{"id":524133,"date":"2026-06-08T06:09:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T06:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/524133\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T06:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T06:09:16","slug":"the-vampire-lestat-premiere-recap-record-collecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/524133\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Vampire Lestat\u2019 Premiere Recap: Record Collecting"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Much like the way in which the Vampire Lestat was stirred from his eternal slumber by the propulsive sounds of rock and roll, so too have I been awoken from a two-year recap hiatus, bleary-eyed and holding a coffee mug that says \u201cDon\u2019t talk to me until I\u2019ve had my blood of Akasha,\u201d by a new season of Interview With the Vampire. Or is it the first season of The Vampire Lestat? This show is something new altogether, with an entirely different feel from the first two seasons, but it is also dense with self-references, callbacks, and call-forwards, and it would be impossible to parse<\/a> without having seen the first two seasons and studied for a Ph.D. in Lestatology. But I trust that this recap comments section, as it was in 2024, will be a symposium among true scholars.<\/p>\n

Let it be known that I watched this episode for the first time on May 13, 2026. Let it be known that I wrote in my notes, verbatim, \u201cIt is going to take me four hours to get through each episode at the rate I have to pause, process, and do laps around my living room.\u201d Let it be known that, in an interview published with my colleague<\/a> Roxana Hadadi on June 2, 2026, Sam Reid said that while reading the script for this season, \u201cHe threw his laptop, took a walk around the building, came back in, finished reading the script, and had a 180-degree reaction.\u201d The parallels are striking, so therefore let it be known that The Vampire Lestat is working exactly as intended, even if I haven\u2019t personally yet reached that 180-degree reaction point. I am exhausted, disgusted, titillated, scoffing, giddy, and cringing at episode one, \u201cDetroit,\u201d but this is part of Rolin Jones\u2019s grand plan, and we must trust the process.<\/p>\n

This show already has me back in its death grip from its opening images, echoing the stark, concrete elegance of Armand and Louis\u2019s Dubai penthouse \u2014 our \u201chome base\u201d for the first two seasons that was destroyed in the finale<\/a> \u2014 only now we are in an off-grid airplane hangar, where a shadowy group of invited global elites has assembled for a posthumous auction of Lestat\u2019s earthly possessions. Among them: the Right Honourable Raglan James (Justin Kirk in glasses), a random cardinal who never made it past the primary voting round of Conclave, and Armand (Assad Zaman), wearing an eyepatch. Already, attention must be paid, and italics must be used, because eyepatch Armand is, to use his favorite word, fascinating. He looks like a Yu-Gi-Oh villain. What happened to him? And why is Louis (Jacob Anderson) walking in with a cane? The auctioneer gets lots (auction pun intended) of exposition out as he reads the descriptions of what\u2019s up for grabs. First is the masters, bonus recordings, and notes for his 2025 self-titled album, The Vampire Lestat, plus a \u201csong cycle in the classic vein set to the poetry of Baudelaire.\u201d The auctioneer, per instruction, lights the whole lot on fire, as though Lestat is saying fuck your physical media from beyond the grave. Drama queen.<\/p>\n

Second on the docket, a Meccani sideboard containing, along with a magnum of his own blood, \u201c111 albums of audio best described as an omniscient history of the events of the 2025 album, its supporting tour, and the consequential global catastrophes that sprung from said album as narrated by the Vampire Lestat himself.\u201d Not even four minutes into the season (including the theme song), and already we\u2019re learning that Lestat is dead and famous, and he\u2019s caused some sort of global catastrophe with his musical side gig. The bidding starts at 50 million yuan, and the 111 record collection, titled \u201cThe Failures,\u201d starts with \u2026<\/p>\n

The albums, narrated by Lestat, are the framework for this season, the way that the titular interview between Louis and Daniel (Eric Bogosian) was in seasons past. This show has, from the very beginning, toyed with Hamiltonian themes of who lives, who dies, and who tells your story, and this season, an ostensibly \u201cdead\u201d Lestat (I don\u2019t believe him for a second) gets to take his own spin out for a spin. If Louis\u2019s self-mythology took the form of a prestige-TV period piece, then Lestat\u2019s takes the form of some truly experimental, gonzo TV storytelling. Lestat\u2019s narration bounces around out of time and from one topic to the next; he is prone to monologues that sound like bad beat poetry, and his heady mix of self-aggrandizement and live-wire emotional vulnerability makes him as unreliable and fascinating (sorry, putting a dollar in Armand\u2019s swear jar) a narrator as any we\u2019ve seen on the show to this point. In it, we learn that sometime between the season-two finale and now, there has been \u201cthe attempted extinction of the Y chromosome across the continents,\u201d but it wasn\u2019t all Lestat\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

