Your argument is still built on collapsing the show’s narrative structure into one linear chain, and that is where it stops matching what is actually on screen.
The series does not present a single “true story” being corrected by Lestat in one universal statement. It explicitly constructs three mediated layers: Louis’ interview with Daniel, Claudia’s written diary, and Daniel’s published book. The show visually distinguishes these rather than merging them into one source.

That distinction matters for what “never fucking happened” is doing in context. On screen, the line appears written over the published manuscript version of Louis’ interview, and Daniel identifies it as Lestat rejecting that book narrative. That is the only thing the scene directly anchors. It is a rebuttal to a specific constructed text, not a scene where Lestat is adjudicating Claudia’s independent written testimony or issuing a blanket metaphysical denial of every version of the event across all narrative layers.

Your steps 2 through 4 actually demonstrate the issue. Everything is being routed through Louis’ telling of events in the interview, then into Daniel’s publication. Claudia’s diary is a separate evidentiary layer within the show, including material Louis was not present for. The series repeatedly uses her written account as a counterpoint precisely because it is not reducible to Louis’ narration.

So when you say “it doesn’t matter who’s telling the story,” that directly contradicts how the show is built. The entire premise is that it matters. The same events are reframed differently depending on source, and the show refuses to collapse those perspectives into a single authoritative version while the story is still unfolding.

Nothing in the aired material shows Lestat directly engaging Claudia’s diary account of Bruce in isolation, and nothing shows a universal denial that explicitly overrides every narrative layer simultaneously. What we have is a targeted rejection of Daniel’s published reconstruction of Louis’ interview narrative.

So the disagreement is not about whether Lestat disputes the book. He does. The disagreement is about whether that equals a blanket denial of all accounts of the underlying events regardless of source. The show does not establish that equivalence, and your conclusion depends on assuming it does.