Interview with the Vampire season 3 will be the Lestat show that the world needs, drawing on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat for much of its source material. While Interview with the Vampire season 2 continued to focus on Jacob Anderson’s Louis, the next installment in the saga will tell a very different story. Per the book series, it is now Lestat’s time to shine – an opportunity that I – and many other Anne Rice fans – have been waiting for ever since the original Tom Cruise movie.

I grew up with Interview with the Vampire. The first time I read it, I formed a deep connection with Louis, whereas Lestat was every person who’d ever hurt me. The second, however, Louis seemed negative, self-absorbed, judgemental, and Lestat was positive. He had a sense of humor and had kept more of his humanity than Louis, in a way – he prattled on about mundane things, tolerating great difficulties. While the show has already captured elements of this nuance and complexity, it is Interview with the Vampire season 3 that seems particularly promising from Lestat’s perspective.

Lestat Is Secretly The Main Character Of Interview With The Vampire

Lestat Is The Most Prominent Character In The Vampire Chronicles

Louis was unforgettable as the narrator of Rice’s first and greatest eponymous Vampire Chronicle, but Lestat was the most prevalent point-of-view character across Rice’s works. Like bands changed from album to album, Anne Rice reinvented The Vampire Chronicles with every release. Gothic epic Interview with the Vampire is a contemporary classic, while the series evolved into a study of truth and of writing itself, spanning many point-of-view characters that often contradicted each other’s accounts. I was impressed by how the show captured this in just two seasons, and its choice to honor Lestat’s significance in season 3 is even more exciting.

Interview with the Vampire season 2 set up season 3 by subverting Louis’ and Armand’s reliability, and breaking from Louis’ perspective at the end to show us events neutrally, whereby Lestat seemed miles apart from the villain often described by Louis. I’m grateful that the stage has been set for Lestat to tell his side of the story in season 3, as he did in The Vampire Lestat, embracing his status as the true protagonist of The Vampire Chronicles. While Lestat was a perfect, maniacal counterpoint to Louis’s measured torment, Louis’ irrepressible obsession always foreshadowed a deeper dive into Lestat.

Tom Cruise Was A Good Lestat But Sam Reid Is Better

Sam Reid Is The Lestat I Was Waiting For

Sam Reid has been given the right format – TV – to tell Lestat’s sprawling story, and has expanded into the character like no other, and will be my quintessential Lestat for good. I loved the Interview with the Vampire movie with Tom Cruise and liked Stuart Townsend’s Lestat in Queen of the Damned, but only Sam Reid’s Lestat is fully realized. Louis and Lestat’s relationship is in good hands with Sam Reid’s endlessly sensitive portrayal and Lestat’s rock star arc in Interview with the Vampire season 3 will be a startling reinvention for the show, in the spirit of Anne Rice.

Breaking down as he asked Louis if he tried to hurt himself, Sam Reid shattered every remnant of coldness possible towards his monstrous Lestat, embodying the layered anti-hero written by Anne Rice. Rice never forgave or forgot Lestat’s supernatural cruelty, seen most clearly through the lens of Louis’ horror and complex trauma. And yet when The Vampire Chronicles switched to Lestat’s perspective, and many times when it didn’t, Lestat was heroically and tragically independent of both the human and vampire worlds, rejecting their status quo and cruelty. He was chronically alone but authentic.

Season 3 Will Give Lestat The Screen Time He Deserves

Lestat Will Tell The Story In Interview With The Vampire Season 3

Speaking to Variety, showrunner Rolin Jones stated of season 3 “The big difference moving forward is Lestat will be front and center telling the story, so it should feel like this show has been taken hostage by Lestat.” This is as it should be, as an adaptation of The Vampire Lestat, which revisited many events from Interview with the Vampire, casting them in a different light. Interview with the Vampire season 2 was smart whilst exploring unreliable narration and I have every faith that season 3 will be no different, and even Lestat won’t be exempt from its scrutiny.

Jones continued that season 3 “is going to be over the shoulder of Lestat de Lioncourt, of whom you have probably seen about an 80%-accurate version of who he is — on fire and reckless. So it should be fun and dangerous.” This confirms that “the odyssey of recollection” referred to in season 1 will be a continuing theme as season 3 analyzes Louis’ narrative. It could add on the meta feature provided in the text of Lestat’s interrogation of the book within the book, the Interview with the Vampire that was published by Anne Rice character Daniel Molloy.

This would make Daniel’s comments to Louis at the end of season 2 all the more significant. In his emotional fragility, Louis was putting off reading his interview, as published by Daniel, despite Daniel’s encouragement. In my bottomless sympathy for Louis, I hope he will read it before Lestat – Lestat had many talents, but handling the fragile with care was never one of them. Nonetheless, Interview with the Vampire will remain an apt exploration of Louis and Lestat’s generation-spanning love story, and I’m glad we will get to see it unfold through Lestat’s eyes in season 3.

Source: Variety