His narration takes us from the auction, where Louis and Armand are a flurry of paddles in a vigorous bidding war, to onstage in 2025, where Rock Star Lestat and his eponymous backing band are playing his single \u201cLong Face\u201d<\/a> for a crowd of his fans, whom he has christened \u201cthe beautiful unwell,\u201d who \u201ccame for cosplay, left converted,\u201d and if that doesn\u2019t describe IWTV fandom, I\u2019m not sure what does. He\u2019s wearing a Dracula cape and Edward Cullen body glitter, and in voice-over, he introduces his bandmates: the boyfriend from Schitt\u2019s Creek, his more talented straight-edge brother, a bassist called Salamander, and a girl drummer. He drones on about how his band is \u201calready resting on the Alps of Adequacy,\u201d but, of course, he\u2019s loving all the attention and crowd-surfing, because for a blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it shot, we see what I think is meant to be a blood-cum stain on his pants at the end of the number. This will not be the last red-tinted vampire bodily fluid we\u2019ll see this episode.<\/p>\n

Backstage, Lestat\u2019s \u201cFailures\u201d narration is accompanied by tour-doc visuals, courtesy of the Vampire Daniel Molloy, filming a follow-up to his best seller Interview With the Vampire. We learn that Lestat\u2019s Lestans think the book and the band are metafiction and that Lestat is just a human pretending to be Molloy\u2019s beloved fictional character, a belief that echoes my more conspiratorial thinking about how there\u2019s no way Sam Reid is an Australian actor and not actually Anne Rice\u2019s Brat Prince made flesh<\/a>. It\u2019s a level of delusion that the show pokes fun at by introducing a Lestat body double, whose name I cannot pronounce, let alone spell, who is used to divert public attention away from the real Lestat as he fucks and kills his way through 52 tour stops in the Great Lakes and Northeast. This information is imparted via voice-over at un kilometre a minute, and it\u2019s a lot to take in, especially as Lestat\u2019s recording is fighting with Lestat hamming it up for the doc cameras, whipping his sweaty hair all over the lens and saying stupid-funny shit like \u201cI\u2019m going to my vampire dressing room now.\u201d The sequence is part Her Smell, part Hedwig, all Lestat.<\/p>\n

On Lestat\u2019s vampire tour bus, we get our first taste of Vampire Daniel, sucking on a hookah (the suitably old-man version of an Elf Bar) and back in Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning interviewer mode, which Lestat treats with great flippancy and annoyance, despite Daniel saying that Lestat is the one who requested him to make the tour doc. Daniel asks Lestat about why he formed a band, why he plays music \u201cno one wants to hear\u201d to small rooms, and why now. Lestat lays down word salad about how human lives have never mattered less, and \u201cno more safe spaces,\u201d and denies the lies and aspersions Louis said about him in that accursed book.<\/p>\n

Flash back to the night Lestat formed his band, which was also the night he learned about the existence of Interview With the Vampire the book, now published and a pop-culture sensation. Lestat has been living in relative normalcy in a gorgeous apartment that, considering it\u2019s in Montreal, probably costs under $2,000 CAD a month. He seems subdued, stable, FaceTiming with Louis like the iPad b\u00e9b\u00e9 he is until he sees a headline about Molloy\u2019s salacious vampire tell-all, causing him to stomp on down to the bookstore and crash out at a couple of blas\u00e9 Quebecois clerks. He scours the book, muttering to himself and scribbling all over and ripping out pages, until the awful cacophony of the band across the street, mixed with fury over Louis\u2019s slander and confusion at the trick-or-treating kids dressed like \u201ccharacters\u201d from the book appearing on his doorstep as though to haunt him like diminutive ghosts of his past, makes him snap. He storms across the street up to the band in the attic, angrily plays a guitar riff at them, and snaps their guitar in half. This is how the obscure Canadian band Satan\u2019s Night Out became the Vampire Lestat. This whole sequence is absolutely the highlight of the episode for me: I like the pacing, and the humor, and the way Reid plays Lestat\u2019s agitation to remarkable, surprising comedic effect. I like getting a lived-in glimpse of what his relationship with Louis looks like in the 2020s, and I adore watching him interact with the modern human world: Why is the Vampire Lestat even giving out candy to trick-or-treaters to begin with? Delightful! The best thing about this sequence is that it shows rather than tells, taking its foot off the voice-over accelerator for a few minutes and allowing a scene to play out for itself, letting the emotions on Reid\u2019s face do all the talking.<\/p>\n

Back on tour, Lestat is staying in a vampire-themed hotel in Detroit called Dracula\u2019s Daughter. Everywhere he goes, there\u2019s a vampire hit out on his head: \u201cThe brat sings, the brat dies. The Great Laws are clear,\u201d they say in their telepathic group chat. \u201cIf he comes to your town, kill him.\u201d The pressure is getting to him, so he texts his estranged lover, \u201cI miss you. Come to me.\u201d He types out, \u201cI need you. I\u2019m struggling,\u201d and then deletes before sending. The lover might be Louis, but the names in the chat are mysteriously labeled \u201cMoi\u201d and \u201cToi,\u201d like chic French Jane and Lily<\/a>, so we can\u2019t know for certain. At his Detroit gig, he shreds on an electric violin while two vamps in the audience heckle him telepathically. We learn they are \u201cregional\u201d vamps (Lestat says \u201cregional\u201d with the derisive edge of a Twitter gay texting that video of Lady Gaga saying<\/a>, \u201cI am honored to be in the presence of so many locals\u201d) who are absolutely going to try to kill him later. As he fiddles away furiously and they stare stakes at him, he gets caught up in a blur of frustrating and traumatizing memories and, in front of the crowd, bites and drinks from the first fangirl who climbs up onstage.<\/p>\n

