The Vampire Lestat Review: Television’s Most Glorious Nervous Breakdown

The Vampire Lestat is a glorious nervous breakdown.

What is The Vampire Lestat about?

Of course, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) would never refer to the third season of Interview with the Vampire that way. To him, the season bearing his name is a golden opportunity to correct the record after the blockbuster release of the book profiling his ex-lover Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson). He does this by inviting Daniel (Eric Bogosian), the book’s author, to document his nationwide tour that he’s conducting with his rock band, The Vampire Lestat. 

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – The Vampire Lestat – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

On the surface, Lestat’s tour is the ultimate den of iniquity, where he can live out a rockstar fantasy under the cover of everyone believing that Daniel’s book is fiction and that Lestat isn’t really a vampire. In his mind, Daniel’s documentary will be his more hedonistic version of Madonna’s infamous Truth or Dare. The real truth is, like Louis and Armand (Assad Zaman) before him, Lestat must come to terms with centuries of deliberately ignored trauma as his popularity and vampiric powers grow in tandem.

The Vampire Lestat Review

While technically a continuation of Interview with the Vampire, you can easily regard The Vampire Lestat as a series in its own right. Showrunner Rolin Jones molds the season around Lestat, matching his irreverence and anarchist tendencies through the episodes’ tone and structure. (The first six episodes were made available for review.) The show gleefully and unapologetically jumps across space and time, quick-cutting between Lestat on stage, Lestat in various compromising positions, and Lestat taking the piss out of the bewildered people around him. 

The style evokes the chaotic anarchy of Lestat’s lifestyle while also reinforcing its fragile artifice. Like Lestat, Jones is aware of the messiness of his storytelling and how it might alienate viewers expecting a more straightforward approach reminiscent of the first two seasons. Unlike Lestat, however, Jones exhibits genuinely firm control of the narrative, finding pockets throughout the first stretch of episodes to acknowledge that Lestat is actually not okay at all, protestations be damned. 

While the first two episodes grant Lestat debaucherous carte blanche to do whatever and whomever, the third episode begins chiseling away at the entertaining pretense. After following Lestat across multiple cities, Daniel finally gets Lestat to sit still long enough for a formal interview. As you might expect, Daniel is immediately provocative, and Lestat is immediately flippant, but the act starts to wear down. Daniel exposes the most vulnerable parts of his psyche, mostly through flashbacks as he recounts his complicated relationships with his first true love (not Louis) and his mother, Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle). 

Lestat has always been a complex, contradictory character, but that characterization was primarily through the lens of Louis and Armand. The third episode offers new shades to his complexity, exploring his capacity for tenderness and selflessness, the sources of his irreverence, and his guilt over his failed relationships and other interpersonal connections. 

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – The Vampire Lestat – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

Before you think that Lestat has gone soft, he then demonstrates that he is still a mischievous bastard, pulling the rug out from under Daniel and us. That isn’t to say that his recollections were false or that he didn’t seriously reflect on his past, but rather that, even at his most vulnerable, he still is in control. (Or, he at least thinks he’s in control, as people knee-deep in nervous breakdowns tend to believe despite themselves.)

The danger of giving an all-consuming character like Lestat the reins of a series is that he will leave the rest of the characters eating his dust. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the characters surrounding him aren’t as compelling as he is. His band members aren’t given much to do besides be confused or intrigued by Lestat’s high-octane behavior, which leaves their role in the season’s primary plot almost beside the point. The same issue befalls Gabriella, who certainly matches Lestat in ravenous carnality but lacks his charisma. The series’s returning characters fare better, although their side quests feel a bit too removed from Lestat’s story. (Distant as it is from Lestat’s road trip, Louis’s lingering grief over Claudia’s death last season carries a hefty amount of the season’s profundity.)

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt and Jennifer Ehle as Gabriella – Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat _ Episode 02 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

Again, those quibbles are easy to understand given the titular focal point of The Vampire Lestat. The season is an unabashed star vehicle for the ruthlessly charismatic Sam Reid. He’s always been captivating in the role, but this season finds him at the height of his powers. Jones gives him a feast of material, and he gobbles up every morsel. He sings, he crowdsurfs, he writhes, he cries, and everything else you can imagine with a reckless abandon that could only be achieved with remarkable physical and emotional control. There isn’t a moment in the season when he doesn’t demand your attention, and there’s no choice but to acquiesce. 

Is The Vampire Lestat Worth Watching?

Lestat would probably agree that The Vampire Lestat is a long-overdue showcase for one of the most outré characters on television. It is also an audacious, thoroughly satisfying gamble on Interview with the Vampire’s part, demonstrating exceptional faith in its audience’s ability to follow the twists and turns that a major retooling like this entails. The faith pays off splendidly in a television season with a tour de force lead performance that ranks among the year’s best.

The Vampire Lestat premieres on AMC on June 7. Six out of seven episodes were provided for review.

The Vampire Lestat Review: Television’s Most Glorious Nervous Breakdown