🔥Euthanize the TV show🔥

🔪 I DON'T LIKE THE SHOW OR LESTAT ANYMORE AND SAM REID IS ON THIN FUCKING ICE 🔪 🥂 I'd like to thank you all for liking my hate posts 🥂

[sixpomseeds]

Call to Action - Reporting Anti-Blackness in The Vampire Lestat (2026)

I'm not tagging this as "tvlcritical" because this issue goes beyond audience or critic opinions of AMC's The Vampire Lestat (TVL) also known as Season 3 of Interview with the Vampire. This isn’t a difference of character perspective, tone, “immoral characters”, “gothic fiction”—the writing in the "Montreal" episode is blatant hatred for Black people.

What happened?

The episode titled "Montreal" aired on Sunday, July 12, 2026 with Kevin Hanna and Ryan Kattner credited as writers; the rest of the writer's room consists of Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, Jonathan Ceniceroz, Anusree Roy, and Daniel Hart. There are zero Black writers on TVL.

3x06 is violently and proudly anti-Black, full stop. The language written and greenlit by AMC was racist, full stop. The Black actors—Jacob Anderson, Delainey Hayles, and Sarah Afful—are not responsible for the script written by a non-Black writer's room. These actors work in a deeply anti-Black industry and have to navigate the ever-present threat of being fired and/or blacklisted for any "flaw" in their performance and conduct on set/in promotional materials or events.

There is zero excuse or justification for the anti-Black language used in TVL to date. We cannot allow this hatred to be met with silence.

What can I do?

Report this episode to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Hollywood Bureau which specializes in anti-Blackness in television and film. Important details to include is the writers, episode release date, and the racist material in question. All of this information is available under the cut.

Emails to the NAACP should be addressed as "ATTENTION: Report, Hollywood Bureau" and sent to [email protected]

Emails to AMC can be sent to three TVL-specific Public Relations contacts:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

The choice is yours, but I will personally be copying the AMC contacts on my email to the NAACP. This is a serious matter and it needs to be treated as such.

Many thanks to @dulacloverboy for pulling contact info together for the NAACP and AMC <3

AMC Network’s “The Vampire Lestat” (2026) episode titled “Montreal” aired on Sunday, July 12, 2026.

Credited writers are Kevin Hanna and Ryan Kattner. There are zero Black writers on staff for "The Vampire Lestat".

The "Montreal" episode included the following language:

00:44:24 - "'Cause there's a little etching on your ribcage says you're a 'slave'."

00:45:10 - "Get this into your nappy little head."

00:46:08 - "How I ginned up the train for the slave, here."  

00:47:27 - "The one good thing in my bleak, Black life." 

[bratprincetamer]

If Marx was alive today but there were vampires he would make some slight revisions to Das Kapital, maybe publish the fourth volume, then he would start studying these vampires, he would try to get Louis to pay his rent, study Lestat as an example of how the celebrity/sex icon has taken over society, beef with Daniel Molloy over everything and get turned by Armand.

[bifauxnenarmand]

[idolomantises]

Something really needs to be said about the amount of queer shows with queer fandoms that are weirdly apathetic towards racism and misogyny.

[tiredopinions]

Louis was barely even touched affectionately this season iirc…his hug with Lestat was just about Lestat’s trauma…in the end scene Lestat’s fingertips are barely touching the back of his neck while his palm is outstretched against lestat’s 😡 they cut out him touching Lemuel’s hand…they made a man run into him for no reason on Halloween night…notes for my 20 page hate essay

[butchraskolnikov]

i still cant get over how horribly Armand was treated this season. the fact that the writers decided to take a character who’s backstory revolves around being sexually abused since he was a child and then spend the entire season humiliating him and treating him as promiscuous. they way they changed the fact that (to my understanding as someone who has not read the books) they took a character who was meant to be portrayed as beautiful, intelligent and graceful and turned him into a ‘gremlin’ and a cartoon villain now that he is south asian.. it feels so orientalist and so disrespectful to victims of rape or any form of abuse. and on that topic they take a character who’s sexual trauma is so inherent to who he is and lowkey ignore it?? get ready to die Rolin

[anime-villian-irl]

Average pro tvl post: we can't do censorship guys! This is a gothic show of course there are going to be fucked up things in! That doesn't mean it's a bad show!

Average tvl critical post; I don't like racism

[certifiedlurker]

To think that the only character who was truly in Louis's corner this season, with no expectations on either side was Lemuel. Truly. Truly I teared up a little while seeing a gifset of "safe?" Safe. Nearly home "you get what you wanted out there?" Yeah. Yeah. Like that is just such a friend thing to do- like text me when you get home type of thing, and Louis desperately needed/needs a friend where there are no expectations.

[jeunesseoubliee]

One of the examples of Louis's character assassination this season is his reaction after the séance.

