Interview With The Vampire Lestat
An interview from last year’s NYCC previewing what to expect for this season
One of my favorite books growing up in my youth was The Vampire Lestat. Unlike Interview with the Vampire, which leaned heavily into existential dread and gothic tragedy, the sequel was a little less philosophical but a lot more boisterous, as Lestat fully embraced who he was publicly. The seductive demeanor of a vampire rockstar fantasy drenched in ego and glam.
It was a book that exuded pure “I’m awesome” energy, but also delved into Lestat’s misunderstood origins, which the show has only lightly scratched the surface of thus far. To tell you how big a fan I am, I once visited the set of Interview With The Vampire Season 2 outside the Lalaurie Mansion. New Orleans itself blocks off parts of its historic buildings for filming, making the setting of the series feel as much a part of the actual town.
Then, at New York Comic Con in 2024, out of sheer casual conversation with strangers circumstance, I actually got to meet and swap stories with Mike Harkins, aka Father Matthias himself, the priest who gets murdered by Lestat in the pilot episode of the series. He shared a bit about what it was like on set filming during Covid-Era times. I’m pretty sure we’re friends on Facebook somewhere.
Anyways, what I loved about the book is that whereas Interview explored the loneliness and horrors of immortality, The Vampire Lestat felt like a rebellious response to it all: a punk-rock middle finger to tradition, quite befitting of a vampire born with all the powers and none of the instruction manuals.
An edgy yet romantic tale in a vampiric sorta way…
At New York Comic Con 2025, I was thrilled to sit in on a press conference talking about what to expect out of this season. New season debuts on June 7th on all AMC platforms, which is why, for the sake of timing it with the show… we waited until now to release this interview.
Fair warning, the audio transcription came in rough in places regarding questions from the press, so this is my attempt to research what my fellow journalists asked and try to capture the experience as best I can. However, I can say this is 100% the responses said from the cast/creators (The reason the audio was rough for the journalists questions is because this recording device was directly under Sam Reid himself).
Joining the panel were Jacob Anderson (Louis de Pointe du Lac), Sam Reid (Lestat de Lioncourt), Eric Bogosian (Daniel Molloy), and co-executive producer/writer Hannah Moscovitch and executive producer Mark Johnson.
Give it a read and feel free to share your thoughts down below.
This Press Room Conference Interview Was Edited for Clarity
Jacob (who plays Louis), any new icons or inspirations that shaped your portrayal of Louis?
JACOB: No specific ones. James Bond was one of his contemporary references. I still love to have Grace Jones in my head, and Eartha Kitt. They’re like two big Louis staples in my mind when i think about how he moves and how he looks at other people. I watched loads of Eartha Kitt interviews for season one, so I always go back to them.
This question is for Sam (who plays Lestat), Lestat wants to be loved very much for who and what he is. But does he even know what that is anymore?
SAM: What a great question... I think that if we had an answer… I don’t think we’d have a show. So, um, uh, does he know who and what he is?
That’s the journey.
To try and wake that up?
Eric (who plays Daniel), is any of that original energy of love between Armand and Daniel going to be retained for the adaptation?
ERIC: I feel that Armand’s love for Daniel is like when a kid has a stuffed animal and he drags it around with him for years until it has just one button for one eye.
He really loves that one stuffed animal…
So, it’s about as romantic as that can be.
Sam, for this season, regarding how Lestat is reclaiming the narrative, do you think it’s really about his love for Louis, his ego, or both?
SAM: It’s interesting. Reclaiming the narrative. Because he’s read the book (The Interview with The Vampire Book which also exists in the show) and the book is a real thing that exists in our world that’s come out.
I think, as a character in general, his love for Louie should just be taken as a given, but what that does is going to inform everything that he does anyway. It’s his ego that is the thing that he’s constantly grappling with.
I think I’ve said this once before, in the books, there’s a great chapter around the time he’s been rescued by Marius, and the first thing he says is… ‘Vanity’.
He’s always grappling with ego. The way Rolin and Hanna have kind of crafted him is, “What do you get when you put a Rockstar Vampire, who takes himself very seriously, in a position that is not taken very seriously, in the year 2025, when we’re dealing with everything shocking at any given moment?”
Like, aliens are real?
Cool. What else is going on? Know what I mean?
We’re watching the most devastating things on the news on a daily basis. What value is a supernatural being who dances around in leather pants?
His ego is super present. Reclaiming the narrative for his ego?
I don’t know… Maybe. Sorry (laughs).
Eric, what do you think being turned (into a vampire) so close to the end of his human life will do to Daniel?
ERIC: The thing to remember is, yes, to be turned later in life means you’re going to carry more of what you were into this other thing. Which is not human. You’re a vampire. You’re something else. It’s another dimension. But he is laden with all of this, and unfortunately, what Sam just said, a big part of this season is Daniel wrestling with the endless contradictions of being suddenly immortal.
I put in one little extra thing for me to play the character. For a man who spent his life being an investigative journalist and who thinks very logically, the world of vampires is not logical.
These guys don’t do logical things. So that really bends his mind, and it creates a lot of stress in this third season. It’s hard for him. And fun.
