Interview With the Vampire stars dissect episode 6's tragic betrayal (exclusive)

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Interview With the Vampire season 2, episode 6, "Like the Light by Which God Made the World Before He Made Light."

Louis (Jacob Anderson), Claudia (Delainey Hayles), and Madeleine (Roxane Duran) almost lived happily ever after on Interview With the Vampire. But the two loves of Louis' life, Armand (Assad Zaman) and Lestat (Sam Reid), ruined all chances of that — which is especially tragic as Claudia and Madeleine had only just began to build a life together as vampire companions.

By the end of episode 6, Armand made the decision to betray Louis, Claudia, and Madeleine to earn his freedom from his coven, and as the three unsuspecting vampires were attacked and captured, he simply watched, doing nothing to help them. In the final moments, it's revealed that the coven plans to put them all on trial for breaking ancient vampire laws, disguised as a fake matinee play in front of a human audience. Their accuser is none other Lestat, fully healed from Louis and Claudia's attempted murder in the season 1 finale.

"It didn't surprise me, Armand's betrayal," Anderson tells Entertainment Weekly, since that happens in author Anne Rice's book. "But the way that it plays out surprised me."

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Zaman promises that the final two episodes of the season will honor Rice's story while still holding some surprises for fans of the book. "I don't think that we are veering too wildly away from how the book ends, but we are also setting up lots of new threads that we can go into season 3 with," he adds. "Book readers will see, especially when we get to episode 7, we tie things up really nicely and we honor the story and it is fantastical in all its ways. I am very proud of how we have told the story, and I think we definitively tell the story of Interview With the Vampire, this first book, properly honor it, and ended it really nicely."

But there's still a lot more ground to cover before season 2 ends, and Anderson reveals that episode 6 is his favorite of the season because of how everything changes for Louis.

"Louis is seemingly on top of everything — he's become this very callous, cold businessman and kind of fallen back into 1910s Louis, just with a new shine," Anderson explains. "To see that collapse in that way was really interesting, and that scene is such a strange scene, in the cafe. It feels very unreal and sort of like dreamy and weird. But the biggest tragedy, really, of that episode and the season, is you really see that Madeleine and Claudia got it right."

After Claudia saved dressmaker Madeleine from an attack from bigoted humans, she convinced Louis to turn Madeleine into a vampire to become her companion. "She's elated that somebody's put her first, and that person is for her, and that's it," Hayles says. "Claudia's always been a second choice, and she didn't have a choice in what happened to her, who she became, her circumstances, but she can choose somebody that puts her first and when she does, that person chooses her back. It's a very pure and lovely relationship."

Anderson loves how Claudia and Madeleine represent the opposite of what Louis' had in all his relationships. "They figured out, at least in theory, what vampire companionship can be and what the antidote to vampire loneliness is," he adds. "They're like the dream of it and it's such a beautiful relationship. Then to see it be immediately taken away from them at that stage is really heartbreaking. They're about to travel the world and now they're captured."

All the actors struggle to discuss more of what this betrayal means for their characters, as the final two episodes of the season adapt some of the biggest moments from Rice's book. "It's especially hard to talk about it without getting into episode 7, because you could almost watch those two episodes in one sitting as if they're one complete story," Anderson says. "And Roxane and Delainey are incredible. AMC, if you're listening, I want to see the few months that we don't see Madeleine and Claudia chilling out, having incredible chemistry, being insanely good actors."

He adds with a laugh, "I just want to see vampire hangouts, really. I love that relationship. It's why I love that episode so much, seeing that companionship blossom. It's so delicate but also very real, because they're just so real with each other. It's so lovely and great."

As for where it leads now that they're captured by the coven and put on "trial," however, Hayles is staying tight-lipped. "You guys have seen the yellow dress, that's all I'm going to say," she teases.

New episodes of Interview With the Vampire air Sundays on AMC.