Claudia tells him that she hates him more than her rapist and the vampires who killed her. She essentially tells him (and Lestat) that she is damned to wander alone in nothingness for eternity. And Louis just... shrugs it off. The daughter he spent 77+ years mourning tells him that she hates him and that she will be miserable forever, and his reaction is essentially a shrug.

And honestly, it all leads back to the Bruce's storyline earlier this season. I remember watching an interview with Jacob where he mentioned that he was uncomfortable with the whole "Louis is avenging Claudia by killing Bruce" storyline because he didn't feel like it was something Louis would do. He said there was a lot of back and forth between him and Rolin about it, and Rolin told him it was necessary for Louis's character arc this season. Like I said in one of my previous posts, the Bruce storyline was a trap.

The Bruce arc served three narrative purposes. First, it gave Louis a reason to read Claudia's diary entries describing her assault. This reflects poorly on Louis, especially when combined with the fact that Claudia herself never wanted him to kill Bruce in the first place. As a result, Louis comes across as self-serving to the audience. Second, it provided another opportunity to push the "Lesdaughter" narrative by drawing a parallel between Claudia's assault and Lestat's, reinforcing the idea that Lestat understands Claudia in ways Louis supposedly never could. Third, it gave Louis the opportunity to throw in Claudia's face that she should be grateful he killed her rapist, provoking shocked reactions from both Claudia and Lestat. That's another shared moment between them, another way to fuel the "Lesdaughter" narrative, and an opportunity to show that Louis's love for Claudia and the grief he carried over her death were more about himself than about her. For Rolin, Hannah, and co. , killing Bruce becomes the perfect vehicle for elevating the supposedly "bond" between Claudia and Lestat while casting Louis in the worst possible light.

The problem is that this only works if you're willing to disregard not only the events of seasons 1 and 2, but also the events that took place earlier this season. Louis is still grieving Claudia. Her loss continues to define him throughout this season. He becomes fixated on Regina because she reminds him of Claudia. He can't let go. He can't move on. As a last ditch attempt to find closure, he even arranges a séance. And what does he get in return? He learns that the daughter he has been mourning for decades hates him more than she hates her rapist and the vampires who killed her. On top of that, he finds out that she has not found peace and probably never will. That should devastate him. It should completely shatter him. This is the same Louis whose grief over Claudia defined entire chapters of his life. The same Louis who tried to end his life because of his grief over her. Yet after the séance, he basically shrugs it off. Minutes later, he's discussing his future with Lestat. And I'm supposed to take this as confirmation that it was never really about Claudia, rather than blatant and shameless character assassination?

Can we be serious for a moment? How does that even make any sense? Even if you argue that Louis's grief was primarily rooted in guilt and self-serving, hearing that his daughter has not found peace and probably never will should still send him into a spiral. It should wreck him emotionally because it confirms his worst fears. It means there is no forgiveness, no redemption, no closure, and no possibility that Claudia's suffering will ever end. The séance doesn't ease his guilt; it validates it. So whether you view Louis's grief as genuine love for Claudia or as guilt over failing her, the end result should be the same: he should be emotionally shattered by what he hears. Instead, the narrative barely pauses before moving on to Lestat and him discussing their future together. That's why I can't take the séance as some insightful revelation about Louis. The emotional consequences simply don't match the scale of what he's being told. The daughter whose death has haunted him for decades tells him she hates him more than her rapist, tells him she's suffering, tells him she'll never find peace, and somehow all Louis takes away from that is that he needs to work on himself.

This feels like a deliberate attempt by the writers to sabotage his characterization. And to add insult to injury, they're not even being subtle about it. It's painfully obvious if you've paid enough attention to Louis's character arc up to this point and have even a basic level of critical thinking. The way he reacts after the séance is completely at odds with everything we've been shown about him for the past two seasons. Hell, even this season.

[harbingerofsoup]

starting a rumor that tvl’s budgetary constraints stemmed from 80% of it going towards bribing critics to give them good reviews

[kblupeach]

When the actors say they "ask Rolin or Hannah" when.you ask them about a scene and the director speaks out, you know the problem falls right on Rolin and Hannah.

[usaginoir]

with you about tvl's aesthetic like it so tacky and far removed from previous season's quality

The whole budget was spent on Lestat’s cbat remix, Gabriella’s push up bra and Gabistat kiss scenes 😔

[thecoolestfreakyouknow]

It’s so sickening that they mocked Louis’ grief through Claudia’s anger about hanging the yellow dress up. He also hung Paul’s portrait on the wall - was that wrong as well? He loves them, he misses them, they are his family. What is so wrong about keeping something of theirs, the way Louis keeps those rocks in his feet, to never forget, to love them forever?

