‘Interview With the Vampire’ Season 3 Starts Filming — See First Photo From Set

The vampire Lestat is going on tour. Interview With the Vampire Season 3 has officially started filming. The series shared the exciting update on June 20 with the first official photo from set.

The show’s account tweeted, “Production has begun” on Friday, June 20 with an image of the clapperboard, a guitar, a retro mic, and a tambourine. The music theme is thanks to Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire sequel novel, The Vampire Lestat, in which Lestat becomes a world-famous rockstar who puts on a one-night-only concert in response to Daniel Molloy’s memoir of his interview with Louis de Pointe du Lac. Showrunner Rolin Jones already confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 that they’re not doing a one-night show, but rather a whole tour. At the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas on May 30 (in a panel moderated by TV Insider’s own Damian Holbrook), Jones revealed more details about the tour and the tunes.

As shown in the rockstar Lestat teaser at SDCC in July 2024, Lestat (Sam Reid) is going to have a brand new look in the third season. Jones shared during the ATX panel that he already has 16 songs from composer Daniel Hart for the musical season, Lestat’s tour will have 50 stops, and Season 3 will pick up around stop 33 on that tour. The tour will be Lestat’s response to Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Daniel’s (Eric Bogosian) Interview With the Vampire memoir.

The clapperboard features new key art depicting music notes chaotically clustered and cascading into lines that look ready to fuel a rockstar’s long night of partying. That art is paired with the band’s fang-like VL logo from the rockstar Lestat teaser (get more details on how it was made here). That “Long Face” video certainly makes it look like Lestat is having a lot of those drug-fueled nights on tour that are causing melodramatic crash-outs. In other words, the diva is down. The clapperboard also reveals that Craig Zisk is directing the Season 3 premiere. Zisk directed Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 1, “What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned,” and Episode 5, “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape.” David Tattersall is the cinematographer for the Season 3 premiere. He also worked on the very first episode, plus Episodes 2, 5, and 6 in Season 1 and Season 2 Episodes 3, 4, and 8.

The guitar in the photo is a Gibson Les Paul. Combine that with the tambourine and the images of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant on costume inspiration boards shared by the IWTV writers’ room Twitter account from earlier this year, and it looks like rockstar Lestat’s vibe is pulling a lot of inspiration from the Led Zeppelin frontman. Back in Season 1, Anderson and Reid said they’d like to see a Robert Plant version of the Lestat Broadway musical while testing their IWTV knowledge with us.

Production has begun. #InterviewWithTheVampire pic.twitter.com/iczMjy6y0A

— Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (@AnneRiceAMC) June 20, 2025

The Vampire Lestat is one of the standouts from Rice’s 13-book series, The Vampire Chronicles. While it and its predecessor are some of the most popular books about vampires ever, The Vampire Lestat has never been adapted in full. Pieces of it were pulled into 2002’s Queen of the Damned film starring Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah, giving fans a glimpse at rockstar Lestat, but Louis wasn’t even a character in the movie despite his presence in the book. AMC’s adaptation will mark the best-selling novel’s first true adaptation, which is shocking considering it came out in 1985.

“When you buy the rights to 18 Anne Rice novels that have sold more than 150 million copies, in your wildest dreams you hope there’s a show as good as Interview on the other end,” said Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks, on June 26, 2024, when the show was renewed. “What Rolin [Jones, showrunner and series creator] has done with these stories and characters, working so closely with Mark [Johnson, executive producer], as the steward of this universe, has exceeded the loftiest version of our expectations. We can’t wait to see where this creative team takes the series from here and know we are walking alongside an incredibly loyal and passionate base of fans who feel as strongly about this material as we do.”

The renewal announcement already confirmed that Jacob Anderson will be back as Louis in Interview With the Vampire Season 3. Here are all the latest updates.

Is Interview With the Vampire Season 3 filming?

Interview With the Vampire Season 3 filming began the week of June 16 in Toronto. The writers’ room started work in 2024. Reid and Johnson revealed during the Deadline Contenders FYC event on April 5 that filming will take place in Toronto, Canada.

“The writers are busy working away, meaning Rolin has no time to himself right now,” Johnson said during the panel. “We are going to be shooting in Toronto, of all places, later in the year, not too far away.”

“Returning in 2026, Season 3 of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire will feature Vampire Lestat headlining as the most immortal rockstar the world has ever seen, and AMC Networks is bringing advertisers on tour with him,” AMC said on April 7. “Content Room is inviting partners to hit the road with Rockstar Lestat for a Season 3 promotional tour including a variety of stops. This ‘Backstage Pass’ offering will integrate advertisers across all touchpoints of the tour — from in-show, on-ground and through custom media campaigns. Kicking off later this year, opportunities include first look ‘soundchecks’ of the new season, shoppable co-branded consumer products in a Rock Shop merch store, and in-world integrated content.”

This “promotional tour” seems to be an appeal to advertisers to take part in marketing for the upcoming season.

When does Interview With the Vampire Season 3 premiere?

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (@annericeamc)

Season 3 will premiere in 2026. An official premiere date will be announced at a later time.

