Interview With the Vampire star Sam Reid talks taking center stage for Lestat's 'wild' rock star ...

&34;I can't really believe we're doing it,&34; Reid tells EW. &34;Sometimes I'm like, 'What the hell?!'&34; Interview With the Vampire star Sam Reid talks takin

"I can't really believe we're doing it," Reid tells EW. "Sometimes I'm like, 'What the hell?!'"

Interview With the Vampire star Sam Reid talks taking center stage for Lestat's 'wild' rock star era (exclusive)

"I can't really believe we're doing it," Reid tells EW. "Sometimes I'm like, 'What the hell?!'"

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a writer at covering all things pop culture – but TV is her one true love. She currently lives in Los Angeles but grew up in Chicago so please don't make fun of her accent when it slips out.

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Published on July 22, 2025 10:00AM EDT

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He is the vampire Lestat. And he's now a rock superstar.

When *Interview With the Vampire* returns for season 3 (premiering 2026), Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) grabs the microphone to finally tell his side of the story. And it begins — as it does in Anne Rice's beloved second novel *The Vampire Lestat *— with his newfound fame as a rock star.

"It's pretty wild, I've got to say," Reid tells * *with a laugh. "I can't really believe we're doing it. Sometimes I'm like, 'What the hell?!'"

While AMC's first two seasons of Rice's *Vampire Chronicles* adaptation centered on Louis du Pointe de Lac (Jacob Anderson), Reid has been oh so patiently waiting for this moment when the Brat Prince takes center stage. Pissed off at the way he was portrayed in Louis and Daniel Molloy's (Eric Bogosian) book, Lestat forms a band and goes on tour to reclaim his own life story.

"Lestat has an intention to express his views and his experience through music, music videos, and recordings, and all this kind of stuff," Reid says. "And they are finding a wonderful, cool way to weave that through a lot of the denser parts."

While the rock star persona is certainly new this season, the actor points out that the flambouyant and arrogant Lestat has always been at peak diva, as someone who has always dealt with things in a "performative" nature. He's now just performing in an entirely new way, and on a global stage.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt on 'Interview With the Vampire'.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

"A rock star is no more different than an actor on the 18th century stage — it's just the same thing in different periods," Reid says. "You could just look at Twisted Sister and question, 'What is going on there?' But that's not a reference! So no one panic. We're not doing that — just thinking about rock star clowns, they're a good example."

Reid adds with a smile, "I don't think Lestat would think much of Twisted Sister, which is unfortunate."

And yes — there will be singing. Lots of singing. Sinking his teeth into becoming a bold rock star for the show was not an easy process for the actor, who reveals that he's been working closely with the show's composer, Daniel Hart, for "quite a long" time before filming began.

"I've been with him working with him on the songs first," the actor says. "It's been a really interesting way to approach a character, by coming in through the music to start with before we had any scripts. Trying to work out the character's arcs through the songs has been an adventure in itself."

Reid is hesitant to name any specific rock stars he's using for musical inspiration, but says that Hart and showrunner Rolin Jones "have a gigantic influence list, which is incredibly intimidating and wild."

"Lestat is a bit of a mercurial character himself, and there's something very interesting about a character who would love to play a symphony as well as a David Bowie song," Reid adds. "How he incorporates all of his influences and how he discovers his personal sound is part of the journey of the show."

But, he confirms, it's going to be pure rock music. Because that comes from Rice herself.

"There's something inherently vampiric about rock music, and that's not really necessarily what is the flavor of the month at the moment in terms of what is desirable in music," Reid says. "And so there's something about harking back to sounds that might feel from different periods, but also trying to bring them back into the now and the contemporary, but also tie them into his own personal journey. Because I think at the end of the day, Lestat is a musician that writes from personal experience."

The showrunner has brought up Fiona Apple a lot to Reid, in how an artist can convey "extreme human or personal experience" in their music. "Lestat definitely ... well, I wouldn't say he speaks in metaphor," Reid adds with a laugh.

*Interview With the Vampire* season 3 has only just started filming, but Reid teases that fans will get a sneak peek of Lestat's musical sound "sooner rather than later."

"You'll probably be hearing some music," he adds with a smile. "I hope people are happy. You know that some people are never going to be happy, but all we can do is approach it with love and care, which we are. There's a lot of love and care being put into it."

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But this season is about so much more than Lestat's rock star career. As with all Rice stories, the themes go much deeper than that as Lestat continues to explore what it truly means to him to be a vampire, giving the series an entirely new flavor compared to Louis' autobiographical seasons.**

"It's deep, but it's actually very fun and silly because Lestat is a big clown, so he is not as chest-bearing as others," Reid says. He then pauses and laughs as he realizes what he just said. "Well, he's actually quite chest-bearing. He's *very* chest-bearing, but in a different way!"

While the first two seasons portrayed Lestat entirely through Louis' biased point-of-view, Reid is hesitant to call Louis an unreliable narrator. "I don't think we should ever try and say that Louis is a liar or unreliable — he's remembered things that are perfectly valid," Reid explains. "But I don't think that Lestat has the same intention to tell his story as Louis has. He's not trying to necessarily unpack something that might be wound in his head incorrectly. Lestat is much more aware of the structures in which the storytelling might or might not take place."

That said, Reid admits Lestat isn't exactly *totally* reliable as a narrator either. "If he's unreliable, he's intentionally being unreliable as opposed to being potentially hoodwinked by a series of events," Reid explains. "Lestat is slightly different [than Louis], I would say. They're both unreliable in their own way, but I don't think one is more or less than the other. One might be more intentional than the other."

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While Reid knows this season is highly anticipated for fans of *The Vampire Lestat*, he warns that this show is always an adaptation, first and foremost — not an exact recreation of the source material.

"It's a massive book," he says. "You're not going to make everybody happy because those people who want it [recreated] page-by-page, line-by-line, it's not practical. Like the first two seasons, [the showrunner] pulls out the core themes, the feelings, the visuals, and the underlying concepts of the book. You can still find those big scenes that you really want to see, but they're in a slightly different context. I think that it's really, really fun. Keeps everybody on their toes."

Just how Lestat likes it.

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