Hannah (Executive Producer), the series so far has been about the act of remembering. How is season 3 going to be a character shift, how memory affects Lestat, but also other characters?
HANNAH: In seasons one and two, we had Dubai, and we had a vampire who wanted to be interviewed and who wanted to understand which parts of the past he had forgotten, and we had a character who was an unreliable narrator and who didn’t remember anything or some things.
This season, we have none of that. So we don’t have an interviewer unless it’s Lestat interviewing himself. And then, Lestat remembers everything, but then there’s a question about what that memory does to him and how much that fucks him up.
If you’ve lived this life for 265 years and you’ve gone relentlessly forward, but there’s been all this horror in your life, and you’ve never examined it at all, suddenly you start to sing songs about yourself, all sorts of fucked up things are gonna happen.
And that’s what this season is about.
(Noticing Jacob’s outfit) So… any of you anime or manga fans?
JACOB: I really enjoyed CHAINSAW MAN and thought it was really fun. One Punch Man, I love. I just started MOB PSYCHO. It’s fun. And I also just started NEON GENESIS EVANGELION from the beginning. I’ve been watching that to help me go to sleep. It’s very dark but there’s something very about it that’s very meditative. And the horror!
Right. So… since this is a music-themed season. What’s on Lestat’s Playlist?
SAM: Uhh. Everything. Really, he’s kind of got the most eclectic taste that you can possibly imagine, which is quite confronting now. In terms of the character, he’s all over the place. He’s lived a couple of centuries and gone over everything.
Is there something you listen to to get in the mood for playing rock?
SAM: One thing I’ve always done, and continue to do, is I’ve found all these incredible bootleg videos of David Bowie’s Cracked Actor Tour. That somebody’s compiled into a singular video? The internet is so wild. On YouTube, you can just find this long-lost concert… that really inspired me.
I think I can look back at that, although Lestat moves differently than David Bowie, but just that sense of showmanship and magic is something I look back to. But Daniel Hart presented, and continued to, and is continuing to while we have two weeks left of filming, just the most extraordinary collection of songs that I have been going over and over in my head for close to six months now. I try not to divert too much.
Question. What’s happening in season 3 with Louis given the book didn’t have any character source material?
JACOB: It’s difficult to talk about Louis’ journey in season 3 because it’s the invention of Rolin Jones and Hannah’s story.
HANNAH: We were trying to think about Louis’ journey this season. Let’s say your daughter dies, and you put a yellow dress up on the wall to honor her. That’s not actually gonna fix it. How long will that really work? You can say you wanna own the night all you like, but that’s going to come in waves. Like, that’s going to come in and out. So I think that’s in some ways what we did with Louis this season, that’s great that he has that yellow dress up there, but his daughter’s dead and his relationship of 77 years ended, so he’s gotta figure out a whole pile of shit now.
Fun Sidebar: The Vampire Lestat is doing a One Night Only Live Show in Manhattan in The Beacon Theatre
Sam, while you were getting into the headspace of Lestat, was there a song that helped you get into that headspace of that part of that life?
SAM: It’ll be clearer once the show comes out, but in terms of musical influences, I’ve been barraged with music in a way that I never really fathomed when I got the role 4 years ago. I’m not looking. I’m processing.
Like I’ve got it up there, it’s articulated like Louis, a lot of presence in al ot of the song.
JACOB: You gotta just listen to the podcast and audiobook.
HANNAH: Daniel Hart and Rolin Jones inundate you with music.
SAM: Don’t take this the wrong way. But Lestat is an artist as a character, so he does convey a lot of what he’s feeling through his music. It’s a whole, 3 to 5-minute song. Multiple times per episode. So I’m not looking for inspiration, I’m learning my lines.
Daniel and I do talk a lot about what we’re going to sound like and reference from… but all the members of the band are real musicians. All of the sound technicians are live mixing the sound and then do post. There’s a huge element of the show where you’re working with real musicians.
There’s an inherent ego you need, not like an actor when I’m playing a character, but when musicians do perform, they play themselves. They play their persona. They rip open their soul and be like, “This is who I am!”
Lestat has a persona, but to be a real musician, he has to continue to pull it back.
It’s been a process of really dealing with the material and trying to find as much truth in the material as possible. Rather than be… “I’m gonna be glam rock!”
We start there, but we gotta go somewhere.
Finally, Hannah, what can you tell us about Gabrielle and how she impacts the story of Lestat’s journey?
HANNAH: I’d say she’s central to this season. And I think we thought a lot about her ahead of time. We thought a lot about what it would be like to be her as a human. To be married off from Italy to France at 15. To be married to a really gross man, and whatever happened in that bedroom was bad. Then to have a bunch of children who died, two who lived, which were 3D copies that were like her husband.
It’s a cage.
But then, Lestat is born, and he’s like her. And Lestat is a dreamer and a hunter and restless and inquisitive and intelligent. It’s about what it means to get close to her son and how complicated that can be.
The Vampire Lestat Premieres on June 7th on AMC and AMC+
Great stuff about my favorite show!