In the season finale of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, our main vamp is reckoning with some of his life’s greatest failures, including an inability to take over the in-universe Billboard Hot 100.
That failure notwithstanding, it was quite an undertaking for creator Rolin Jones, music writer Daniel Hart and actor Sam Reid to bring Anne Rice’s beloved vampire rock star to the small screen — even if, in their retelling, Lestat’s massive fandom becomes a modest cult following (and his album ends up as a fictional chart flop, bested by Drake).
Yet the character refresh didn’t stop there. While Reid modeled some onstage physicality after rock ‘n’ roll greats, he was careful about not pulling too much. “I looked at a lot of glam rock,” the Aussie tells Billboard over a video call from his home country, where he’s starring in a Sydney production of the play Doubt. “But I was a little bit concerned about him feeling too nostalgic, so I didn’t try and lean too much into that.”
Preparing for the immortal theater kid’s latest musical adventure instead led Reid down a YouTube rabbit hole about… lions. “Lestat’s got big cat energy,” he laughs. “That’s how I always operate with him. It was like that, just on steroids.” In front of an audience, the vampire is feline and cocky, embracing a genre-typical androgyny (but put a pin in that for now).
