We knew for quite some time that Delainey Hayles would be back in The Vampire Lestat. But we didn’t know what character Hayles would play in her return. In Interview with the Vampire, we witnessed the death of Delainey Hayles’ original character, Claudia. Claudia was the vampire daughter of Lestat and Louis, and she was murdered by the Paris Coven for “breaking the Great Laws” of the vampire, while Louis was just barely spared. Uncovering the truth of her death was a core part of Louis’ journey in Interview with the Vampire. And reckoning with the grief of losing Claudie remained a major part of Louis’ story in The Vampire Lestat. But did Delainey Hayles actually return as Claudia in The Vampire Lestat? Yes, and also no. In The Vampire Lestat episode three, Hayles appeared in the form of someone else, a human. But who is The Vampire Lestat‘s Regina, Delainey Hayles’ new The Vampire Lestat character? Let’s take a closer look at what the series revealed to us about this familiar face with a new name.
Table of contents; Jump To:
- Who Does Delainey Hayles Play in The Vampire Lestat?
- Who Is Regina in The Vampire Lestat? Here’s What We Know
- Regina Was Working for Armand Throughout The Vampire Lestat
- Is Regina Related to Claudia at All?
- Nerdist Take: Delainey Hayles’ Regina Storyline with Louis in The Vampire Lestat Was Intense But Effective
- Will We See More of Delainey Hayles’ Regina in Queen of the Damned ? Could Regina Become a Vampire?
Who Does Delainey Hayles Play in The Vampire Lestat?
Delainey Hayles plays Regina in The Vampire Lestat. We meet Hayles’ new character, Regina, in The Vampire Lestat episode three, but we hear Louis talking about her as early as episode two. Hayles’ Regina plays a role in the entire season.
Who Is Regina in The Vampire Lestat? Here’s What We Know
In The Vampire Lestat, Regina is a human who works as a waitress at a NYC diner called “Brick and Bacon.” Louis describes Hayles’ Regina to Daniel as follows: “I saw Claudia in New York, coming out of the subway… Someone who looked like her, but in her twenties, if she’d made it to her twenties. So I come up, I watched her turn the corner. I saw her walk into a diner. I couldn’t help myself. I go inside, I grab a booth. It’s not her, she’s not there. Chased a ghost, I guess. I ordered a donut and coffee, just to pass. And she comes out the back in uniform. It’s not her. This one’s got a different walk, accent. I’m not in her section. I walked out.”
But indeed, when we finally see Regina in The Vampire Lestat episode three, played by Delainey Hayles as she is, the new character is an exact copy of Claudia. Her accent is British when she speaks to Louis, and she’s aged to Hayles’ age at the present. But we understand how intense this is for the character.
In episode four of The Vampire Lestat, we learn more about what we believe to be Regina’s background. Regina reveals that she’s quite poor, living in an apartment that’s falling apart, full of mice and dangling wires, and populated with too many roommates. And Louis discovers that she’s been struggling. Among other things, Regina has a debt looming over her and a criminal record that includes a history of credit card scams and stealing cars. Of course, all of this makes engaging in a relationship with Louis look quite tempting, but also makes the relationship between them, not exactly healthy to begin with, even more so, born of desperation and unequal power dynamics. But… it turns out there’s more to the story.
Regina Was Working for Armand Throughout The Vampire Lestat
Alas, it turns out parts of Regina’s tale of woe were true in The Vampire Lestat and parts of them… Weren’t. Delainey Hayles’ new character was actually sent into Louis’ orbit by Armand, who was seeking vengeance, we suppose, of some kind for Louis’ abrupt conclusion of their relationship, and perhaps for Armand’s vision of the way Louis mistreated him and never loved him throughout the 77 years they spent together, and perhaps for the many things that had gone wrong in his life that had nothing to do with Louis at all.
In any case, in The Vampire Lestat finale, Armand reveals that he found Regina by using facial recognition software on his iPad, along with an old photo of Claudia. He shares that Regina does indeed have a “grifter’s resume,” but that in addition, there was a “years-long tale of seduction and cold commerce” between the two, which culminated in Armand setting Regina up in New York and sending her into Louis’ orbit. Armand notes that Hayles’ Regina passed in front of Louis 19 times before he finally noticed. And then, when they did cross paths, Armand guided her to manipulate him with the mind gift… But not fully. Regina was good at her job, he suggests, and did some of it of her own volition. And her job was to allow Armand “the aperture with which to rip Louis’ innards out.”
