Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt in The Vampire Lestat
Sophie Giraud/AMC
The most resonate word to describe the journey The Vampire Lestat takes we, the beautifully unwell, on—over the course of the six episodes available to review—is fearless. Interview with the Vampire’s third season, bearing a new name and Lestat’s (Sam Reid) point of view, is the bravest show you’ll watch this year. In that regard, it follows in the footsteps of its two proceeding seasons while charting its own path.
It was a risk to go for the same hat trick Anne Rice pulled in her Vampire Chronicles books after the show’s audience has spent four years attuned to Louis’ (Jacob Anderson) voice and perspective. But it’s one that pays off in dividends.
Gone is the sprawling period drama that traverses the 20th century as Louis pieces together the fragments of his memory while self-contained in a modern, minimalist, staid abode in present-day Dubai. In its place is a raucous pleasure den tour bus that goes from venue to venue across North America as Lestat has a mental breakdown and is forced to reckon with his past. That’s not an easy transition even with the connective tissue of what came before.
This season does not feel effortless, it feels earned. There is a difference between following a narrative change born from the books and stepping fully into a perspective shift whilst embracing what that means for the story and its audience. But if you’re going to follow Lestat down the Devil’s road, you must be prepared to question everything you think you know about Lestat, Louis, Claudia (Delainey Hayles), Armand (Assad Zaman), and even Daniel (Eric Bogosian).
It’s not that the series is no longer preoccupied with the monstrosity of memory, it is. But its focus is now on what it means to try to heal. How messy and painful that process can be. It’s about re-discovery of self, accountability, and ownership of your own choices from how they affect you to how they affect other people, particularly the ones you love.
Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt in The Vampire Lestat
AMC
The Vampire Lestat achieves this while still being a rollicking, rolling, campy, hot mess with off the wall, out of pocket dialogue that’ll leave you wondering if that line really came out of someone’s mouth. It is also incredibly heartbreaking and full of triggers that can and will hit close to home for anyone who has lost someone, been abused, assaulted, raped, or used substances to dull the pain of existence.
But in that heart break is an overwhelming, overflowing exploration of grief and love that feels like a pouring out of Pandora’s box until what’s left is a hope that’s as golden and full of song as Lestat himself. This season acts like the embodiment of the gift Louis thanked Lestat for in the season 2 finale of Interview with the Vampire. He said, “I came here to thank you. For the gift you offered me. The gift I denied. For the nights in front of me, where I might learn to live honestly.”
Living honestly is what Daniel’s book—published without consent and twisted from Louis’ own faulty account of his life with Lestat and after Claudia’s murder—compels Lestat to do. But rather than have a sit down the likes of which would crack him open, Lestat takes to the stage.
He writes music that wrestles back control over his own narrative and leads Daniel around by the nose promising insights into his life while making it very difficult to get anything of use on camera for a documentary. But before Lestat can build himself up, his mind must break him down to pieces that manifest as muses.
‘The Vampire Lestat’ Expands ’Interview With The Vampire’
When we first meet Lestat again, he’s in a good place. Montreal is his home now. He and Louis are in contact, falling into a banter that’s reminiscent of the first season but with an awareness to their history and flirtation that blooms with possibility. Then the infamous Interview with the Vampire drops and it all falls to ruin.
Lestat escapes from the pain and betrayal into music, taking the rough around the edges band Satan’s Night Out—Larry (Noah Reid), Alex (Seamus Patterson), TC (Sarah Swire), and Salamander (Ryan Kattner)—under his wing and carrying them to greater heights in an era that sees rock as a relic of the past.
It’s fitting that Lestat’s genre of choice is one that is considered to be bygone. It’s not mainstream, it’s not popular but it can hold an array of emotion, conveying his capriciousness, vulnerability, and anger with a simple key change or vocal inflection sung over a guitar’s mournful cry.
Daniel Hart, Interview with the Vampire’s composer and songwriter, is masterful in how he structures the musical arc of the season.
You’ll notice that Lestat’s sound evolves and ripens as he confronts his muses and his demons. It will bowl you over and steal your breath, leaving you in desperate need of a physical copy of this soundtrack for your collection because the songs yearn, they rattle, and they shake you up. They have such an impact, the show wouldn’t be as poignant or visceral without them. Not a single song is a throw away even the more bouncy, infectious ear worms.
Lestat is unflinchingly honest in his lyrics, but it takes time for his music to crescendo past the surface and delve into the meat of what’s been hiding behind a curated version of his life.
Heart break is a running theme of The Vampire Lestat. It has to be because Lestat’s heart is broken. But it’s not just the book and Louis’ unvarnished, unflattering, partly fabricated portrait of who he is that has done this. Lestat has not dealt with the trauma he’s experienced in his life and so his mind, fractured as it is, decides to take him for a ride since songwriting requires introspection and reflection in order to connect with the listener. And my goodness does he.
Sam Reid’s voice this season is transcendent. He is a rock star. There is no other way to describe how the music lives in his body and really how this role lives in it as well. If you were blown away by his work in the first two seasons, you’re going to be left speechless by his performance now that it’s his turn to step fully into the spotlight. Interview with the Vampire season 3 lives by his portrayal of Lestat’s vulnerability, avoidance, tender heart, and turn of phrase.
