Daniel Hart Talks Crafting Lestat’s Magnus in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’s ‘Your Biggest Fan’ Song

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• The Vampire Lestat composer Daniel Hart broke down “Your Biggest Fan,” Lestat’s intense songs about his maker, Magnus.

The songs created by Daniel Hart for The Vampire Lestat are nothing short of masterpieces. But one song in particular has truly stunned fans: the intense “love song” “Your Biggest Fan.” “Your Biggest Fan” functions as Lestat’s reckoning with his maker, Magnus, who forced vampirism onto him without his consent, desire, or full understanding. But, in truth, Lestat did not actually know Magnus. In Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, we learn that Magnus stalked Lestat from afar before kidnapping him and turning him into a vampire. But once that was done, Magnus immediatly threw himself into the fire, leaving Lestat on his own in his new state. So ultimately, “Your Biggest Fan” reveals more about Lestat himself and his state of mind about his kidnapping and turning than anything else. Addressing this powerful song, Daniel Hart spoke to Nerdist about the process of crafting “Your Biggest Fan” for The Vampire Lestat. (As a note, please proceed with caution as you read, this response touches on darker themes.)

Hart shares about Lestat, Magnus, and “Your Biggest Fan.”:

I wrote the song pretty early on in the writer’s room process. In the writer’s room, I was going back and forth between the table where all the writers were sitting, outlining plots, discussing characters, thinking about what would happen from episode to episode in season three. And I went back and forth between the writer’s room table and then a little makeshift studio, a musical studio that I had set up in the same house where the writer’s room was based. And I would sit at the table, and we would talk and talk and talk and then someone would say something that would give me an idea, and I would go off and work on a song for a little bit, and I would come back to the table when I had gotten enough of an idea down that it wouldn’t be forgotten or lost.

I don’t remember exactly what it was about Magnus and Lestat that made me make the choices I made with “Your Biggest Fan,” but it was certainly after rereading that passage in the book of Lestat’s transformation multiple times and it just felt like there was so much meat on the bone.

And we were already talking in the writer’s room at that point about telling the story in different ways. What were the ways that we wanted to approach the characters that we either hadn’t done before in seasons one or two, or that were ways that were different from the book, or different than stuff that we had already seen in other television shows?

So I don’t know why it occurred to me, probably because deep down I am very dark and twisted, but I thought, well, if he’s going to write a song about his transformation, then he should write it from the point of view of the person who transformed him. And since it was basically abduction and then abuse, and a rape of sorts, then that would be Lestat’s experience of it.

But the person who did those things, as can often be the case in real life, the person who is the tormentor, the predator, the abuser, doesn’t view themselves that way. And for Magnus, I don’t think he viewed himself that way at all, and either because he himself was so dark and twisted or because by that point in his own life, he had just basically lost his mind. So I thought, yeah, he wouldn’t think of himself as doing something terrible at all. He wasn’t torturing people. He was loving them. So I thought, oh, it’s a love song. Obviously, it’s a love song. So then I started writing a love song about abducting someone and then torturing them, and then it became the thing that it is.

But, [of course, the song] is really about Lestat’s version of what he thinks Magnus thought was happening. Since he barely knew him. The guy transformed him and then threw himself into a fire, and that was that.

AMC

If this breakdown of “Your Biggest Fan,” isn’t enough to convince you that this series is tackling some incredibly complicated themes in truly deft ways, unlike anything you’ve ever seen on television before, then I don’t know what would be. All I know is that “Your Biggest Fan” is even more devestating in-situ when it finally comes around in The Vampire Lestat. And considering that Lestat is putting himself in Magnus’ shoes makes it even worse. Get yourself ready and get those tissues ready.

The Vampire Lestat airs at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to air.

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The post Daniel Hart Talks Crafting Lestat’s Magnus in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’s ‘Your Biggest Fan’ Song appeared first on Nerdist.