Ultimately, though, it seems that Regina really did come to care about Louis in The Vampire Lestat. And that part feels sincere. And on Louis’ end, Claudia and Regina are obviously entwined in ways he’ll never be able to separate. In the end, Louis offers Armand the amends he wants so much, although they are not wholly sincere, and Armand lets both Regina and Louis leave alive. Delainey Hayles’ Regina runs out of the room before Louis’ head fully re-attaches to his body, and we don’t see her again in The Vampire Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat Clued Us in That Regina Was on Armand’s Team All Along
Before the finale, we received a new fascinating insight into Regina from The Vampire Lestat‘s marketing team. Since the beginning of the series, The Vampire Lestat had been releasing character posters that were either pink or yellow-colored. Eagle-eyed fans realized that these colors implied the formation of two teams. Speculation abounded that the color marks a character’s allegiance, either to Lestat or to Armand, or perhaps their feelings about the Great Conversion. Regina’s poster was yellow, like Daniel and Armand, not pink, like Lestat and Louis. And that gave us our earliest clue that Delainey Hayles’ Regina was actually on Team Armand in The Vampire Lestat. (Kind of, anyway)
Is Regina Related to Claudia at All?
Even after the finale, we don’t know if Regina and Claudia have any kind of cosmic connection on The Vampire Lestat. Anne Rice’s universe is full of all kinds of magic and powers, though, so we guess we can’t entirely rule it out either.
That said, in episode five of The Vampire Lestat, Louis asks Lestat to meet Regina and confirm for him whether she’s “Claudia come back to him” or not. Lestat becomes emotional about seeing Regina, who does look like Claudia, but confirms to Louis that she is nothing like their dead daughter. Chiefly, Lestat cites that “it’s not her,” because of “the eyes.” And Louis agrees, “No spark, right?”
After this meeting, Lestat is moved to write a song about Claudia called “Stained Glass Eyes,” so we’re feeling like the lack of Claudia in Regina’s eyes implies she isn’t connected to Claudia. Still, anything could happen.
Nerdist Take: Delainey Hayles’ Regina Storyline with Louis in The Vampire Lestat Was Intense But Effective
Although The Vampire Lestat brought back Delainey Hayles as ghost Claudia for a fascinating scene, it was Hayles’ Regina that had the biggest impact on Louis and the narrative this season. While it was Armand’s doing that the situation Louis and Regina found themselves in arose in the first place, Louis’ inability to let go of his grief, guilt, and loneliness, his inability to move on, and, in some senses, his selfishness about his own pain made Armand’s job much simpler than it needed to be. After his first encounter with Regina, Louis returned to the diner several times, as Regina notes, “three times in five nights,” to engage with the Claudia look-alike and try to get to know her. And that was a wild thing to do, whether or not Armand was pulling all the strings.
Having Regina speak with Claudia’s New Orleans accent, putting her in a position to be an emotional support for a situation she couldn’t understand, even hiring someone to play Claudia’s dead lover, Madeleine, were all facets of the relationship that intensely crossed a line. And yet, we got a real look into where Louis’ head is in The Vampire Lestat. And that place is, like every other character, very messed up. Even though the journey was an intense one, it very effectively helped us to see where all of Louis’ trauma has taken him.
And, credit where credit is due: Louis really tried hard to kick the habit with Regina in the end, something that was no easy feat with Armand behind the scenes. He also tries desperately to save her life, even forcing himself to offer Armand sentiments that dug deep into his soul. And that’s the essential goodness of Louis that we love so much. Hopefully, Louis’ run-in with Claudia’s ghost also cemented this feeling. And if Louis and Regina DO meet again, they’ll be able to engage in a more productive way.
The idea of seeing someone we love come back to life is, of course, a temptation that no human and vampire could withstand easily. But even if Regina was just a coincidental Claudia look-alike, she couldn’t have actually helped Louis with his grief over Claudia. And, especially for a vampire, intense grief can be a dangerous thing. We want healing for Louis, and this was absolutely not the path to it in any form. We’re crossing our fingers that going so far down this dangerous road with his grief will help Louis to see that it is time to work through his feelings more productively. And at present, he has admitted he has some work to do on himself in The Vampire Lestat; hopefully, he’ll hold onto that feeling in Queen of the Damned.
Will We See More of Delainey Hayles’ Regina in Queen of the Damned? Could Regina Become a Vampire?
It’s unclear if Delainey Hayles will be back as Regina after the final episode of The Vampire Lestat. But with season four of the series, Queen of the Damned, officially confirmed, we bet there will be more of Hayles to come.
Hayles tells us that even after the intensities of The Vampire Lestat finale, Regina is still thinking about Louis. She offers, “I think we saw her leg it out of the room, and I think in her mind she was like, ‘I need to get out of here.’ But I don’t think it’s escaped from her mind that Louis was doing everything he could in the room to try to save her. So maybe it’s one of those things where it’s like, I don’t know, she goes back to waitressing, and then she’s like, ‘Oh, yeah. I wonder what he’s up to.'”
And that’s just the line of thought that could bring Hayles’ Regina right back into the mix of things.
The Vampire Lestat (or season three of Interview with the Vampire) is now streaming on AMC and AMC+. You can also read Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat book today.
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Originally published on June 21, 2026.