He picks up the torch Jacob Anderson passed and runs with it. They are a match, note for note, which is rare. It is not easy to go from a supporting co-lead to the one who must carry a season’s entire arc when you were once the phantom that haunted the narrative. But Reid does it with such care, such attention to detail that the hand-off feels seamless and only jarring in that we’re in the present day more consistently than we are in the past.
Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt and Jennifer Ehle as Gabriella
AMC
Lestat’s Story Examines Love And All Its Costs
But the past is certainly prologue in The Vampire Lestat beginning with his mother, Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle). Their incestuous relationship is the most confronting dynamic in the series thus far. It is abusive and horrific.
Jennifer Ehle plays Gabriella with a mercurial nature that masquerades as playfulness until she starts to become bored or is challenged. Then she pesters and pokes and provokes until she gets what she wants whether it’s Lestat’s body, blood, obedience, or silence.
The control she has over her son transcends the maker-fledgling bond because of their parent-child relationship. Though their sexual connection is portrayed and talked about as if it is strictly uncomplicated, consensual, and a familial boundary that vampires do not concern themselves with, it is not that simple or neat. That’s made clear by how, when, and why they cross that boundary as well as Lestat’s reaction to it and his blustery asides about it every time it happens.
But often, Gabriella feels like a stand-in for the persistent shame that Lestat carries and his struggle with feeling worthy of love. She’s used almost metaphorically like the weight on his back, the idea he has in his mind that to be loved he must endure whatever version of it he’s been given by who’s willing to give it to him, with exception to Armand. His love Lestat categorically rejects.
Paired with the tragedy that is his first love Nicki (Joseph Potter) and the cruelty that lies within his maker Magnus’ (Damien Atkins) all-consuming obsession, which is depicted in the catchy and deceptively creepy song “Your Biggest Fan,” what Lestat chooses to share does not go down easy. As you watch, take care of and be kind to yourself.
Gabriella is also a sharp and stark contrast to Louis, who eclipses darn near everything for Lestat whether they’re in each other’s presence or not. Louis is both the answer and the question he is ruminating on this season, with most of Lestat’s songs being about or informed by his feelings for Louis.
There’s a line he has about the amount of days he lived before Louis entered his life, implying that his existence didn’t start with and does not rest on Louis’ involvement, but because Louis is Lestat’s heart, he remains at the center of the story.
This go around, Jacob Anderson occupies the role Sam Reid did for two seasons. He’s a scene-stealing, focus shifting, force in the narrative who balances Louis on the knife’s edge of restraint, aggression, devastating grief, aloofness, and a capacity for love that both puts him together and tears him apart. It is no wonder why Lestat loves Louis, no more than it is no wonder that the audience does, too.
Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac in The Vampire Lestat
AMC
Louis has his own place in this season separate from Lestat, but it does circle back to include him because Lestat remains who he trusts with his most vulnerable self. There’s a violence to Louis’ story that’s raw, cathartic, and surprisingly humorous before its broken open and flipped on its head.
He aches with a wound that won’t heal and that he keeps pouring salt into because he can’t move on. Interview with the Vampire’s showrunner Rolin Jones teased that they found a way to give Louis an active role in this season and you won’t be able to guess what it is, but it will break your heart.
The Snag In ‘The Vampire Lestat’
This season is so propulsive that the writing around Armand and Daniel can almost be forgiven. Thankfully, it’s saved by Assad Zaman and Eric Bogosian’s performances.
They’re compelling together even as their characters are in a difficult place because it’s mostly set-up for what’s to come. With Daniel being tied to Armand, and the journalist turned documentarian having a catty, antagonistic relationship with Lestat, much of how he was turned and the real reason for why is left a mystery.
Armand does give him an answer and their scenes are as intense as one would expect, but it merely leads to more questions. For those, like myself who have never read the Vampire Chronicles books, that might be off-putting unless you have at least an awareness of the Devil’s Minion, the pair’s ship name derived from a chapter devoted to their relationship in Queen of the Damned.
I suspect the pay off of the slow crawl toward their story will be worth it in a season or two but for now it leaves Daniel with very little to do besides snark and seethe as Armand tries to make amends with those he’s wronged and also is awkwardly and then insidiously chaotic at the same time.
As for Delainey Hayles’ return, she sparks. There is a quickness, a snap, and a rage to her that’s exhilarating to watch. But that’s all I’m at liberty to say. Sheila Atim as Akasha is also a standout for what little we see of her. But what is seen is bone-chilling in the best way.
There’s almost an old-school style Frankenstein and his monster quality to Akasha’s moment that’s so eyebrow raising, it’ll leave you leaning forward wondering what exactly is going to happen with her and what happened to her considering the state she’s in.
Finally, a warning. The Vampire Lestat will linger with you long after you finish it. This season will be the song on your tongue, the thought in your head, and the pain in your heart. Going down the Devil’s road means bearing witness to everything on it and the only balm here is the certainty that it will be well worth the ride.