Seconds into New York Comic-Con’s 2025 panel for Interview with the Vampire Season 3, a.k.a. The Vampire Lestat, Assad Zamad picked Eric Bogosian up a few inches off the ground, sending the already hyped crowd off to the races and setting the tone perfectly for a chaotic and cheeky discussion to follow.
On Friday, The Mary Sue attended a press conference with a room of reporters from various outlets where EP Mark Johnson, writer Hannah Moscovitch, stars Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, and Bogosian answered questions, as well as the afore-mentioned Main Stage panel for fans of the Anne Rice adaptation with the afore-mentioned talent plus Zaman and new cast member Jennifer Ehle–who will play Lestat’s mother Gabriella de Lioncourt. The panel was moderated by true blue fan Damien Holbrook from TV Guide. Here’s every dirty detail about The Vampire Lestat for you to suck right up.
Let’s start with the longed-for The Vampire Lestat trailer:
If you happened to catch the sparkly new footage at San Diego Comic-Con, you may notice that this is more or less what AMC exclusively shared in that room. However, since several weeks of The Vampire Lestat filming have happened between then and now, there are a few fun new teases. We have more of Anderson as Louis, the return of Delainey Hayles as Claudia, the return of Damon Daunno as Claudia’s vampire abuser Bruce from Season 1, two whole shots of Zaman as Armand with his infamous “half-blank, half-apocalyptic” stare, and a tiny peek at the vampire Magnus played by Damien Atkins.
Of course, Lestat’s transformation into rock star is the central focus of the season. But that will only deepen the show’s themes: memory, truth, trauma, love, etc. “If you live this life for 265 years and you’ve gone relentlessly forward,” said Moscovitch at the press conference. “There’s been all this horror in your life and you’ve never examined it at all. Then suddenly you start to, like, sing songs about yourself? All sorts of fucked up things are gonna happen and that’s what the season is about.”
Sheila Atin is Akasha, the Queen of the Damned
The biggest news out of the panel, confirmed by Johnson, is that the Akasha ink is finally dry. The actress bringing the ancient vampire to life in this franchise is Sheila Atin, who you may recognize from movies like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Woman King, the television show Harlots, and Barry Jenkins’ miniseries The Underground Railroad. (Fun fact: Atin and Reid have already worked together in the past on a jukebox musical called The Girl From The North Country. They sang Bob Dylan songs on stage together. Atin won an Oliver Award for that show!)
Johnson also confirmed that Lestat’s mortal band members on the show are Schitt’s Creek alum Noah Reid, Ryan Kattner, Seamus Patterson, and Sarah Swire. And speaking of The Queen of the Damned, Moscovitch confirmed that this season will pull from that book as well as Merrick, The Vampire Armand, and of course The Vampire Lestat. We all have so much reading to do!
“Devils Minion” fans got fed, but not answers.
Wondering why I started this off by talking about a hug between two actors whose characters seemingly hate each other? For the uninitiated: the AMC series has been slowly, intentionally teasing a toxic (in the best way) dynamic in Anne Rice’s books between the vampire Armand and journalist Daniel Molloy that emerges in an early chapter of Queen of the Damned titled “The Story of Daniel, the Devil’s Minion, or the boy from Interview with the Vampire.” On the AMC series thus far, Daniel and Armand have shared some charged glances, and a pretty intense couple of days in a ’70s flashback. But when and how and if that relationship will develop into what it becomes in the books remains to be seen.
When probed for information about the romantic elements of said dynamic, Bogosian had a choice metaphor. “I feel that Armand’s love for Daniel is like when a kid has a stuffed animal and he drags it around with him for, like, years,” he said at the press conference, “until it just has one button for one eye. And he really loves that little stuffed animal. So… as romantic as that can be. No flowers yet.” (However, what is and is not romance may be in the eye of the beholder. Bogosian repeated that stuffed animal metaphor at the panel in front of Zaman, who responded: “It’s tattered. It’s broken. But it’s mine.”)
