My Vampire Lestat Review: Stopping Before the Nosedive
In an interview, show runner Rolin Jones stated that each episode of The Vampire Lestat feels like a song and the season as a whole feels like an album. Each episode is different, but as a whole feels cohesive. I would agree with one modification: this is side A of the album and side B is missing.
The Vampire Lestat came in with no pretense that it would have any similarity to its predecessor Interview with the Vampire, besides the same characters.
Gone are the days of warm oil lamps and extended time spent exploring the minutia of complicated interpersonal dynamics. Gone are the ornamented monologues of Louis de Pointe du Lac. Lestat uses TikTok lingo and rants about interests and people niche to him, look them up if you want to know what he is referencing, he isn't going to explain. This season isn't for you.
It's for Lestat, and Lestat is a rollercoaster.
If "Detroit" is the moment the car takes off at break neck speed, "Toledo & Toronto" are the loop-de-loop and "The Failures " is the moment the car stops right before a dive drop. Do you feel nauseous? Grab a barf bag. Need to breathe? Wait until the season is over. You are in the Vampire Lestat's mind now and no one is going to hold your hand.
The show takes a big swing. It tells its audience: if you enjoyed Interview with the Vampire, great, that is a complete show for you to enjoy, but we are doing something different now. We aren't going to explore large portions of The Vampire Lestat (book) and we aren't going to revisit most of the first two seasons.
In large part, this season explores how abuse changes one's relationship to themself, specifically how they receive love and how they give it. Lestat isn't asking you to forgive him, he doesn't even believe himself is worthy of forgiveness, but he is asking you to listen.
The arc of the season follows Lestat's breakdown following the release of Daniel Molloy's Interview with the Vampire, a book that makes him second guess his relationship with the love of his life Louis de Point du Lac and vampire daughter Claudia. He is failing as a vampire, a husband, a father and now an artist. His music doesn't appeal to a general audience, his band hates him, and he feels no fulfillment in his life.
In need of any love at all, he asks his mother, Gabriella, to return to his life which spirals into apocalypse… literally. While Lestat simply wants to feel the love of someone who knows him completely, Gabriella has her own motivations. While Lestat wants to make music because he is an artist, Gabriella wants him to make music to gain power over the vampire population. The secondary arc of this show is watching Lestat come to terms with the fact his mother abuses and uses him and still does not love him the way he needs to be loved. That love can only come from Louis de Pointe du Lac, with whom Lestat finally reconciles at the end of the season.
In episode 7, Lestat accepts (and also doesn't) that all his endeavors and relationships have been failures, but at least he tried.
As a whole, TVL is an enjoyable season of television thanks, in no small part, to Sam Reid and Daniel Hart.
Reid carries a massive load this season. Lestat is on screen in almost every minute of the show, and very rarely is he taking it easy, lying back on the couch as he does in Episode 4 "The Devil's Road". He flies, he screams, he sings, he cries, and then he does it all over again.
When Lestat is on screen, the actor disappears. There are no cracks where Reid shows through, no hints that Lestat isn't anything but the being that has spent nearly three centuries with the blood of a primordial spirit in his veins. He takes a character that can easily come off as overbearing or annoying and maintains a god-like level of charisma and physical stature while also conveying tender, child-like vulnerability. Give Reid the ball and he'll never miss.
You see Lestat experience every emotion under the sun this season from nauseating narcissism to complete and utter torment. Stand out performances include renditions of "The Loneliness", "Long-Face" and "Hit the Lights" as well as scenes with the muse of Magnus in Episode 3 and a panic attack with Louis in episode 6. In episode 5, Lestat speaks to Akasha like a son to a mother as well as a young paramour to their lover. Reid's performance is dripping in so much whimsy and wonder that it seems he is ten years younger.
Hart also gave all to his role of composer this season. Writing 19 songs for the show as well as a new score for the season is no small feat, especially considering the songs were written before the scripts. Hart played a massive part in creating the character of Lestat this season and the songs he wrote gave us insight into Lestat that we might have never had without it.
