What Sam Reid Hopes to Explore in ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Season 3

Kelli Boyle July 30, 2024, 5:30 pm

Sam Reid as rockstar Lestat in 'Interview With the Vampire' Season 3 teaser — AMC

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Interview With the Vampire Season 2 finale.]

Interview With the Vampire revealed Sam Reid in his rockstar Lestat form at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 on July 27, thrilling fans with a musical teaser that gave a glimpse at Season 3’s interview format and original music. AMC dropped the Vampire Lestat’s debut single, “Long Face,” in full the next day, showing off what composer Daniel Hart had tucked up Lestat’s bratty chartreuse sleeves.

That teaser and song will be the fandom’s nourishment as we wait for the third season. But more important than the music will be Lestat sharing his story in his words for the first time in the series — and in some respects, the first time onscreen anywhere. The 2002 film Queen of the Damned, based on Anne Rice’s third book in The Vampire Chronicles series of the same name, squeezed in some details from book two, The Vampire Lestat, but it wasn’t a full adaptation. Interview With the Vampire Season 3 will mark the first time this iconic literary character’s origin story — and presumably his perspective on what Louis told Daniel Molloy — will be depicted onscreen in earnest (viewers got a taste of it in Season 2 Episode 3 from Armand’s perspective).

Reid has loved Rice’s books since he was a teenager. Given his personal history with the books, combined with his experience of playing Lestat, I was eager to ask about his hopes for the future when we spoke before the Season 2 premiere (and before the series was renewed).

The Vampire Lestat adds more context to the events of Interview With the Vampire, revealing how Lestat ended up in Paris for the horrific trial. Reid says that Lestat may not be eager to tell the story of the first two seasons from his perspective, but he is hoping to bring unsaid details about Lestat and Claudia’s (Delainey Hayles) relationship to light.

“I don’t necessarily think Lestat wants to retell this story,” Reid explains. (But that doesn’t mean Molloy wouldn’t make him!) “Anne Rice, quite rightly, does go and say, this is what happened in Interview With the Vampire from Lestat’s point of view, but he also has a lot of other stuff to talk about. Do you know what I mean?”

Indeed, there is much to unpack about the 77 years that have passed since Claudia’s death — something that Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat didn’t grieve together until decades later. Fans are also eager to learn what Louis and Lestat’s relationship has been like since their reunion in 2022 New Orleans. (“Long Face” certainly has implications…)

Reid makes one thing clear: Lestat is not interested in challenging Louis’ feelings about their relationship. Lestat “understands why Louis felt this particular way,” Reid says. It’s part of the character’s contrition, his acknowledgment that he hurt Louis and Claudia badly. Reid continues, “What I would love to tell one day is how much Lestat loved Claudia and how similar they are and how much of a deep pain exists when he thinks about her.” Lestat will “never get over” what happened to her, Reid reveals, nor the fact that she looked to him as a child looking to her father for help in her final moment.

Claudia didn’t mince words about her resentment for her maker in both seasons. But even so, her similarities to her father are made clear throughout the 15 episodes. Reid would love to explore this more in the future.

“When you’re reading from her diaries in Season 1, she’s a child. She’s a child interpreting a very tumultuous relationship that her parents are having,” Reid says. “It’s not necessarily interpreted correctly. It’s how she felt and how she saw things happening, but it’s not necessarily the truth. It’s a child’s perspective, so there’s some nuance that she might not fully grasp.”

Claudia understands things better in Season 2, as she’s aged decades by that point. But the truth about how she became a vampire was withheld from her until the trial, barring her from understanding the full context of her creation. She was “the glue that kept Louis and Lestat together,” Reid tells me, “and also tore them apart.”

“That little family is what the show is about really, and I think it will always remain that way,” he adds. “But there’s a lot unsaid.”

Why Jacob Anderson Said 'Goodbye' to Louis After 'Interview With the Vampire' Season 2

As previously reported, Reid tried to get showrunner Rolin Jones to include more details about Lestat and Claudia’s bond in Season 2, but Jones insisted that establishing Lestat’s grief over her death needed to happen first in order for future seasons to work.

“He’ll never get over Claudia, ever,” Reid said about the events of the trial in Season 2 Episode 7. “That was a big thing because we were always trying to work this out with Rolin. I was like, ‘But we’ve got to be putting more in. They were closer.’ And he was like, ‘I think we have to lay in the foundation that Lestat will never recover from the death of Claudia.’ He will always carry that with him as the biggest guilt in his life.”

The Season 2 finale showed that Lestat has lived a tortured existence since Paris, his mind warped by grief. Both Reid and Jones hinted that Hayles could return to “haunt” Lestat in Season 3, which could explain why he seems so unmoored in 2022 and unhinged in the Season 3 teaser. We know from that teaser that Molloy is interviewing Lestat for a music documentary called The Vampire Lestat. Will this interview follow the format of the previous seasons, which featured Louis narrating flashbacks? Reid is eager to break form.

“I’m not sure if you ever need to see any more narrators,” Reid says. “I just want to be in real time where all the vampires are living in the same time zone.”

Louis is also going to be in new form in Season 3 now that the’s finally accepted his vampiric nature and is healing from the deaths of Paul (Steven G. Norfleet) and Claudia. One thing’s for sure, Interview With the Vampire Season 3 is going to be completely uncharted territory for all of these beloved characters.

Interview With the Vampire, Season 3 Premiere, TBA, AMC