Interview with a Vampire fans had better brace for Season 3, The Vampire Lestat. Because you are not be ready for what creator Rolin Jones has in store with his adaptation of the second novel in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.
Centering on Lestat's quest to become a rock star, this season offers plenty more sex, even racier than before. There will be blood, including blood-tears, blood-piss, and blood showers, because sure, why not? And there will be rock n' roll — from composer/songwriter Daniel Hart — blending influences like David Bowie and T-Rex with The Police and Billy Idol.
But make no mistake, as Lestat, Sam Reid finds a rock star persona all his own, and it is devilishly enthralling.
The Vampire Lestat is chaotically laid out, but purposefully so.
The Vampire Lestat begins at the end. More specifically, at an auction, where on the block is the Brat Prince's story, told across tracks on the sole vinyl pressing of an album he calls The Failures. In attendance are familiar figures from Anne Rice's Immortal Universe, including Louis (Jacob Anderson), the Talamasca's Raglan James (Justin Kirk), and Armand (Assad Zaman), who is curiously sporting an eyepatch.
Lestat is not in attendance. This means the whole of the season is looking back. Yet from the start, this season poses mysteries: Where is Lestat now? What's become of him? (And what happened to Armand's eye?)
Like Interview with the Vampire Seasons 1 and 2, the story leaps forward and back in time, often to challenge a remembrance of the past with a question from the present. Lestat's approach is far less resigned and chronologically focused than Louis', and the effect can be disorienting, even frustrating. This tumultuousness feels intentional, though, playing like a reflection of the mercurial vampire's frenzied mind. Or perhaps it's Jones' way of demanding viewers rewatch the season once they've seen its end.
Interview with the Vampire's first two seasons reward such rewatching by revealing new meanings to a phrase here or a visual there. This time, audiences might feel they're better prepared to spot the tricks in the storytelling. After all, Lestat lets us in on some gnarly revelations way before his circle of friends. Nonetheless, he is a slippery narrator, as his story comes not only out of chronological order, but also with a give-no-fucks facade, a twisted family secret, and an ax to grind against his audience.
See, when Lestat's not having ferocious hook-ups with other vampires, he's enduring interviews from investigative journalist Daniel Malloy, who wrote the book he loathes for its cruel depiction of him. Riding high on the success of this book based on Louis' interview, Daniel can't resist the challenge of prying answers from the formerly elusive and morally confounding Brat Prince for a rock doc. Of course, Lestat won't make it easy on him. And notably, it's not Daniel's documentary that makes up the series' perspective, but Lestat's albums, mysteriously recorded after the events they reveal.
As such, episodes will flash from a childhood in France, where his festering father and brutish brothers snarled at the blonde boy and his educated mother Gabrielle (a bitingly cold Jennifer Ehle), to a not-so-distant past, where Lestat wedged his way into a struggling rock band. Renaming the band The Vampire Lestat, he goes out on tour to sing original songs that spill the secrets of vampirism and his own life. Several of these songs, including "Long Face," "All Fall Down," and "Butterscotch Bitch" are already available to stream. Make of them what you will.
Questioned by Daniel about what certain songs mean, Lestat is evasive or aloof or even devious. But when he's alone with his thoughts, he is plagued by the ghosts of his past. Flashbacks plunge us into his nightmarish rebirth. They shine new light on his relationship with Nicki (Nicolas de Lenfent), Armand, and his time at the Théâtre des Vampires — including what role his first fledgling really played there. However, the most exciting bits are anytime Reid and Anderson reunite, be it over a boardroom table, bellowing about Armand, or on a park bench, having a decades-in-the-making heart-to-heart.
Of course, those familiar with the book know there are other loves that could be a way bigger issue for Louis than that dramatic singer, Antoinette (Maura Grace Athari).
Sam Reid is riveting as rock star Lestat.
Reid's proved an impeccably skilled actor through Seasons 1 and 2, as he not only played Lestat but also "Dreamstat," Louis' imagined version of him, a sort of imaginary friend/ghost who followed him and Claudia through Europe. Across a timeline spanning centuries, Reid brings to life a Lestat richer than those who've come before in the beautifully brutal movie Interview with the Vampire and its rightfully ignored sequel, Queen of the Damned.
This Lestat is mercurial, given to moods of explosive passion, thundering tenderness, scorching indifference, and poetic fury ("I heard your hearts dancing!"). On stage as an actor in Season 2, he was a seductive clown, then a heartbroken lover. Now, as The Vampire Lestat, he rewrites his narrative, turning his heartbreak into a rousing chorus, inviting a mortal audience to sing along, while smirking at the vampires enraged by his exhibitionism. And the songs are sexy, catchy jams, one after another.
Off stage however, Lestat, is also performing. He constructs a devil-may-care persona for his fans, for Daniel's prying cameras, and his own bandmates, who don't know their frontman is a real vampire. But through all these efforts to entertain, to titillate, to outrage, who is his real audience? Is he singing to be understood? Or to be loved? And in either case, by who?
The Vampire Lestat make fans unwell.
Like Lady Gaga's Little Monsters or Beyoncé's Beyhive, Lestat calls his fans "The Beautiful Unwell," and Jones leans into this with cliffhangers that will have fans jaw-dropped, ravenous for more. Critics have been given the first six of the seven episodes that make up Season 3. And the ability to binge them is a privilege this critic doesn't take lightly, as the season will be released weekly. I burned through them, desperate to see what was coming next.
However, at the end of episode 3, I needed break to give my heart time to recover from the tension, violence, and agony in its final moments. I sat in the feeling of being satisfied by the dark wrath, the passion that demanded it, and the unifying pain therein. Then, the end of episode 6 — the last critics' were given — I was so in shock that I had to rewind. Nothing from the books prepared me for what Jones does here. Fans are sure to freak out when they see it. And I am sorry to say I can offer no worthy guess on what will come next to close out Season 3. But honestly, that's thrilling.
Since Season 1, Jones has regarded Rice's books with respect, but not as a Bible. He's kept much of the poetry of her prose through narration, and kept true to the moods of her vampires. But he has changed timelines, many character details, and pivotal moments to tell a story that's distinct from past adaptations. With The Vampire Lestat, he builds from Lestat's isolation to the clamor of ecstasy (through orgies and bloodsucking), the infuriation of creation (through comedic rock doc parody moments), and the intoxication of love, even when it's toxic.
Sure, along the way, readers of Rice might point to the road signs we recall from her novels. But this journey takes new paths, impossible to predict, and all the more exhilarating for their sick surprises. In the end, fans might be tuning in to see a sexy Lestat strut as a rock star, argue with his on-again-off-again exes, and be a Brat Prince in full. Jones will deliver there, those with an sleazy layer of grit that keeps the show from losing its edge. Then, he'll go harder and deeper, unearthing subplots savage, sumptuous, and absolutely addictive.
Hang on, baby. It's going to be one hell of a ride.
How to watch: The Vampire Lestat premieres on AMC and AMC+ on June 7, with new episodes each Sunday.
Source: Mashable