Jacob Anderson also gives an outstanding performance in his role as Louis de Pointe du Lac. An actor of Anderson's caliber is almost always going to feel underutilized unless given Interview with the Vampire level screen time. Where Reid's Lestat shines when he is stealing a scene, Anderson's Louis thrives as a scene's foundation. He is the glue that holds the show together, the cement, the quiet, steady presence that gives the audience a break to take a breath. Anderson is an incredible scene partner, bringing life and a lived in feeling to every moment on screen. He makes unrealistic dialogue realistic, he reveals profound emotional depth and tormented humanity with just his eyes, and he does perfectly what actors are supposed to do: make you feel. It is hard to pinpoint one or performances that stood out this season, because every scene he is in had me enraptured. From Louis’s conversations with Regina to his panic when he learns about Lestat and Gabriella, Anderson is perfect. Like Reid, when Anderson is on screen, there is no thought to the actor behind the role. There is just Louis. And Louis is nothing without Jacob Anderson.
While Louis is a chaotic character in his own way, the show feels the most like itself when Anderson and Reid are together on screen. It is impossible to describe it as anything other than magic. The show goes to lengths to separate Louis and Lestat, despite an already decades long separation. Both find affection and attention in other places only to come up empty and realize the only home they have is with each other. Lestat and Louis do not need to kiss or even express direct romantic interest in each other for the audience to feel like these are two people who are meant to be. A finger brush or the caress of a neck scar can be just as erotic as taking off each other's clothes.
Episode 6 is the stand out episode of the season as it is a return to form to what makes this show special, spending extended amounts of time examining the complex interpersonal dynamics of two people who are wrong for each other and yet. This show has yet to bring to the table anything as engaging as watching Louis and Lestat just walk around the city and toe the line of getting back together, save for their parental relationship with their daughter Claudia.
Delainey Hayles deserves every minute of screen time she receives in season 3. She balances two roles, Claudia and Regina, playing both as believably distinct people. While Regina gets little screen time over the season, you immediately fall in love with her. Like Louis, you just want to see Claudia's face again, until, like Louis, you accept the fact that she is not Claudia and Claudia is gone. When Claudia's spirit returns in Episode 6, you can't help but feel partially responsible for her rage alongside Louis and Lestat. You also wanted to see her again, you were also pulling on her to return when she has already had so little peace. Hayle's performance in the seance of Episode 6 should be sent to every working casting director.
However, where the show soars through performance and music, it struggles in its narrative.
Returning to Hart's extraordinary work this season, how his work is used on the show is hit and miss. Some songs are over utilized while others under utilized. "Biggest Fan" is the standout example, with only half the song used in Episode 3, leaning instead into the original score for the second half of the episode. Both the score and Biggest Fan are beautiful, but the amount of choice the creative team was given results in some songs feeling crammed in, rather than using fewer pieces to their full potential. A good example of balance are episodes 6 & 7, where fewer songs are used, while a good example of failed potential is "Big Bad Wolf".
The specifics to Lestat's anger regarding Louis and the book is glossed over in the text of the show, but the lyrics of "Big Bad Wolf" lay out Lestat's issues in detail. It is therefore disappointing that the choice was made to use only seconds of the song in Episode 5. Audience members who take the time to download the song after the show will be treated to a back door on Lestat's psyche like it is an easter egg when it should be part of the text of the show.
But there are more shining moments when Hart's work are used to full effect like "Brutal Love", "Stained Glass Eyes", "Long Face", "Black Licorice" and "The Loneliness."
This season also suffers from lack of interest in its own source material.
While Interview with the Vampire was divided into two parts, each season has a complete arc, with the overarching plot complete at the end of season 2. The Vampire Lestat is half a story in every way and yet it is marketed as one complete season. There is no part 2 teased in the Episode 7 end credits. There are hints from the creatives that Queen of the Damned is considered a part two, but this is a completely separate book to be adapted with its own dense plot.
While elements from The Vampire Lestat were translated into a modern day context, time was wasted setting up elements of The Queen of the Damned and The Tale of the Body Thief. Setting up plot points that are 1-2 seasons and 2-4 years away from premiering while there are questions the audience wants answered about the prior two seasons is alienating.
Many came to season 3 with questions about Lestat's role in Claudia's trial, what specifically he took issue with in Louis's interview, what he did after he was killed in New Orleans and how he made his way back to a disintegrating shack for Louis to meet him in 2022. And those are just a few questions left open from the last two seasons.
Book fans were looking forward to seeing Lestat's complex relationships with Armand, Nicki and Gabrielle (Gabriella in the show). Fans of any of these relationships will be disappointed. Nicki and Lestat's relationship is vague and non-specific, his relationship with Armand only hinted to, and his relationship with Gabriella something entirely new.
