Interview with the Vampire (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  Interview with the Vampire, the AMC television series, begins with a request from a 145-year-old vampire named Louis de Pointe du Lac. He summons a journalist, Daniel Molloy, and asks him to redo an interview the two of them recorded 49 years earlier. The first attempt ended badly for Molloy, who was attacked. Now Louis wants to tell it all again, including his tangled bond with a French vampire named Lestat de Lioncourt. The series draws on The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice and takes its name from the first of those books. It premiered in 2022. Why did Louis need to tell his story a second time? Why did a property that so many studios wanted take years to reach the screen? And what did the writers change to make an old tale feel dangerous again?

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• 2. The Long Road To Television

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  On the 26th of November 2016, Anne Rice announced that she had regained the rights to her vampire novels. Before that, the books had been heading toward a film series at Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Her son Christopher Rice had adapted the screenplay, and Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were set to produce. The novels had already reached cinemas twice. The 1994 Interview with the Vampire starred Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and the 2002 sequel Queen of the Damned was less commercially successful. Rice was blunt about where she wanted to go next. In her words, "It is, more than ever, abundantly clear that television is where the vampires belong."

  A month-long bidding war ended on the 28th of April 2017, when Paramount Television Studios and Anonymous Content optioned the rights. Christopher Rice was attached to rewrite the screenplay, and Anonymous Content's David Kanter and Steve Golin joined as executive producers. Bryan Fuller became showrunner on the 11th of January 2018. He quit later that same month, so that he would not interfere with what the Rices were planning. Hulu put the project into development on the 17th of July 2018, and Dee Johnson replaced Fuller as showrunner on the 19th of February 2019.

  Then the deal fell apart. On the 19th of December 2019, Hulu decided not to move forward. Rice responded by adding her trilogy Lives of the Mayfair Witches to a larger, complete rights package. Warner Bros. Pictures still owned the rights to that trilogy. Paramount Television was reported to be one of four bidders seeking the property.

  The winner was AMC Networks. On the 13th of May 2020, it announced the purchase of the rights to the intellectual property covering 18 novels, along with the possibility of developing films and television series. On the 24th of June 2021, AMC ordered an adaptation of the first novel. Rolin Jones was attached as creator, showrunner and writer. Mark Johnson became an executive producer alongside Jones, overseeing the wider universe for AMC. Anne and Christopher Rice were named non-writing executive producers. On the 19th of July 2021, Alan Taylor was attached to direct the first two episodes and to executive produce. Before the first episode aired, AMC renewed the series on the 28th of September 2022 for a second season covering the rest of the novel, bringing the total to fifteen episodes.

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• 3. Storyville Instead Of Plantations

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  Storyville, the red light district of early 20th-century New Orleans, is where the series puts its Louis. In Rice's novel, he was a white planter and African slave owner in the late 1700s. The show makes him a mixed-race Creole man who runs a brothel. Jones explained that the move placed the story in a "time period that was as exciting aesthetically as the 18th century was". It also let the writers avoid "digging into a plantation story that nobody really wanted to hear now." Jones added that the later books in The Vampire Chronicles shaped his choices, because AMC meant to build a whole universe from Rice's work. He admitted the balancing act between staying loyal to the source and surprising readers who already knew it.

  The love story at the center is another deliberate choice. Jones described the relationship between Louis and Lestat as gothic romance. His stated aim was to "write a very excitable, aggressive, toxic, beautiful love story." The series embraces the queer relationship that runs through Rice's novels, which the 1994 film only insinuated. Critics praised the writing for avoiding color-blind casting. That choice let the show explore race, sexuality, history and abuse as real forces in its characters' lives.

  Claudia changed too. In the novel she is five years old, but the series casts her as a fourteen-year-old. The reason was practical, since the older age avoided Louisiana's child labor law. It also gave the character room to struggle with being an eternal teenager.

  The frame story changed most of all. Daniel Molloy, played by Eric Bogosian, is a cynical journalist in his 70s with Parkinson's disease. He has a long history of drug and alcohol abuse. His 1973 interview is the one that ended with him being attacked, and Louis has chosen him to hear the tale a second time.

