Based on Anne Rice's iconic novel, Interview with The Vampire follows Louis de Pointe du Lac's (Jacob Anderson) epic tale of love, blood, and the perils of immortality. In Season 2, we’ve watched as Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) has sharpened his interview skills and leveraged his mysterious connection to the Talamasca to get to the truth about his past and how it’s intertwined with those of Louis, Claudia (Delainey Hayles), Lestat (Sam Reid) and Armand (Assad Zaman). We spoke to Bogosian about the complexity of Season 2’s scripts, reaching new levels of emotional depth within his craft, and how Daniel’s transformation at the end of the season tees up a whole new world of possibilities for him. 
Q: I think one of the best things about Daniel in Season 2 is that at this point he’s verbalizing what the audience is thinking as these revelations happen. It’s SO much fun to react to something and end up having the same reaction as him in that moment! How did it feel going into this season knowing that Daniel was at the crux of so many of Season 2’s “a-ha” moments?  
A: Well, first of all, it diverts from the Anne Rice bible, so we're going into unexplored territory here and we have to talk about Rolin Jones, who's, as far as I'm concerned, a genius. It's not that he's just writing something, but he's writing something in tandem to Anne Rice's genius. So, it gets to be very, very complex. As a writer myself, I'm always asking, “What is Daniel up to and what is going on in these scenes?” As an actor, the first thing that I need to do is look at the script and try and really understand it. I didn't always do that because I think of myself as a smart person. I would give cursory looks at scripts, and then I would learn them. But with these scripts I understood that as we were shooting there was something different going on, you know?
Years ago, I did a Woody Allen movie, and I had a lot of time to work on five lines, so I started to understand that there's always more work to be done. In the case of this show and this character, I tried to familiarize myself as much as I could with what I was reading in these scenes, but it was constantly a revelation all the way to the moment when we would actually be shooting them as to what is actually happening here emotionally. I don't have to carry as much information as, let's say, Armand, who has been around for 500 years. My character though, will be told things that he didn't know… things that he just knew in his gut.
There were so many parallels between my life and Daniel Molloy's that it's kind of uncanny. I had trauma when I was young. I don't mean to make it into some big deal, but I had it and I forgot about it. It didn't exist to me, but that doesn't make any difference. It was still changing the way that I was behaving towards people because it was always there pulsing invisibly inside of me. So that's what's been happening this season. When you realize, when you suddenly say, “Oh! That's who I am!” In his 60s he's learning who he is? That's huge stuff.
If you're lucky, you get to do stuff with subtext. This material for Season 2 was like a sub-basement beneath the basement, and it's hard to keep track of all of it. Like I said, it's really during shooting that we actually got there. That means that I got there in partnership with the other actors and what they brought to the scene. Our secret weapon was Jacob Anderson [aka Louis] because he does not hold back emotionally at all, which, can wreck you. He would get pretty tired on set by being so deeply, emotionally in it. For me as an actor, I get to rely on that when I go into scenes, and I can look him in the eyes and we're there. We're not Eric and Jacob anymore, we're Daniel and Louis. So that's pretty cool.
Q: So much of this season has been about memories, subjectivity, and whether we can trust our own minds when it comes to the emotional moments of our past. In Episode 4, Daniel really starts having more fleshed-out flashbacks of the 1973 incident and they include visions of Armand’s face and voice. By Episode 5 he’s so overcome by these moments of clarity that he wants to dive in with Louis and get to some truths about San Francisco. Really getting to the heart of the matter and asking the question “why me? Why save me?” You go into very emotional territory.  
A: Well, like I said, there are strong parallels between the life of Daniel Molloy and the life of Eric Bogosian. I came to New York around the mid-70s, just as Daniel shows up in San Francisco, and I was footloose, fancy-free, and very curious. Anything that was going down, I was going to find out what was happening behind that closed door. I didn't care what it was! Experimental theater would be one side of it, but another side of it might be a S&M club on 19th Street. I was going to get in there. I was in gay discos. I was in all kinds of places, shooting galleries, anything that was crazy and way out. I also thought I was a writer and I thought I was a good writer, but I was really just a kid who was very much like the character that Luke plays.
The evolution to become this other person over time, it happens over decades — I really relate to that. But the flip side of that is if you suddenly discover that there’s a whole other component to your personality you didn't even know about, or you don't even remember — and that was absolutely the case with me as well — well then there's a lot to work with there. Rolin and the directors got me to places in these scenes that I don't remember ever going to in any movie or TV show. I'm known for doing very broad stuff throughout my career, very intense stuff, angry stuff. But as far as introspective or really feeling feelings, that’s a great challenge. As an actor I want to continue to evolve and remain teachable, and I'm fascinated by what acting actually is. We can use the word, but we don't even know what we mean. It's like love. What do you mean when you use that word?
I've been around a lot of really terrific actors over the last few years, and I look at what they're doing. I look at how they explore roles, and this was a real challenge for me, to say, “Can I go deep with this stuff? Can I find this?” So much of what you do as an actor, you have a bag of tricks and there's a lot of contrivance, but when you're working with an actor like Jacob who's ready to go to the deepest wells of emotion, it encouraged me to say, “Okay, I'm going to go there too. And what does that even mean?” Does that mean I start crying? I’ve watched guys who have tears come to their eyes, and this time tears came to my eyes. It was like, “Whoa, where's that coming from?” It was almost a little scary.
Q: I think another exciting thing for Daniel this season, if we’re talking about his success as an interviewer, is that he’s really blown the lid off the whole freaking thing by the time we get to Episode 8. He’s done it. He's really been able to peel the onion back to a point where these truths have come out that are life changing. I love your final scene in the finale because there’s levity in your final reveal that you’ve been turned by Armand.
I don't even know what that does to our relationship!
Yes, what does that relationship look like and what do Daniel’s other relationships look like now? I loved that final telepathic conversation you had with Louis as well when you’re giving him the heads-up. He'd been listening, so he sort of knew what other vampires were rumbling on about, but you were like, "Get the hell out of Dubai!” It’ll be really interesting to see what happens in Season 3.
There’s so much potential in so many different directions, which is what’s so exciting about the show. At the same time, our feet are still firmly planted in some of the things that motivated Anne Rice to write all this stuff in the first place. Asking those questions: What is life? What is mortality? You don't want to die, but do you want to live forever? What would that be like? And certainly, it's something I think about a lot because I'm older than most of you guys, and I'm at a point in my life where you do think about those things. You think, okay, so what have I been doing all this time and what does this all lead to?
The material really speaks to me. I love the challenges of the material. In some ways Daniel's a lot closer to me than almost any character I've ever played. But then there are other areas that I have to work on in order to craft it. There’s a mystery to it all, which I like to try and fold into what I'm doing when I’m working with such wonderful actors.  
Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire is available to stream on amc.com (with a cable provider login), and the AMC apps for mobile and devices. You can also watch episodes via AMC+ at amcplus.com or through the new AMC+ app available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Fire TV, Apple TV, and Roku plus Samsung and Vizio smart TVs. AMC+ can also be streamed through a variety of providers, including AppleTV, Prime Video Channels, DirectTV, Dish, Roku Channel, Sling, and Xfinity. Sign up for AMC+ now.