AMC 'Vampire Lestat' Review: Sam Reid Rocks Campy Reinvention
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- "The Vampire Lestat" premieres Sunday, June 7 at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+, serving as the third season of Rolin Jones' 'Interview with the Vampire' series and making no attempt to orient newcomers
- Sam Reid stars as Lestat, who forms a rock band and embarks on a modest North American tour playing mid-size venues in Detroit, Toronto, and Toledo, with the season structured around a black-and-white tour documentary
- The plot turns on Daniel Malloy (Eric Bogosian), a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose book outing vampires as real is dismissed by a 2025 public supposedly preoccupied with aliens, Greenland's sale, and a suddenly competent New York Knicks team
- Jennifer Ehle joins the cast as Gabriella, Lestat's 250-year-old undead mother whose 'thirst for blood ranks a distant second to her nymphomania,' and who is one of the few new characters the review says is developed beyond a prop
- Jacob Anderson returns as Louis de Pointe du Lac, with the reviewer noting the premiere's 'manic' pace gives way to Louis's 'aching romanticism,' and calling the resulting remix 'not as powerful as the original' but 'just as transfixing'
Why it matters: AMC is gambling its prestige vampire drama on a full pivot from gothic tragedy to glam-rock camp and musical numbers — a format shift that the reviewer credits to Sam Reid's magnetic performance but warns may alienate viewers lacking deep Anne Rice universe knowledge. The series doubles down on tonal commitment rare in television, and the reviewer's framing positions this as a bold stylistic evolution that succeeds despite (not because of) its insularity.
