The third season of the AMC series adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire is taking a left turn, as well as a new name: The Vampire Lestat. Now, instead of diving into the past, Lestat is in 2025, touring the country with a garage band to refute what Louis told Daniel Malloy in the show’s book version of Interview. Yep, it’s that different.
Opening Shot: A shot of what looks like an auction in the near future.
The Gist: Two lots are available at the auction, which is attended by lots of luminaries, along with Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Talamasca agent Raglan James (Justin Kirk). One is the complete master recordings of Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), including his 2025 album The Vampire Lestat. Right before the bidding starts, though, it’s set afire per Lestat’s request. The winning bid is 1 yuan.
The second lot has an intricate music box with a rare bottle of port, a magnum of Lestat’s blood, his complete works on vinyl, and recordings of “an omniscient history of the events of the 2025 album and supporting tour and the consequential global catastrophes that sprung from said album and tour.” It’s entitled The Failures. The bidding starts at 50 million yuan. Among the bidders are Louis and Armand (Assad Zaman).
This is when Lestat’s narration from The Failures kicks in. Lestat is on tour with his band (yes, you read that correctly) and we hear them playing their most popular song, “Long Face,” at a medium-sized venue in Detroit. The crowd is really into it, except for two “local vampires” who tell him telepathically that “your song sucks.” After the show, he carries a lifeless groupie to the dressing room, supposedly someone he fed on — though the band has no idea he’s a vampire. Oh, he’s also filming a documentary of the tour.
He’s fighting against the portrayal of him in the book Interview With The Vampire by Daniel Malloy (Eric Bogosian), told to Malloy by Louis, and the idea that he’s not real. On the tour bus, Malloy himself is there to interview Lestat for the documentary — Malloy is now a vampire, thanks to Armad, and Lestat request that he direct the doc.
We go back to the previous Halloween, with Lestat living in Montreal and pissed at Louis when he finds out about the book. That’s when he sees a band rehearsing across the street, busts in, and tells them they’re doing everything wrong. But as we go back to Detroit, Lestat’s past comes flooding back in the form of both flashbacks and attacks from those “local vampires” who want him eliminated.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Vampire Lestat is technically the third season of the series version of Interview With The Vampire, though the tone of this season feels a bit more like a music-filled show like Julie And The Phantoms.
Our Take: Showrunner Rolin Jones and his writers, including the songwriter of “Long Face,” Daniel Hart, have not only shifted the setting of Interview With The Vampire to pretty much all of the present day, indulging Lestat’s desire to be a rock star, but shifts the tone of the show to something more comedic. Sure, there’s still a lot of drama, and a lot of bloodletting, but they certainly are leaning on the music and the comedic aspects of Lestat’s massive ego more than anything else. Strangely, it works pretty well.
Yes, Lestat’s wordy monologues, both while narrating The Failures or lecturing Malloy as he tries to ask him questions for the documentary, can be absurd at times. We had to turn on the subtitles to catch all of what he was ranting about. But Lestat is as absurd as he is powerful, and it’s all part of the image he wants to cultivate as he gathers devoted followers. Call it a combination of Iggy Pop and Tim Curry’s version of Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The first episode seems to be a bit loosey-goosey, wrapped up in establishing Lestat’s reasons for going on tour, and showing the effects of when he drinks the blood of a groupie named Baby Jenks (Ella Ballentine) that’s super-high on all sorts of substances.
However, there is story there, including how Malloy and Nicolas de Lenfent (Joseph Potter) save his bacon and how they might have contributed to humanity’s near demise, and Lestat’s relationship with his Fledgling mother/lover Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle). But it has to coexist with Hart’s catchy but decidedly retro music (Malloy jokes that he skipped the show and played T. Rex on Spotify, for instance), as well as the rapid-fire pop-culture references and funny lines.
It certainly is a departure from the heavier tone of the first two seasons of Interview. But it’s also in line with just the kind of vampire Lestat is, and it’ll be interesting to see how the band’s tour devolves as the season continues.
Performance Worth Watching: Sam Reid would have been a good frontman for a glam rock band in the mid-’70s. He embraces Lestat’s rock star desires and runs with it.
Sex And Skin: There certainly is some of both, including someone showering on the tour bus and some elevator adventures between Lestat, Baby Jenks and another groupie played by Amaka Umeh.
Parting Shot: Gabriella finds a bloodied and in pain Lestat in a seedy motel in Windsor, Ontario. He’s very happy to see her.
Sleeper Star: Eric Bogosian’s sardonic sense of humor fits perfectly here, while it was somewhat of an anomaly during the first two seasons. We loved the line where he called a Post Malone-Jelly Roll concert “Face Tattoo Palooza.”
Most Pilot-y Line: During Lestat’s monologue to Daniel on why he thinks it’s his time, some of what he says perfectly synthesizes this era. But then he says “Saks ate Barneys,” which is technically true, though we’re not sure why he thinks that’s part of the crumbling of Western society.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Vampire Lestat is a bit of a left turn in the Interview With The Vampire story, but it’s campy fun with good music and a Lestat that is funnier the more seriously he takes himself.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.