Watching the just-finished season of AMC’s “The Vampire Lestat” was a totally dissonant viewing experience. Sam Reid is brilliant and mesmerizing as this incarnation of the title character, a present-day vampire rock idol who sings ironic pop songs to the masses. Yet the show is so enamored with its protagonist’s celebrity persona that it fails to offer much more of literature’s most fabulous vampire icon than sex, drugs and (bad) rock ‘n’ roll. For the latest in a collection of shows that has taken such care to build out Anne Rice’s beloved literary world, “The Vampire Lestat” feels like it fundamentally misunderstands its main character and how to tell his story.
Part of what makes it all so jarring is that “The Vampire Lestat” is such an abrupt swerve from the “Interview with the Vampire” seasons that preceded it. (Although the show changed its title for the just-completed season, “Lestat” is part of the same overall series.) “Interview” was charming and electric in the ways of its vampires, telling the stories of Louis, Lestat and Claudia with stellar performances and sumptuous sets and costuming. It was sexy and self-aware, and its stars instilled their scenes with vast emotional depth. Even though some of the particulars of the source material were changed, the series still felt very much in the spirit of Rice’s book. And AMC has shown to be a strong steward of Rice’s material, with a collection of adaptations that also include “Mayfair Witches” and “Talamasca: The Secret Order.”
When whittled down to just a messy gay drama between two vampires (beautifully portrayed by two outstanding actors; Jacob Anderson plays opposite Reid as Louis), the “Interview” and “Lestat” seasons are successes on their own terms. But whereas “Interview” also managed to tell a compelling, updated version of Rice’s novel, “Lestat” is more interested in the shallow trappings of its tawdry vampire prima donna, who has outrageous sexual escapades and takes blood showers in his tour bus.
“The Vampire Lestat” is more evasive about capturing Lestat’s history and defining the underlying elements of his character. The Lestat who Rice wrote was a vampire searching for his people, his legacy and the truth behind the vampire mythology. He struggles with how to find his place in the world as a young, human man and then how to reckon with the moral and existential questions of being the living dead. Before he’s the brassy rock star, he’s a lost, lonely excavator of vampire history.
Because the salacious style of this present-day vampire Iggy Pop is the focus of “Lestat,” his autobiographical songs serve as the main narrative framework of the series. It’s a bold choice, and not just because the songs are overwhelmingly cheesy; the music too loudly (pun intended) telegraphs everything. Lestat reveals his past, one theme at a time and one character at a time, through song. Even his horrific rape/vampire transformation story gets a pop-song telling.
At least part of the problem here seems that the show is committing so fully to the over-the-top persona of its protagonist that its storytelling comes across as just as superficial and ostentatious. There’s no subtlety, no subtext. The surrounding action and characters unfold inelegantly: Louis and then Claudia are both awkwardly shoehorned into Lestat’s story. Another vampire, Armand, who spent the second season of “Interview” being the desperate and scheming ex-boyfriend, becomes so arch by the finale of “Lestat” that he’s the psychotic villain of a completely different show, something more horror or erotic thriller.
And Lestat’s mother, the vampire Gabriella, is reduced to a jealous, lusty literal MILF with a boss-lady bob and a garbled Italian accent. Was Gabriella and Lestat’s relationship coded as incestuous in Rice’s book? Yes, certainly. But instead of us getting a more complex Gabriella and a more knotty, ambiguous mother-son relationship, we’re treated to a Lestat voice-over boasting about his “Oedi-piphany” and a few incestuous sex scenes included solely for shock value.
All of which leads me to wonder, more as a fan than as a critic: Lestat can be tawdry and flashy, but would a modern-day Lestat really be absent of any such nuance? Would he be so mired in several more decades of internet, TikTok and reality TV that he would be this jaded, frenetic, vainglorious Lestat who purrs his ironic criticisms and seduces everyone in sight? Would he prance across the stage and sardonically address those who may have mischaracterized him from the account in “Interview”? (“I am actually the toxic bitch, anxiously attached show pony with a personality disorder called Lestat,” he says onstage during a concert with a few skips and a playful high kick.) Would he be so unbearably affectatious?
Perhaps. But there’s Lestat the drama queen and Lestat the poet. Lestat the philosopher and Lestat the rebel. There’s Lestat who is more than just shocks and stage lights. So “The Vampire Lestat” ends up being a shift from “Interview” in more than just the most obvious change of perspective; the series can’t rise to the occasion of its characters or the actors portraying them. Of all the unfortunate ironies of “The Vampire Lestat,” this is truly the worst: Despite its stars and its style, the show is still so painfully anemic.
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