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• 4. Casting The Immortals

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  In August 2021, Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson were confirmed as Lestat and Louis. Reid had read The Vampire Chronicles as a kid, and he went back to the books while preparing, referring to them constantly. He also took singing and piano lessons to portray Lestat's musicality. The character he plays is hedonistic and falls for Louis as soon as Louis arrives in New Orleans. Lestat is also fearful of abandonment, after abuse from his family and from the vampire who made him.

  Two months later, Bailey Bass joined as Claudia. Kalyne Coleman landed the recurring role of Louis's sister Grace. In 2022, Christian Robinson and Assad Zaman were cast as Levi and Rashid. Bogosian was cast as Molloy in an undisclosed capacity, and Maura Grace Athari completed the cast as Antoinette that April. Zaman's Rashid hides a larger secret. He is the first-season disguise of Armand, a 514-year-old vampire who is Louis's current turned former lover and who saves Molloy's life during the first interview.

  For the second season, Anderson, Reid, Bogosian and Zaman returned. Delainey Hayles replaced Bass as Claudia, because of "a variety of unforeseen circumstances." In 2023, Ben Daniels joined as Santiago, the leading thespian of the vampiric troupe the Théâtre des Vampires, and Roxane Duran joined as the dressmaker Madeleine. In February 2024, David Costabile signed on as a guest star.

  The third season brought a different kind of expansion. In July 2025, Jennifer Ehle joined as Gabriella, Lestat's mother, and Damien Atkins joined as Magnus. Ella Ballentine, Jeanine Serralles and Christopher Heyerdahl were also added. Daniels was the one main cast member not set to return. In October, Sheila Atim was cast as Akasha, the mother of all vampires and the title character of the third book, The Queen of the Damned. Noah Reid, Ryan Kattner, Seamus Patterson and Sarah Swire joined as the members of Lestat's band.

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• 5. Backlots And Strikes

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  About 40 period building facades went up on a backlot at The Ranch Studios in Chalmette, between October 2021 and January 2022. Production designer Mara LePere-Schloop used them to recreate Storyville, including the show's Iberville and Liberty Street. Principal photography for the first season ran from December 2021 to April 2022 in New Orleans. Real landmarks stood in as well. Gallier House, which Anne Rice had used as the model for Lestat's townhouse, appeared on screen. Beauregard-Keyes House served as the interior of the Fair Play Saloon.

  The second season began filming on the 3rd of April 2023 and was expected to wrap on the 31st of August. Most of the shoot took place at Barrandov Studios in Prague, which stood in for Paris. Locations included Old Town Square, the Vyšehrad complex and the Estates Theatre. Extra filming happened in Paris and New Orleans, and Craig Zisk was named as one of the directors.

  The Théâtre des Vampires needed a stage identity of its own. For its choreography, animation and stage concepts, the production worked with a real British theatre company called 1927. Its founders, Suzanne Andrade and Esme Appleton, also appeared in the show, as Celeste and Estelle.

  Labor disputes then intruded. On the 3rd of May, an AMC spokesperson said the Writers Guild of America strike was not expected to disrupt the schedule. The scripts were already written, although rewriting was not allowed. In July, the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike halted filming. Work resumed on the 2nd of October after a "roughly 10-week hiatus", once AMC Networks reached interim agreements with the actors' union and the writers' strike ended.

  The third season began filming the week of the 16th of June 2025 in Toronto, with Zisk back to direct the first episode. At the premiere of Talamasca: The Secret Order, executive producer Mark Johnson said shooting would conclude on the 23rd of October 2025.

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• 6. Scoring The Voices

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  Daniel Hart had already worked with Rolin Jones on The Exorcist, so Jones asked him to score this series. The two centered the music on the period in which the protagonists live and discussed early 20th-century American classical musicians as influences. Hart gave each main character a theme built on the tone of that character's voice. The idea was that the music would sit inside their internal monologues.

  Milan Records released the first season soundtrack album on the 22nd of October 2022. It includes the song "Come to Me," performed by Sam Reid as Lestat. The second season album followed on the 17th of May 2024, five days after the season premiere. Benny Bishop of Comic Book Resources praised how the first season handled its diegetic and incidental music, writing that the show made "music into a character."

  The third season leaned into Lestat as a performer. On the 13th of February 2026, "Long Face," written by Hart and performed by Reid as Lestat, became The Vampire Lestat's first official single. Artist profiles for The Vampire Lestat appeared on streaming services the same day. The opening theme, "All Fall Down," arrived as the second single on the 13th of March 2026. A cover of Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" followed as the third on the 24th of April 2026.

