Unreliable Narrator / Interview with the Vampire (2022)

• The Framing Device is that journalist Daniel Molloy previously interviewed Louis de Pointe du Lac in San Francisco in 1973, and is now in Dubai in 2022 interviewing him again about the same events — namely Louis' relationship with his ex Lestat de Lioncourt. The two stories are markedly different.
  • In the third episode, Daniel questions the accuracy of Louis' retelling of his romance with Lestat because it's so dissimilar from the 1973 interview. In either version, it's safe to say that it was a toxic relationship, but the tenor of it is very different. In 1973, Louis told it in a cold and resentful manner, more like Awful Wedded Life. In 2022, he tells it hot and tempestuous, like The Masochism Tango.
    Daniel: I gotta say, it's not so much the minute details, Louis, rather the total rewrite that's giving me pause here. I mean, 1973.
    (plays 1973 cassette recording): He was a sow's ear, out of which nothing fine could be made. I was his complete superior, and I had been sadly cheated in having him for a teacher.
    Daniel: 2022.
    (plays 2022 audio recording): It was a cold winter that year, and Lestat was my coal fire. And I found myself, for the very first time, to anyone other than Paul, confiding my struggles to another man.
    Daniel: San Francisco.
    (plays 1973 cassette recording): He appeared frail and stupid to me, a man made of dried twigs with a thin, carping voice.
    Daniel: Dubai.
    (plays 2022 audio recording): I never allowed myself to feel emotionally close to anyone, much less a man. Lestat had surrounded me.
    Louis: The version we speak of now is the more nuanced portrait.
    Daniel: Hmm. Or the more rehearsed.
  • Based on the 1973 interview, Daniel was under the impression that Louis was abused by Lestat, but in 2022, Louis now denies that he was the victim. Was Louis slandering Lestat before, and being more truthful now? Or was he was being more truthful then, and sugarcoating the past now?
    Daniel: It's the abused-abuser psychological relationship I'm talking about.
    Louis: I do not consider myself abused.
    Daniel: I mean, usually when you're a little too close to it, the abused still loves the abuser — but you flipped it completely on its head.
    Louis: I'm not a victim.
    Daniel: Fifty years later, you talk like he was your soul mate, li— like— like you were locked in some fucked up gothic romance.
  • By 1917, a 39-year-old Louis ^note the closure notice he receives in episode 3 is dated Mar. 1, 1917, so it's before his October birthday is still carrying a torch for his Old Flame Jonah at least 20 years onwards, which contradicts his claim in the series premiere that "I had never allowed myself to feel emotionally close to anyone, much less a man" after he and Lestat made love for the first time. Louis obviously had strong feelings for Jonah when they were teenagers (it's very likely they are each other's First Love); Lestat knows it after stalking them and observing their easy intimacy, and he's incredibly jealous of their longtime closeness (he calls Jonah "an old love" of Louis). It's unclear why Louis downplayed Jonah's importance in front of Daniel and wished to portray Lestat as the sole person Louis has ever fallen in love with.
  • It turns out that Louis can't precisely recall certain details like the weather.
    Louis: The mud on [Lestat's] boots could have come from anywhere.
    Daniel: Was it raining that night?
    (Louis in his mind replays part of his memory of Jonah at the bayou without rain)
    Daniel: Did it rain?
    (Louis in his mind replays the same memory of Jonah at the bayou with heavy rain and thunder)
    Louis: I don't remember now. It could have been dry on the bayou and wet in the Quarter. It's Louisiana.
    Daniel: The odyssey of recollection.
  • In the fourth episode, Daniel is granted access to Claudia's journals, and Rashid informs him that they're "an alternative perspective on the years of your interest." As the vampire daughter of Lestat and Louis, Claudia views her fathers differently than how Louis does. Louis is warmer and more affectionate in her eyes than in his own account (e.g. his sweet nothings to Lestat — "I missed you" and "I hated sleeping without you" — suggest that Louis is more lovey-dovey than how he presents himself to Daniel), whereas Lestat is colder and crueler than how he was depicted in the previous episodes, being the Tough Love parent. Claudia has her own biases — she loves Daddy Lou more than Uncle Les, so this would affect how she characterizes them in her diaries.
  • In the fifth episode, Daniel insists on reading the missing pages from Claudia's journal, no matter how disturbing their contents may be, because as an investigative journalist, it's essential that he obtains as much information as possible. Louis refuses, so Daniel now doubts the veracity of the second interview even more than before.
    Daniel: When you do that, Louis, when you editorialize, however noble the reasoning, it calls into question the other shit you're shovelling my way.
  • In the seventh episode, Daniel notices that yet another diary of Claudia's has been tampered with. Unlike the one featuring Bruce, where the pages were roughly torn out by hand because Louis doesn't want Daniel to read about the Implied Rape, this other journal's pages were removed with surgical precision. This hints that Rashid (who is the only other person who has read all of Claudia's writing) was the one who did the editorializing in this instance. After the vampire Armand drops his Human Disguise, he tells Daniel, "I protect [Louis] from himself, always have," which suggests that the omitted entries are very hurtful to Louis. Daniel figures as much.
    Daniel: The boat you bought Anderson, a shipload of coffins for cargo.
    Louis: Plenty of cover for a couple of stowaways, ready to begin the adventure of our lives.
    Daniel: Well... isn't that neat and tidy?
    Louis: There was a ship. We did get on it.
    Daniel: Yeah, I read that, the first 50 pages. Not exactly the, uh, adventure-of-our-lives feeling I'm feeling.
    Louis: It was a traumatic escape.
    Daniel: Yeah, but she didn't say that explicitly. I mean, maybe in some of the pages that got torn out. Well, not torn out, exactly. More like with a ruler. But, um... there's a feeling that she hated your guts there for a while.
• All of the information that the audience is receiving is filtered through Daniel's lens, so when Louis reads out loud a paragraph from Daniel's autobiography which highlights the latter's flawed memory, viewers must keep in mind that we can't completely trust Daniel's interpretation of events, either.
  Louis: "I am in my Buick, staring in the rearview mirror at my daughter in the car seat, an hour after I gave Derek, a guy I don't know, the last 30 bucks I had. My editor reminds me, it's seven years before car seats are mandatory. My ex-wife reminds me, I never owned a Buick. This is the odyssey of recollection."
  • Near the beginning of the pilot, after listening to the tail end of the 1973 interview on a cassette player, Daniel concedes that he doesn't recall the argument he and Louis had just before the latter attacked him. It establishes that Daniel's substance abuse in The '70s has caused gaps in his memory.
    Louis: You were disrespectful.
    Daniel: I was high. [...] Alright. That's my voice, but I don't remember it.
  • In the sixth episode, Daniel has two bags of levodopa (which he refers to as "legal dope") in his system to treat his Parkinson's disease, and his powerful medication makes him sleepy. He dreams about how he and Louis first met at Polynesian Mary's, but it's possible that his recollection of that event has been somewhat altered by the levodopa transfusion (elderly patients are generally more sensitive to its effects on the central nervous system, which can lead to confusion, hallucinations and delusions). Moreover, Parkinson's disease in its later stages includes forgetfulness, memory loss and dementia.
  • At the end of Season 1, Armand tries to remind Daniel that he saved his life, but Daniel has no memory of it.
    Armand: This time, I won't save your life. Louis can sometimes act out. I protect him from himself, always have. Stopped him that night in San Francisco.
    Daniel: You were there.
    Louis: You don't remember, do you?
    Daniel: No, I don't remember.
    Louis: What was that you said about memory? "A monster," was it?

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