‘The Vampire Lestat’ TV Review: Your Vampire’s Favorite Vampire Returns for His Rock ‘n Roll Era [A-]

Much of the lead-up to The Vampire Lestat has focused on the musical angle as the titular character becomes a rockstar in the modern age. It may boast a new name, a new focus, and even a fancy new title sequence but luckily, the show formerly known as Interview With The Vampire hasn’t lost an ounce of its proverbial bite. Just like the first two season’s, AMC’s Immortal Universe flagstone indulges in all the sexy, queer, bloody fun of vampirism while continuing to interrogate the reliability of its narrators and the very idea of storytelling and performance itself. And what better way to do that than through stardom?

Rolin Jones and co’s new framing device for this season is more like device within a device: on the outside layer there’s The Failures, described by an auctioneer as “an omniscient history of the events of the 2025 album and supporting tour… as narrated by Lestat himself,” which we will hear in voiceover along with support from Guy Maddin as “The Voice Of Failure.” Within that, there is also a documentary being filmed by one Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), a sort of response to the in-universe Interview With The Vampire book. As in the first season, Daniel probes and pokes to try and get Lestat to open up for real about his past, something Lestat may not even be capable of after centuries of performance. This is represented in rapid-fire, almost impressionistic editing; sometimes shots last less than a second before we’re back to the present, as if suddenly shoved back inside a box. Visual changes don’t just stop at the editing either as it alternates between black-and-white Truth Or Dare style cinematography and occasionally even vertical cellphone video. Just about every episode this season contains, if not a concert sequence, then at least a song courtesy of Daniel Hart, the lyrics of which nod to Lestat’s sordid and painful history (perhaps best represented by recurring attempts to avoid answering a question about whether or not he had a stutter growing up). 

Sam Reid continues to not so much play Lestat as become possessed by his essence whenever he sets foot on set, Shaggy and Matthew Lillard style. He remains an immortal bitch but Reid ably portrays a creature struggling to maintain the mask and keep from plumbing the depths, a contrast well-seen in flashbacks (perhaps the only objective part of this story). Understandably such a strong focus could risk the rest of the cast becoming vestigial or oriented around him, but to the creative team’s immense credit, they manage to feature the rest of the cast (Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman, primarily) organically. Anderson especially gets a meaty character arc that starts separate from his toxic ex until they gradually find themselves back in each other’s orbits and forced to reckon with the consequences of last season’s trial. Bogosian remains a stalwart smart-ass, knowing just when to add some levity; he and Zaman also still play wonderfully together in a scene I dare not spoil so that you may gasp the way I did. 

All this–as great as it is–still dances around the biggest addition to this season: Jennifer Ehle’s Gabriella, Lestat’s fledgling and yes, his mother. It wouldn’t be gothic horror without some deeply disturbed parental dynamics, and the show ties it back to cycles of abuse in ways that mirror Louis and Lestat’s own inability to quit each other. Ehle herself is rather fun, managing her accent ably with only a few touchy spots. There are a lot of characters for a show that presents a very particular framing device and while it does handwave it away as omniscience (and honestly, it’s very possible he’ll get godlike powers in another season), it does come across at times like the show is trying to have its cake and eat it too. None of it ever really becomes distracting per-se, but it does make one wonder if it would’ve been better to choose one or the other. 

Throughout it all, The Vampire Lestat remains one of the best shows on television thanks to its firmly established tone and purpose. Here is a show equally capable of heartbreak as it is at over-the-top gore (after all, “serving cunt has its consequences”), not to mention the ever-present spectre of the mysterious Great Conversion. Just like the vampires at the center, it’s modernized and adjusted, satisfying those intimately familiar with the Vampire Chronicles and the ones who’ve never heard of Anne Rice until now. Not only that, it deepens characters whose arcs seemed to have ended, setting the stage for grander and wilder times to come. It’s the perfect blend of crazy thrills and moving depths, the kind of adaptation that takes its source and its genre seriously by reminding you that as messed up as all these characters are, they’re a blast to watch.

The Vampire Lestat premieres on AMC and AMC+ on June 7.

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Devan Suber

Devan Suber was interested in film from a very young age, which eventually led to a love of the Oscars starting sometime around the year of Inception, and now encompasses virtually everything pop cultural. He has written for IGN, The Film Stage, Polygon, and The AV Club among other fine websites from his home in Philadelphia. His thoughts on various topics including film, video games, and various television programs are on Twitter @therealdsube and BlueSky @therealdsube.bsky.social

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