The most expansive arc of the season is Lestat coming to understand that he is in a sexually abusive relationship with his mother Gabriella. There is more on-screen intimacy between the pair than Louis and Lestat who are the core romance of the show. It is grotesque, disturbing and by the end, exhausting. We learn that he loves her greatly and would do anything for her, even bring the end of the world, but learn little about Gabriella or her motivations. Only that she doesn't care much about Lestat, only enough to use him for her own unknown reasons.
Yet, Gabriella is the cornerstone of the show's plot. It is her abuse and Lestat's love for her that leads him to recording an album, rallying the vampires, and performing a concert that will unleash horrors onto the world. For such an important relationship, it lacks the depth one normally expects from characters written by Rolin Jones and Hannah Moscovitch. While Armand's motivations were similarly masked until the end of season 2, hers are completely absent.
Armand and Daniel's inclusion in the season is also, in one word, bizarre. We hear through expositional dialogue that Armand loves Daniel, that he stalked him for decades, that he turned him, but we don't see anything. Their subplot could be completely absent from the show and the show would not suffer, rather it would be more focused.
Daniel's interview with Lestat leads to nothing and only serves as a way for Daniel to have a vendetta against Lestat to lead to the beheading in episode 6. Lestat's backstory with Nicki and Magnus could have been explored in a more interesting way without Daniel.
Armand has a large role in the book "The Vampire Lestat" yet almost none of it is adapted, even though the ending for season 2 left so much potential for his motivations to be explored. Armand has many things to be angry with Lestat about: destroying his Paris coven, leaving him, choosing Louis, spurring on the Great Conversion and opening up vampires to danger – but none of this is addressed. In Episode 7, it is not Lestat's detached head that Armand confronts, but Louis's; Louis who Armand has had no screen time with in season 3. The last time the pair were on screen, Louis threw Armand into a wall because it was revealed he lied to Louis about killing his daughter. Louis is the one who has been wronged, yet Armand feels owed an apology. If the pair had been given screentime together or if Armand's resentment of Louis developed, this could have made sense, but it wasn't. This leads to Louis being tortured by Armand in a scene that felt as if it was written for Lestat but got switched to Louis just to give him screen time. And where was Lestat's head? In a bowling bag with Daniel serving no narrative purpose other than to be picked up by Raglan James because he wanted the concert to happen for some unknown reason.
Unknown reasons on top of unknown reasons on top of more unknown reasons.
There could have been a more narrative-ly satisfying way to put Lestat in a near-death situation before the concert and it could have been done entirely without Armand and Daniel, and without subjecting Louis to needless on-screen torture. They are included only to set up a relationship that will develop for an unconfirmed season while the current season suffers.
The future post-Apocalypse narrative also confounds. Over the season we see Louis and Lestat find their way back to each other but we know from the future narration that they will be on the outs again. For me personally, this cheapens their reunion. Louis and Lestat have been separated for decades, their reconciliation was short lived and for the most part happened off screen. The audience wants them together and the show is telling its audience not to be invested in their romance because they are going to break up anyway.
By Episode 6 Lestat stops calling the book Louis's book and calls it Daniel's, accepting that Louis did not want the book released and that the depictions are not entirely honest. But in the future, that acceptance is gone. Is Lestat narrating what his feelings were at the time or what his current feelings are? One can't be sure, this will hopefully be answered in future seasons.
Lastly, the anti-black choices in this season cannot be ignored. I will not talk over the Black community, it is up to each and every Black person what their interpretation is and what they can forgive. It is not up to any non-black person to tokenize one Black person’s opinion as the opinion – even Jacob and Delainey’s. Intentions are buried under the impact of carelessness, and this show has been careless. From Daniel calling Louis "Louisiana Fried Chicken" in Episode 4 to Claudia's racially charged language in Episode 6, these inclusions were obvious indicators that the writers room was white and did not know how to write such inclusions with the sensitivity deserved.
To Rolin Jones, hiring Black writers is not a suggestion, it is a necessity and not just because three of your main characters are people of color. You cannot infuse racially charged language into your scripts while ignorant, you only lean into racist stereotypes and alienate the fan base that gave you this show.
While there are many issues with the narrative, it cannot be denied that I enjoyed this season. This roller coaster is bumpy and I feel as if I am still waiting for the dive, but I loved it and I don't want it to stop. The performances, the music, the cinematography, the directing, the editing; on and on one could go about the obvious passion of those behind the scenes. It must be appreciated and celebrated to create something so honest and unconventional and to do it without fear.
There needs to be more art that is afraid to fail as it takes failure to succeed and even in failure, there is no waste – and isn't that what The Vampire Lestat is all about?
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