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• 7. What Critics And Viewers Said

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  On Rotten Tomatoes, the overall series holds an approval rating of 99%. Metacritic gives it a weighted score of 83 out of 100. IndieWire named it one of the most essential LGBTQ TV shows of the 21st century.

  The first season earned positive reviews from 98% of 84 critics, with an average rating of 8.15 out of 10. Judy Berman of Time called it the season's best fantasy franchise reboot, even though House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power debuted in the same period. Kelly Lawler of USA Today called it "a story that is very Black and very gay," and said it never feels like tokenism. Jenna Scherer of The A.V. Club gave it an "A-" and pointed to its gothic melodrama. Not every critic was convinced. Brian Tallerico of The Playlist felt Molloy "can feel a bit too much like a writer's highlighter." Charles Bramesco of The Guardian gave three out of five and argued that the explicit queerness felt like catering to a viewership made to wait too long.

  The second season scored 100% positive reviews among 77 critics, with an average of 8.85 out of 10. On Metacritic it reached 89 out of 100 from 14 critics, a rating of "universal acclaim." Nina Metz of the Chicago Tribune gave it a perfect score and called it "probably one of the best TV shows of the decade." Carol Midgley of The Times gave three stars out of five, calling it bleaker and less camp. Several critics lamented how little Lestat appeared after the first season's finale. Collider, TV Guide and TV Insider all named the show their best television show of 2024.

  Performances drew some of the loudest praise. TV Guide credited the "sizzling chemistry" of Anderson and Reid with making the show work. Saloni Gajjar wrote that Anderson "arguably exceeded" Brad Pitt's performance in the 1994 film. IndieWire called Reid's work "a master class in manipulation."

  The audience numbers were strong too. The premiere was the number one new series launch ever for AMC+, and together with the return of The Walking Dead it drove the platform's highest two days of viewership and subscriber growth since its October 2020 launch. On AMC, 1.2 million viewers watched the premiere, including about 493,000 in the 25-54 demographic. That made it the number one new drama on ad-supported cable in 2022.

  Awards followed. The series drew nominations from the Critics' Choice Television Awards and the GLAAD Media Awards, among many others, including the Gotham Awards, the Dorian Awards and the Saturn Awards. Several critics put the show on their lists of Emmy snubs after the first season. In 2025, it was listed at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for hairstyling on the episode "No Pain" and makeup on "Do You Know What It Means To Be Loved By Death."

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• 8. One Show, Many Screens

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  The series premiered on AMC on the 2nd of October 2022, with an advance release three days earlier on the streaming service AMC+. Spain was the exception, where it premiered on the 12th of January 2023. In 2023, it aired on BBC Two in the United Kingdom, ABC Television in Australia and Sky in Germany. The streaming service OSN+ carried it across the Middle East and North Africa. Netflix in the US offered the first season for a year starting on the 19th of August 2024. RLJE Films released the first season on DVD and Blu-ray on the 26th of September 2023, with French and Spanish dubs and the series' 2022 San Diego Comic-Con panel.

  The second season premiered on the 12th of May 2024. AMC renewed the series for a third season on the 26th of June 2024, adapting the second book in The Vampire Chronicles. In July 2025, the series was officially retitled The Vampire Lestat, to honor the book the season is based on. It was scheduled to premiere on the 7th of June 2026.

  The show is also the first entry in a shared setting called the Immortal Universe, built from adaptations of Anne Rice's works. Mayfair Witches and Talamasca: The Secret Order belong to it. In 2023, a short-form spin-off called Night Island was announced, with Jonathan Ceniceroz of Interview with the Vampire set to write. In September 2025, Night Island was confirmed to still be in development, alongside the announcement of an adaptation of Memnoch the Devil.

  AMC also built companion audio around the show. In 2022, it launched The Official Interview with The Vampire Podcast, a pre-recorded weekly show where host Naomi Ekperigin joined cast and crew to discuss the first season. For the third season, AMC announced a weekly half-hour aftershow, The Vampire Lestat: After Dark, hosted by Lizzie Bassett. It debuted on the 24th of May 2026 on AMC+ and on podcast platforms, with the premiere and finale editions set to air on AMC itself.

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