How do you cope with a breakup? A lot of people turn to music, singing their hearts out in the shower to weepie ballads or go-get-‘em empowerment numbers. If you’re Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), the vampire with a flair for the dramatic, and someone wrote a book depicting you as a tantrum-throwing narcissist, you become a full-blown rock star with an album of response tracks, and you take it on the road with your semi-bemused human band.
Most of the living world thinks it’s a cheap gimmick (and one that isn’t even selling out venues), but for Lestat, it’s a cry in the dark, and a chance to set the record straight. If only his own mind would let him.
Showrunner Rolin Jones proved a hell of a lot of doubters wrong with “Interview with the Vampire,” adapting Anne Rice’s legendary novel with a deft hand that offered some fascinating changes without losing the lascivious yet earnest tone of the book. Now, with a title change, the show’s third season takes on the second book in “The Vampire Chronicles,” the one that is widely considered to be the best of a very ambitious saga. This is the one where Lestat, the most famous vampire since Dracula, is in charge, and Jones and company are not playing it safe.
Left furious by what he sees as egregious errors in the book of Louis’s story, as published by the now-undead Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), Lestat hires the fledgling journalist to make a documentary of his band. But the lion’s share of his perspective comes from a collection of recordings, called “Failures,” made in what is presumed to be the aftermath of a destructive event (book fans, you know what’s coming.) He’s sullen, cheeky, somewhat self-aware but not always willing to confront the most troubling excesses of his past.
The story he tells goes off on weird tangents, pauses and restarts as he so desires, and may not be the whole truth. As with Rice’s novels, which cover varied perspectives and weave a “Rashomon”-esque battle of duelling narratives, Lestat admits that he’s often spinning tertiary asides to pad out his story. He may not have been there when Daniel and Louis (Jacob Anderson), his on-off great love, talked about the book, but he has to include that detail somewhere. And, of course, sometimes he’s just too high to think straight. It all adds a delicious and very Rice-esque flavor to the series, even as it deviates from the source material.
Therein has lain one of the show’s greatest strengths. Even as it changes characters and plots whole-cloth from their originals, they retain their integrity. It’s something the other shows in AMC’s attempt at an Immortal Universe have struggled with. “The Mayfair Witches” is too timid to be as weird as the books, and the now-canceled “Talamasca: The Secret Order,” while intriguing as a standalone series, seemed tonally at odds with its supernatural siblings. “The Vampire Lestat,” mercifully, is pretty effing odd. Indeed, it goes into some pretty disturbing territory that many Rice fans thought would be impossible for a mainstream adaptation.
And yes, that means Lestat is doing it with his mother. The vampire Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle, larging it up with an Italian accent), his fledgling and sometime-lover, is here, and the show does not flinch in showing the full extent of their twisted relationship. Gabriella is a woman who escapes the stifling confines of her time to become a proud monster who rejects every facet of motherhood — although, alas, the show does not portray her full rejection of gender that made her so thrilling in the book, which is one of the series’s rare missed opportunities. Button-pushing stuff, yes? But it’s also extremely faithful to the books. Things aren’t much better for poor Louis, who finds himself falling into a rabbit hole of psychological desperation that would make Freud flinch. Rice’s work is at its most startling when she confronts the cold, hard truth that vampires do not care for human morality. What’s a little moral depravity now and then when you’re not even alive?
And at the center of the hurricane is Sam Reid, who relishes the opportunity to be the full spectrum of Lestat. He’s an all-powerful vampire who also sobs for his mommy/girlfriend, craves outside validation, and suffers from about five different kinds of trauma. In 2025, he’s a fun niche, not an arena-filling legend, one who inspires fangirl devotion and tin-hat conspiracies alike. Reid rises to all of the challenges set before him: the strutting rockstar who mangles modern slang; the lost little boy; the jealous ex; the troubled youth; and the manipulative interviewee. Where the first two seasons blurred Lestat through Louis’s memory, here he is in his own words, which probably aren’t any more trustworthy than his ex’s. There’s a reason the show needed a title change, for Season 3 is The Sam Reid Show.
That’s not to say we’re denied time with our favorite vampires. Anderson is still excellent, here playing a somewhat more subdued Louis who is ready to move on but stumbles at the first hurdle. Eric Bogosian’s Daniel is an even more bitter pain in the neck now that he’s undead, directing the documentary and dealing with a few fledgling hiccups. His maker, Armand (Assad Zaman), has some apologizing to do, but how much can you trust a 500-year-old gremlin? The humans aren’t bad either, with Lestat’s band just trying to survive a North American tour without being drained by their lead singer.
Will fans get what they want from “The Vampire Lestat”? The series has never been one for fan service (another Rice-ian commitment), and its willingness to play around with its canon is what keeps audiences on their toes. Certainly, there are more than a few eye-widening shocks throughout this season that will surely inspire heated discourse, and the sheer glut of plot forced into a short season run leaves some moments in need of a deeper breath. It wouldn’t be an Anne Rice project without that. Still, this is a striking and nervy piece of work that goes there over and over again. Jones has proven that he could steer this show through the novels’ more unhinged deviations and make it gripping.
This “Vampire Chronicles” superfan is on the tour bus until the end.
“The Vampire Lestat” premieres June 7 on AMC and AMC+.
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