Why Jacob Anderson Said ‘Goodbye’ to Louis After Season 2

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Interview With the Vampire Season 2 finale.]

All throughout AMC‘s Interview With the Vampire Season 2, fans were worried about how big of a presence Jacob Anderson‘s Louis would have in the potential third season and beyond. These concerns were, in part, due to a podcast interview Anderson gave during which he shared that he said “goodbye” to Louis after they wrapped filming Season 2, making fans worry that Louis was not going to be in future seasons. These concerns rose again when AMC renewed the series on June 26 and announced that Sam Reid‘s Lestat would be the focus of Season 3 (they revealed Lestat’s new look at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 on July 27).

While Louis does take a back seat to Lestat in Anne Rice‘s Vampire Chronicles series after the first book, showrunner Rolin Jones has no intentions of sidelining Louis next season. As he told TV Insider’s Damian Holbrook in a Season 2 finale interview, “I’m not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner. The next turn, center stage, is Lestat, but I don’t think we’re going to be pushing Louis to the side like he is in those books.” As executive producer Mark Johnson added, “The last line is Louis saying, ‘I own the night.’ That is not an exit line.” The Season 3 description also states that Louis will be back. Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, I asked Anderson about this “goodbye” ritual and what it meant for him. It was his way of bookending his experience on the first two seasons, not him actually parting ways with the character.

Anderson said on the Stirring It up With Andi and Miquita Oliver podcast in January 2024 that “at the end of shooting this season, I got a handful of rocks from the Dubai set and I put them in a little pouch, like in a little baggy, and I started to spread them.” He continued: “I started to basically spread Louis’ ‘ashes’ in significant places. I put them in Louis places to say goodbye to him for a bit, because that show and him have been so much a part of my brain for the last two years.”

The rocks were from the zen garden with Armand’s (Assad Zaman) since-removed magnolia tree, rocks that served as a reminder of the damage the Théâtre des Vampires coven caused when burying Louis alive in Paris. Louis dug his feet into this zen garden in moments of emotional overwhelm during his interview with Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) across both seasons.

Using these rocks to symbolize significant emotional moments is something Anderson and Louis have in common. But Anderson used them to create a boundary between him and Louis after filming wrapped. The heavy material of both seasons were exhausting for Anderson, but a deeply meaningful emotional experience more than anything else. He honored Louis while taking care of himself by spreading these rocks like “ashes” in New Orleans and his favorite park to give himself “catharsis,” Anderson tells me.

Taking the time to shut down Louis’ feelings in his mind was important “because this has been my life for two years. It feels like longer,” Anderson says. “I don’t mean that like it’s been difficult. It’s been really significant. I’ve never spent so much time in a character’s head, and Louis’ head is a mess. It’s a lot. I don’t mean to make it sound more than it is. I just needed to release something a little bit.”

“Particularly in Season 2, there were things that were quite tough even to imagine,” he adds. Truly, few actors have been tasked with harder material this year on TV. Playing Louis this season required depictions of self-harm, addiction, a suicide attempt, physical and mental torture, and trauma-induced psychosis after what happened to Claudia (Delainey Hayles) and Madeleine (Roxane Duran). It’s healthy for Anderson to step away from that headspace for a while, to say he won’t carry Louis’ feelings along with his own for the time being.

AMC

“I love Louis like a person I know. I love him as if he’s a friend. I think I just needed to let him go for a bit and just be myself,” Anderson explains with a chuckle. “Not that I was walking around being Louis, but for Season 2 I kind of was. I was away from home and away from my family. It kind of became my life last season. And I just was like, I need to do something for myself that feels symbolic in a place that feels really comfortable for me and warm and homely, which is New Orleans and that’s Louis’ home. So that’s all it was.”

He does note, however, that Season 2 “is the end of Louis’ story” as we’ve known it. What he said next was said before the series was renewed. “I genuinely don’t know anything about the future, so I’m not even being cryptic,” he adds, explaining that Season 2 “is the end of the book, the end of Interview With the Vampire. And it felt like that. It felt like the end. And I think that it was a good thing for me to mark it in some way for myself. It’s been amazing.”

Now, we all know it’s not the definitive end, as in the end of the series. But it is the end of an era. When Louis returns, he won’t be the same vampire we’ve known for 15 episodes. Jones said this himself in our finale interview, saying that the end of Louis’ story is also a beginning.

“I don’t think Louis, as we leave him, is going to be this guy who is suffering as much,” Jones explained. “Actually, I think he’s maybe beginning his legitimate vampire experience there at the end.”

Anderson feels great about what they’ve made in this remarkable series. “I’m really proud of it and of everyone,” he tells me, adding with a giggle, “but it’s the most woo-woo I’ve ever been about anything in my life. I’m like, ‘I’m gonna scatter ashes!’ I don’t mean literal ashes. It’s hard to really explain.”

Watching the season, it’s quite easy to understand why the actor would need a break. “It’s actually a really hard show to talk about other than plot details and machinations of the story,” Anderson says, “because it does feel like a really intense emotional experience to make it, which again, it sounds very highfalutin and woo-woo. It feels different.”

Honestly, thank god Louis won’t be “suffering as much” in Season 3, as Jones describes. Our boy deserves a break.

Interview With the Vampire, Season 3 Premiere, TBA, AMC