The first Season 3 poster, embedded above, and its rockstar-themed design hints at the major visual shift to come in the third season. Playing with perspective is a core piece of this show’s design as the vampires reflect on their centuries of existence. Seasons 1 and 2 centered on Louis’ perspective, and now Season 3 will shift to Lestat’s as he tells his life story. With a new vampire at the helm of the storytelling will come a new aesthetic for the show’s overall look. Jones told TheWrap in June that “you should imagine that aesthetically, and just the way the show feels and moves will feel like Lestat just hijacked the show. You will not feel like a 148-year-old guy talking to a 78-year-old guy anymore. That’s not happening.”

Louis is still going to play an important role in Season 3. “I’m not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner,” Jones promised in our Season 2 finale interview. “The next turn, center stage, is Lestat, but I don’t think we’re going to be pushing Louis to the side like he is in those books. I don’t think Louis, as we leave him, is going to be this guy who is suffering as much. Actually, I think he’s maybe beginning his legitimate vampire experience there at the end.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jones added about Louis to TheWrap. “What they should worry about is, if those people expect to see the same show, that’s never gonna happen. We’re going to go just as aggressively Lestat front and center.”

What will Interview With the Vampire Season 3 be about?

Interview With the Vampire Season 3 will be an adaptation of Rice’s second book in The Vampire Chronicles series, The Vampire Lestat. In it, Lestat turns himself into a rockstar to use his fame to respond to Louis’ interview with Molloy, which resulted in a hit book. Like in the show, readers believe the book is fiction. Lestat is determined to make clear to everyone that vampires are real. He tells the story of his human and vampire life before meeting Louis and Claudia and also briefly explains how he ended up in Paris for the deadly trial. Lestat and his band perform just one concert at the end of the book. The AMC series is expanding this by taking Lestat’s band on tour in the third season.

The description for Interview With the Vampire Season 3 reads: “In Season 3, resentful of the perfunctory portrayal in the trashy bestseller Interview With the Vampire, the Vampire Lestat sets his story straight in a way only the Vampire Lestat can — by starting a band and going on tour. Gabrielle. Nicholas. Magnus. Marius. Those Who Must Be Kept. They join Louis, Armand, Molloy, Sam, Raglan, Fareed, and others we can’t tell you about yet on a sexy pilgrimage across space, time, and trauma. No Auto-Tuning. No Trigger Warnings. All Feels Amplified.”

While the book begins in the 1980s, the AMC series has changed the setting from the novel in both seasons. Season 1 was set in early 1900s New Orleans, and Season 2 was in post-World War II Paris. The present-day timelines in both seasons are set in Dubai in 2022 before Louis returns to New Orleans. The Vampire Lestat is also not an interview between a vampire and a journalist like the first book. Rather, it’s Lestat himself narrating his story to readers. AMC’s rockstar Lestat teaser shows Reid’s vampire being interviewed by Bogosian’s Daniel Molloy in a VH1 Behind the Music-style music documentary. It also included an original song, “Long Face,” the full version of which was released the day after the SDCC panel. It’s the first of many original songs to be created for Season 3. The show’s composer, Daniel Hart, is creating the original music.

“The second book opens in this very extreme, confronting, different way,” Reid said in the Deadline Contenders panel. “We’re honoring that. The rockstar vampire is such a bizarre concept, and it’s something that we’re attempting and hopefully do it okay.”

“The music has always been done by Daniel Hart, and Daniel Hart is really just bringing some extraordinary work to the new season,” Reid added in the panel. “This show rests so heavily on his music. It’s so visceral, the way the music can come in and ride a wave for the audience. He’s really having the time of his life writing these songs.”

No details about Season 3’s episode count, or the possibility of The Vampire Lestat being split into two parts like Interview With the Vampire, have been shared.

Who is in the Interview With the Vampire Season 3 cast? Will Louis be back?

Season 1 focused on Louis, Lestat, and Claudia in New Orleans. Season 2 centered Louis and Claudia in Paris, along with Armand (Assad Zaman) and his theatrical coven. Louis has been telling the story for the first two seasons. In Season 3, it’s Lestat’s turn, but Louis won’t be absent.

As Jones said he is “not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner,” Johnson added in our same finale interview, “The last line [of Season 2] is Louis saying, ‘I own the night.’ That is not an exit line.”

The Season 3 description says that the characters played by Anderson, Reid, Zaman, Bogosian, Joseph Potter (Nicholas), Justin Kirk (Raglan James), Chris Geary (the vampire Sam Barclay), and Gopal Divan (Dr. Fareed from Season 1) will be in the third season. It’s possible that Delainey Hayles could come back to haunt the narrative following Claudia’s tragic death in Season 2. As Jones told TV Insider of Claudia’s potential return, “Everybody, even folks that are dead in our world now, still can… you know, come back.”

Additional cast will be announced at a later time. Fans are eager to know who will play Gabrielle, Lestat’s mother, as well as Marius, Magnus, and Those Who Must Be Kept — all of whom are mentioned in the logline.

Is there an Interview With the Vampire Season 3 trailer?

Not yet. But fans can enjoy the rockstar Lestat teaser and “Long Face” lyric video in the meantime. As Reid previously revealed to TV Insider, the rockstar Lestat teaser was their second attempt at the sizzle reel.

The other shows in AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe are Mayfair Witches and The Talamasca. Mayfair Witches Season 2 ended in early March. The Talamasca comes out in 2025.

Interview With the Vampire, Season 3 Premiere, 2026, AMC (Streaming on AMC+)