The panel was a tad evasive when directly asked about this relationship. However, at the end of Season 2, we learn that Armand sired Daniel and turned him into a vampire–something he had previously sworn never to do. Because the internet knows how to do its job, you may have already seen clips of Holbrook at the panel very deliberately asking Zaman how he feels about Armand being Daniel’s (vampire) “daddy,” and Zaman’s gleeful reaction. “I have to be honest,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve heard it referred to as ‘daddy,’ and I like it. Can we keep it? Can we keep that, Eric? Yeah. He likes it too.”
As for their individual arcs, Bogosian, the Tom Holland of this cast most prone to accidentally spoil something, did seemingly quote a Lestat moment from Season 3 that we haven’t heard yet. Talking about how the newly sired vampire Daniel is a “pissed off guy with power,” he said “what does Lestat call it? Transformational trauma.” Get to speculating what the in-show context of that delicious turn of phrase is, y’all! And Zaman stressed that Armand is also trying to figure out his relationship with himself. He’s choosing himself! Good for him.
Lestat, Louis, & Armand are not going to be in a throuple.
A threesome is a bridge too far for this sexy series, apparently. Moscovitch could barely wrap her head around the idea. “I don’t think anyone likes each other very much right now,” she said.
Yes, they’re going there with Lestat’s mommy issues.
“She’s so central to this season,” Moscovitch said at the press conference. “We thought a lot about what it would have been like to be her as a human and, you know, be married off from Italy to France at 15 and to be married to, like, a really gross man. Whatever happened in that bedroom was bad. And then to have a bunch of children, some of whom died and then two who lived who were like 3D copies… like she copied her husband with her body two times. She’s like in this cage. And then Lestat’s born and Lestat is more like her. Lestat is like a dreamer and a hunter and restless and inquisitive and intelligent.”
That’s the base of their complicated relationship, which Ehle reiterated at the panel that Gabriella had limited agency growing up, and no hope until Lestat was born “in a really fucked up way.” Read between the lines if you like, but their dynamic crosses some taboos. But do taboos exist for vampires? After centuries of life, does it even matter? And does Louis meet Gabriella this season? Based on the way Anderson and Ehle played off the question at the panel with a joke, it seems like the answer might be yes.
Even with Gabriella back in Lestat’s life, he’s still very focused on Louis. Lestat’s love for Louis should be a given, Reid said. There was one funny moment during the press conference where Reid was talking about his character’s relationship with human beings. Does he appreciate them? Does he even like them? Anderson chimed in saying, “Lestat probably likes humans more than Louis.” Anderson meant more than Louis likes humans. But Reid thought he was saying Lestat likes humans more than Lestat likes Louis, which is emphatically false.
Louis’ vampire crash out is going to be epic.
Finally, let’s talk about the character who was the central character prior to this season. “We were trying to think what we could say about Louis’ journey,” Moscovitch said at the press conference, because as Anderson said it’s largely the invention of the series. In Rice’s text, Louis doesn’t appear very much in this chunk. What they came up with is an epic crashout. “Quite often,” said Anderson, “most people that are like ‘my life is fixed! I found this and I found that and I’m doing this and I’m doing this now–I’m not being specific ‘cause I don’t want to [give things away]–but like, those people quite often… I can be one of those people as well. You crash out. There comes a point where, you know, you suddenly lose energy and the truth comes to light again. It comes to get you.”
“Let’s say your daughter dies and you put a yellow dress up on the wall to honor her,” Moscovitch continued. “That’s not actually going to fix it, right? Like, how long will that really work? And you can say you own the night all you like […] But his daughter’s still dead. And his relationship of 77 years ended. And he has to figure out a whole pile of sh*t.”
At the panel, Anderson stressed that he didn’t want to give too much of Louis’ arc. “It’s really f****d up.” We’ll just have to trust them, and given how good Season 1 and Season 1 are we’re in good hands.
(featured image: AMC)
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