SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “New York,” the fifth episode of “The Vampire Lestat,” now streaming on AMC+.
When costume designer Lex Wood started planning the wardrobe for “The Vampire Lestat” — or Season 3 of “Interview with the Vampire” — she had one word in mind: color. And lots of it, to reflect the mania that is Season 3 narrator and the newly-formed rockstar version of Lestat de Lioncourt, played by Sam Reid.
Straying away from the red and black typically associated with vampires, Wood, who joined the Anne Rice adaptation’s costume department at the end of Season 2, viewed the shift in narrator as a chance to expand the AMC+ show’s aesthetics.
“Lestat is a musician,” Wood tells Variety. “Everything is through the lens of the music, so I spent lots of time researching and listening to music by artists that felt like they fit into our vibe, some that were directly referenced by Daniel Hart when he was composing.”
While Wood and Reid were clear that they didn’t want to model Lestat after any one rockstar, to give him the space to be “as individual as he can,” Iggy Pop, David Bowie because of his “changeling and chameleon effort,” and Freddie Mercury were all inspirations when Wood began designing pieces for Lestat and his wayward band members.
