Isobel Grieve
The following review contains spoilers for the entirety of The Vampire Lestat (aka Interview with the Vampire Season 3)
The switch from Interview with the Vampire to The Vampire Lestat was a dynamic choice for the series’ overall spirit and themes. The perspective shift is monumental in how the audience is shown these iconic characters through Lestat’s vision rather than Louis’s. The previous season of Interview with the Vampire explored the fallible nature of memory and love’s great portrayal. The stated purpose of The Vampire Lestat (the novel) is to set the record straight on what Louis de Pointe du Lac and Daniel Molloy got wrong. The premise of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat is much the same. Alas, as the adaptation progresses and other characters intervene, this initial manifesto is set aside for another.
While some characters seem remarkably the same between Louis and Lestat’s perspectives, like Daniel and Raglan James, others have taken on new features and characteristics. Lestat and Louis’s hair is longer. Lestat is scarred. Louis’s gait has slightly changed. Armand is shown as remarkably less romantic, leaning into mania induced by centuries of traumatic loss and abuse. He is the villain; he is the victim. These changes cement how clouded Louis’s memories are from his emotional journey over a century and, as we learned through Armand’s monologue in the finale, also by manipulation. The ‘reality’ through Lestat’s eyes is harsher. Grittier details of the vampiric experience are exposed, and cruel intentions are laid bare. Yet, the ‘truthful’ depiction of the season’s events is also remixed and crowded with Lestat’s memories triggered by drugs, PTSD and loves lost returned. The music evokes and unleashes moments of the past he’s buried for his sanity, only for them to reappear in front of him, mocking him as he struggles to maintain control over what’s around him.
The Vampire Lestat novel has similar hinges, mixing his present and his past, but these flashbacks are portrayed more as his choice to reveal to the reader rather than Lestat’s voice-over from the not-so-distant future in the TV show, rehashing the dramatic and tumultuous year of 2025. It is not entirely clear if Lestat’s innermost secrets would be so blatantly on display if not for their integral part in the downward spiral of his psyche, which inevitably draws and unleashes the Queen of the Damned, Akasha, whom we soon shall meet in the next season. This story and playful deviations come down to executive producer Rolin James and his obsession with Anne Rice’s universe. His dedication to these beloved and iconic characters artfully creates an adaptation which favours the source material while also dynamically surprising diehard Anne Rice fans with his changes.
And this journey is made vivid and emotional through the impeccable performances across the board. Rolling from Detroit to Toledo, Toronto, New York, and Montreal, the tour bus is always moving. The entourage shrinks as the stakes rise higher and higher. Bandmates: Larry (Noah Reid), Alex (Seamus Patterson), TC (Sarah Swire), and Salamander (Ryan Kattner) create a quirky rockstar atmosphere. Logistical lawyer with a wild side, Christine Claire (Jeanine Serralles) and social media coordinator/drug-infused blood bag, Dee Pharma (Amaka Umeh). The stage is immediately set for a high-style grunge show-business revel, but the fun wanes over the seven episodes as renegades crash the party, emotion clouds judgment, secrets buried are revealed, and alliances change.
Sam Reid shines in this restyled Lestat. From his mixed accent to his rock-operatic singing, crude onstage behaviour, and his eyes…mesmerizing his co-stars and viewers alike. From emotional outbursts to the subtler moments, Sam Reid’s Lestat is a complicated monster who you can’t help but love; it’s been the case since he first stepped into New Orleans in the very first season, yet this diverging performance adds impeccable depth. He communicates with his gaze what emotions lay just beneath the surface, bubbling until he cannot contain them anymore. Watching this actor discuss the character work in interviews and on the AMC official podcast, The Vampire Lestat After Dark, it’s hard to imagine how such a quiet-tempered man unfurls such a captivating beast.
Book lovers of Anne Rice knew the time was coming for the deliverance of Lestat’s insatiable mother, Gabriella, a character earlier adaptations never attempted to relay. Casting made an excellent choice with Jennifer Ehle; she bounces from mother to lover quite effortlessly. Which is not something one wants to commend, but here we are; it’s in the character, it is all a part of the messy Oedipus complex explored in the original material. This relationship informs the behaviour Lestat displays in his relationship with Louis and his parentage of Claudia. For Gabriella, this appears to all be about control and freedom, what she did not have while trapped in a decrepit French countryside manor with Lestat’s father and sons. Does her trauma excuse the manipulation of her son? No, but it is fascinating to watch.
