#but my favorite is ''families are fucked up huh'' and unfortunately the complex triangulation between those three?

[notbecauseofvictories]

you mentioned enjoying i.w.t.v. in response to an ask recently -- can i ask if you found any one character more compelling than the others? (i didn't, haha; i found all four leads equally intriguing and well-drawn, and am beyond excited to see them -- and our new fifth main character -- in europe next season. this is unusual for me so i was just curious!)

Thank you for this question, Anon, because it genuinely made me go back and think about the show. I mean, obviously I knew it was good from the get-go---no other show I've watched in recent memory is such a romp, explores with gusto a divorce that is also a marriage that is also a serial killer streak. It's an Edward Albee play with vampires! I adore it.

But other than clocking it as great television, a show I couldn't ignore even if I wanted to...I have not thought about it all that much.

The hard part of evaluating IWTV as a show is that Lestat/Sam Reid is constantly doing the most. It's genuinely hard to pay attention to anyone else on screen when he is Doing Acting, because the performance he's giving is so unbelievably enormous that it tends to blot out everything else. When you look like that sexy Lucifer and every single line reading you give is maximally unhinged, how are people supposed to pay attention to your scene partners?

Whereas Louis/Jacob Anderson's performance is smoother and subtler; his rage is an undercurrent, his denial is a gloss. As a narrator, his desires are treated as the only measure of truth---since even in his slantwise telling, he can't quite avoid Lestat's thrall.

(I did also love Daniel and "Rashid" but since I read the books so long ago, they didn't really work for me except as a framing device. A great framing device! But only that.)

That being said...I think I have to go with Claudia/Bailey Bass. To be fair, the psychosexual tension between Lestat and Claudia as they compete for Louis' attention (as father/lover/wife and sister/daughter/other woman) is probably my favorite part of the television show. The fucked up relationships between the three of them are so satisfying, Claudia's artificial youth (a hindrance, a tragedy) colliding with Lestat's (a gift, a power) and both of them vying for Louis' attention but not in a kind way...I loved those episodes. And the episode where Claudia and Lestat have their steel-in-a-velvet-glove confrontation on the train? I was in ecstasy.

So I suppose my answer to "which characters do you find compelling?" is "the fraught (somehow incestuous) threesome that is the New Orleans crew, because holy hell, how can I be expected to pay attention to anything else?"