She had taken LSD and MDMA, so Lestat immediately starts tripping backstage while Daniel & Co. try to revive her. He has a vision of her soul floating above him, prophesizing everyone\u2019s death (Daniel \u201cdies bad\u201d) and warning him that \u201cthey\u2019re comin\u2019\u201d for him. He confesses that he wants \u201cbillions\u201d of fans, even though she says that won\u2019t break his centuries-long cycle of (Charli voice) falling in love again and again.<\/p>\n

Cut to Lestat\u2019s head in a toilet bowl in a motel bathroom with blood spewed all over the walls. Then freeze-frame, record-scratch, \u201cyou\u2019re probably wondering how I ended up here\u201d\u2013type backtracking on the part of Lestat\u2019s narration. We see that, after the groupie was revived via blood transfusion, she came out partying with Lestat at the Detroit hotel, and he is rolling off her molly-laced blood, because \u201cI have a blind spot when it comes to blood poisoning\u201d (cue flashbacks to his near deaths from past seasons). Reid plays this so well, but the direction is a little over the top, with drug-trip visuals that are too distracting to follow the dense-as-ever disjointed narration. Lestat has a threesome in the elevator on the way up to his suite, but when he gets out on the top floor, the regional vamps \u2014 called the \u201cFang Gang\u201d \u2014 are lining the hallway, all trying to kill him. It looks like a yakuza action scene, as Lestat single-handedly claws and kills one henchman after another, with Daniel and the playwright vamp Sam (now moonlighting as a vampire DJ) eventually popping out of the elevator for backup. The Fang Gang (God, it\u2019s soooo Scott Pilgrim) say they honor the laws of the Children of Satan, which is all too triggering for Lestat, who just wants to live loud and proud and be unburdened by his demons. The fight makes its way to the penthouse, exposing Lestat as a real live vampire to his bandmates, who, up until now, thought the vampire thing was an elaborate bit. Bloody and beaten, he yeets himself out the hotel window and flies off to the motel room where he puked blood and is down bad, until the mystery \u201cToi\u201d appears at his door.<\/p>\n

This is another moment for an excellent performance by Reid, looking truly monstrous and pathetic with his face mangled, eyes blackened, and lip split, who, in a single frame, captures all of the love and need and sadness and desperation and pathetic humor of the character, at his lowest and desperate to be taken care of. \u201cMon cher,\u201d he says, and then we get the ultimate fake-out and big bomb of the season: That\u2019s not Louis he\u2019s been texting. It\u2019s his damn mother, the Vampire Gabriella. She mends a wound on his face with a caressing hand, and then the two make out, intensely, on the cheap hotel bed.<\/p>\n

This show remains for the crazies, by the crazies, and I am so happy it\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We need to talk about the blood piss. I did not need to know about the blood piss. I did not need a whole scene of explanation where Lestat goes, \u201cOh, and of course Louis didn\u2019t tell you about the blood piss. This isn\u2019t your mama\u2019s season of Interview With the Vampire. On this season, vampires piss blood.\u201d I think it would have been a funny gag to see (see also: that little spot of blood-cum), but the expounding on the mechanics of the pissing of the blood was one of a few moments where it felt like the episode had really overindulged. I don\u2019t want this show to be What We Do in the Shadows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2022 Speaking of the delicate balance between camp sublime and cringe, this is a music-heavy season with lyrics that are very on the nose, as Lestat says his songs tell his story. They risk falling into the corny trap that often befalls the sort of \u201cpunk rock\u201d you hear in certain musicals, but it\u2019s all buoyed by composer Daniel Hart\u2019s catchy, clever pastiche and Reid\u2019s totally committed, entrancing glam-rock performance.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I didn\u2019t love the whole \u201cDid you stutter as a child?\u201d thing Daniel\u2019s doing. It\u2019s not the gotcha he thinks it is. In general, I found Daniel\u2019s smarm much more tolerable when he was a weak and trembling human fearing death and find it far more annoying now that he\u2019s just another vamp. Is this what Armand feels like all the time?<\/p>\n

\u2022 Lestat is absolutely traumatized by \u201ctwo years as Mr. Du Lac\u2019s B-movie brute\u201d in the book he calls \u201cthe editorial wags of an insane person.\u201d Here are some things said or shown in the first two seasons and in Daniel\u2019s book that Lestat insists are slanderous lies:<\/p>\n