Anne Rice’s earlier works are all about asking the moral questions. Was turning Claudia at such a young age noble and selfless as they saved her from death, or was it selfish to keep her as she was indefinitely without opportunity to change, grow and experience outside their bubble? The question remains when Claudia (Delainey Hayles) appears before her fathers in Episode 6, dragged from limbo into a séance to appease their guilty conscience. A profound performance from Hayles; so much anger and resentment fills the screen when her apparition appears. That raw emotion and confessions of her own manipulations are a merry-go-round of deceit, despair, and dangerous fury.
Was it fair to bring Claudia into a pseudo marriage that was already falling apart? And then, once again, the show shifts the question onto Regina, Claudia’s doppelganger (Delainey Hayles): Is it fair to enter this girl’s life with emotional baggage and roleplay a relationship to soothe that guilty conscience as Louis does in Episode 4 (“The Devil’s Road”)? And is it, then, fair to extract financial gain from two beneficiaries as Regina, we find out, did—playing to Louis while also under Armand’s thumb. Is it just deserts for the ex-lover Armand (Assad Zaman) to manipulate and manufacture an emotional break from those who did him wrong? Is it all excusable when traumatized people traumatize people?
It’s like a punishment circle for these characters, the way they all go around and around, hurting one another. But I’m not tired of it yet! I am enthralled by the performances and the story. Assad Zaman is a brilliant psychotic cult leader; how he maintains charisma while being a vampiric zealot is eerie. He is so stunningly beautiful and delicate in his movements; he retains this youthful glow even as he expresses explosive rage; it is heartbreaking, creepy, and shocking as Armand exacts his revenge in the finale.
Across from Zaman is Jacob Anderson as Lestat’s Louis, his head removed from his body, spiked and strapped to a butcher’s table, rasping, gasping and croaking. It is grotesque with a hint of camp, watching his arms swat away unwanted touch, and his hands slap the table for paper to write his amends. The visuals are unhinged, but the emotional concession between these characters marks a pivotal ending to the crescendo in their relationship. It’s not a breakup because they’re way past that; it is a settling of affairs, a confrontation post-breakup to say, “You owe me an apology,” and get closure. In every other world, these things involve exchanging a sweatshirt for a CD and asking if their mom wants the Tupperware from Thanksgiving back, but decapitating one’s ex-boyfriend seems to be the norm in Anne Rice’s universe. I can’t complain; I love the drama.
The love triangles become squares become pentagons. The Vampire Lestat is a realist and a romantic, falling in love and lust with desperate souls and cultivating a long list of ex-lovers who march on through life immortally or otherwise, making connections on the outside or the inside of this Eros’s web. While Gabriella may be on the outside at the end of The Vampire Lestat finale, Louis and Lestat all but declared their divorce void, and Armand has captivated Daniel’s devotion through an untenable bond perhaps decades in the making. These fan-favourite ships are ripe with grand gestures, emotional peaks, and languishing love stilted by emotional dysregulation.
There is no hero, no righteous cause. The Vampire Lestat, as with Interview with the Vampire, is an exploration of the deplorable decisions and consequences of perpetually wounded, complicated characters. The saving graces of other vampire types do not apply. It is refreshing to watch the vampire not shy from its nature, to drench itself in blood and not feel guilty for it. It is an embracing of one’s ‘flaws’ that similes humanity in its messy disposition.
Seven episodes is an odd number for a season; selfishly, I wish we got one last taste of Lestat onstage; I want to see how his voice finally draws Akasha (Sheila Atim) out of her resting place. The novels, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, blend from one to the other. I didn’t hesitate a minute between finishing one and moving on to the next; I can’t say what it would have been like for the reader when Anne Rice was first releasing them, but I imagine it is similar to how I feel now. Sheila Atim’s manic monologue in Episode 5, “New York,” was a brief, crazed preview of the destruction and retribution she wreaks upon the world. The cliffhanger final skyline of a decimated city from Lestat’s balcony also teases what war is yet to come. Although the series is not officially renewed, the longevity of this story, its dedicated fanbase and enthusiastic producers leave me with high hopes.
