[Warning: The following post contains discussions of sexual assault.]
Delainey Hayles‘ Claudia revealed harrowing details about her time away from Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) in Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 3, “No Pain.”
In “No Pain,” Claudia briefly reveals dark truths about what she endured while held captive by the vampire Bruce (Damon Daunno) years prior. She and Louis have been telling the coven that Bruce was their maker, not Lestat, and that he killed himself in front of them, prompting their journey to Europe to find more bloodsuckers. She revealed physical attributes that only she could know to Louis to help keep their story straight, and she eventually detailed the more horrific abuse she suffered at the vampire’s hands.
Hayles tells TV Insider that this is Claudia desperately seeking connection with Louis. “She is in a way begging him to ask her more about herself because he never really does that,” she says. While Claudia has been urging Louis all season long to find himself outside of his bonds with her and Lestat, Claudia still wants love and care from Louis at her core.
Watching the Bruce plot in Season 1, when Bailey Bass played Claudia, “was really, really sad” for Hayles. “The way it was shown in Season 1 was, I think, done right. You don’t really need to see that.” (This plot was created for the show; it’s not in Anne Rice‘s book.) When Claudia shares these details in seemingly random moments in Season 2, it’s because she’s been repressing her feelings for so long that she needs to let some out.“For Claudia, it’s a case of she’s very good at suppressing things until they explode for her,” Hayles explains. “She’s suppressed that for so long that it comes out in little leaks of herself … So when they’re making up the backstory, that memory pops up and then it pops up again when she’s going to bed in the coffin. It pops up because it’s only how much she’ll allow of that to pop up. She’s very in control.”Claudia is “battling with her circumstance, the body she’s in, how that plays out in her life,” Hayles says, “and she’s also battling [the Bruce trauma] with that.” She wants to be able to go to Louis with these feelings, but “she has no one to talk to other than her diaries,” Hayles says. “That’s why it pops up that way. She’s never really spoken to someone about it.”Claudia gets initiated into the Théâtres des Vampires (Larry Horricks / AMC)Claudia is suppressing her disappointment in Louis as well, but is still committed to things working out between their little family. “It’s like, ‘I’m leaving a trail and I want you to pick up the pieces.’ And he never really does,” Hayles explains. Simply put, she’s begging Louis to connect with her.“I think Louis thinks he knows Claudia more than he does, and he actually knows nothing about her,” Hayles adds. “Not who she is in her entirety.” And so when he starts to get to know Armand (Assad Zaman), it feels like a bit of a betrayal. “In the beginning she’s very happy just to be with the theater,” the 25-year-old adds. “And then she slowly realizes that she is being pushed to the side again.”RelatedWhy That Major ‘IWTV’ Character Was Left out of Episode 3Claudia was at her happiest point in Paris when being initiated into the Théâtres des Vampires coven. Ben Daniels‘ Santiago is the vamp she most admires from that group, according to Hayles, but she’s still walking on eggshells despite their warm welcome at the end of “No Pain.”Claudia is “in awe of [Santiago], of his performance. But she’s Claudia. She knows not to trust him,” Hayles says. “But I think towards the later stages of it, she gets wrapped up in the theater. She is looking for a place to belong, and Santiago is the one that’s been the nicest to her, so she’s kind of flocking towards him. But in the beginning, she’s fully aware of the lies that Louis and her are telling. She’s the one telling Louis what to say as well, so that doesn’t come out of the picture, but she is in awe of Santiago.”In Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 4, “I Want You More Than Anything in the World,” “the coven questions Louis and Armand’s special relationship; Claudia finds a new friend,” per AMC. The teaser also reveals Claudia on stage in her leading role debut as a baby girl in the theater’s newest play, “My Baby Loves Windows.” For a 40-year-old woman trapped in a young girl’s body, the infantilization will be torturous for Claudia. But Madeleine (Roxane Duran) may provide a welcome reprieve.Interview With the Vampire, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC, Streaming Sundays on AMC+
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