[yusiyomogi]

when i first heard them say that putting her dress on the wall won't solve anything, i really thought they meant that it wouldn't lead to the healing the way louis imagined. like, it wouldn't be a stopping point to the grieving process. because it's how the show could frame it: louis saying to himself that he can move on by honoring those he loved and then actively trying to move on ("getting results" kinda mindset claudia mocked him for a few times in s2).

and the answer to that would realistically be: you can't really completely move on from grief, it'll always live with you, you just need to grow outside of your grief and accept it as part of you without obsessing over it. the dialectic approach to the narrative: in iwtv s1&2 he was wallowing in grief and guilt, in tvl he would act like he moved on completely, all that resulting in a more balanced realistic view in the end of tvl.

but back then i had a lot of delusions about the writers and i believed that they cared about louis in some way lol. no, actually the whole point was that it was another self-pity move (?) and that louis still "wallowed in grief" even though he clearly was busy with his business and lestat's bullshit (?) and that he should have forgotten about claudia completely because claudia hated him (has it stopped him before??). mind you, all after being manipulated into the depth of grieving by armand and having a psychotic episode because of it. his entire "problematic" arc in tvl was designed by someone else. he literally didn't even do anything that season.

all the shit claudia mocked him for during seance scene is more applicable to louis at the start of s1. this scene is nonsensical and doesn't understand louis or his character arc or even grieving process in general, it's just a bunch of resentments the writers wanted to voice about him since s1 because they hated writing for him. and yes, i don't think they rewatched their own show. it feels like they wrote tvl from reading fans' reactions on reddit.

[usaginoir]

To add on to this: Louis is the one who’s not allowed to “”wallow”” in grief over his traumas by the narrative

Lestat, Armand and Gabriella’s trauma serves as explanations for how they became like that, they are not diminished or told to just get over it. Not saying it’s well executed at all time… but. They get to be traumatized. What happened to them is horrific. What happened to Louis is also horrific. What happened to Claudia is unforgivable.

But since the perpetrators of this trauma is the Showrunners “favorite” (See this post, I’m not saying those characters are written well) characters they want to baby… they feel the need to make Louis reaction to the abuse the problem and not the abuse. Can’t make this shit up.

Writers mistakes and showrunners retcons get blamed on Louis. Lestat’s hair and scars, the portrayal of Antoinette. (Funny how they only cared about how the white racist woman Lestat was sleeping with was portrayed *cough*)

Tom Anderson (white supremacist during Jim Crowe) is a fan favorite in universe… Louis gets called delulu for killing Bruce even though that wasn’t his idea but the Talamascas, the Regina dinner with Madeleine mocking the Judas dinner where Louis and Claudeleine got kidnapped, Claudia’s ghost racist BS, Claudia’s entire existence… all of Louis trauma gets dismissed and laughed at by the narrative.

Claudia’s trauma is either not mentioned, dismissed or only served to get us to empathize more with Lestat. Don ’t get me started on the Bruce and Baby Jenks BS.

Coldeveryseason post about rehashing the characters and their beats are the why the characters regressed to me.

There’s many problems with this decision and I won’t talk about it here. But Justice for LDPL

[yusiyomogi]

I had no idea that Jacob Anderson swallowed small rocks during the scene at the theatre in s. 2. As if I needed another reason to be pissed at this show. Ty for your posts. It helps to know I'm not alone in processing the sadness, etc. of what's happened with tvl.

the scene where he gets buried in stones was actually a nightmare for jacob to film. he said that swallowing small rocks was not that big of a deal for him in comparison. the first few times they tried to shoot this scene they actually used white menthol candies, with all the horrible menthol dust getting into his eyes, nose and mouth. only then they switched to the actual rocks, which he said he swallowed a lot of. jacob doesn't tend to complain about his experience on set, but he said a few times how physically exhausting this whole sequence was.

the fact that s2 was so emotionally and physically difficult for him, and then they convinced him to join tvl just to add another grotesque torture scene is making me angry beyond belief. and he mentioned that tvl ep7 scene was also physically challenging because he apparently had to film most of the footage squatting (and it's... a lot of footage). i mean yeah, ofc all actors unfortunately have to deal with some discomfort on set, i just don't get why the writers needed to add another torture scene for louis which wasn't even in the book and was also unpleasant to film.

anyway... thank you too! i'm glad that many people are willing to look at tvl critically. iwtv was and will probably stay a cult classic, and it was pretty frustrating that people fully relied on its reputation when they watched tvl. even though it's a very different and flawed work.

[orcbara]

i swear to god if people don't start understanding that responding to doylist critique of a piece of media with watsonian exonerations is not an actual rebuttal

[orcbara]

somebody saying "hey i don't like that the only gay man in this story is a weird pervert and it portrays gay sexual promiscuity as a moral failing and character flaw" cannot be rebuked by arguing about how the character's backstory or personality traits explain their behaviour. the choices made by a writer are all fundamentally mutable; somebody saying an author's choices should have been different is not going to be persuaded by an argument that takes those choices as immovable fact

[justanisabelakinnie]

[usaginoir]

Louis is the type of mom who gives the kids Chickpea cookie dough and black bean brownies and then acts like the victim when no one likes it

[tiredopinions]

praying we get moses and jacob in something else