The Vampire Lestat Is in Full Diva Mode in New Teaser With Sam Reid (VIDEO)

Rock star Lestat (Sam Reid) has notes for Daniel Molloy’s (Eric Bogosian) decor in a new teaser for The Vampire Lestat. The teaser for Interview With the Vampire‘s third season was aptly dropped on November 7, Lestat’s birthday.

“This is the kind of room that old people grab you by the hand and say, ‘Do not let me die here,'” the brat prince (his nickname from the Anne Rice books) says while smoking a cigarette and preparing for his closeup.

Reid plops down on a leather chair, wearing a velvet shirt and striped pants and sunglasses in the teaser above. Channeling the first rock star Lestat teaser debuted at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, Lestat complains about an ugly lamp and an invasive fern on the set of his interview with Daniel. He’s smoking a cigarette indoors because no one can tell him not to. In the first rock star Lestat teaser, he was offended by a goblet on a table. (Reid broke down that first look at rock star Lestat with us earlier this year.)

“Oh, what is that lamp? And the fern? No, no,” he whines. “I enter a room, with that fern, and I do not enter.” Jot that down.

Daniel is heard asking for the fern to be removed as the teaser ends.

The Vampire Lestat (the official title for Interview With the Vampire Season 3) wrapped filming in Toronto as of Friday, October 24. Executive producer Mark Johnson said at the Talamasca: The Secret Order New York premiere on October 21 that filming on Season 3 would finish on Thursday. Now, crew members are posting on social media in celebration of the end of filming after production began this summer. When does it premiere on AMC?

Here, we’re breaking down all of the latest updates on the follow-up to Interview With the Vampire‘s critically acclaimed seasons.

Is there a Vampire Lestat trailer?

Yes! The first trailer for The Vampire Lestat was shown to fans in the SDCC 2025 panel audience, and then it was officially released after the NYCC panel in October. In addition to the first looks at Delainey Hayles and Assad Zaman and other returning and new characters in Season 3, it shows Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat in some kind of legal meeting.

The trailer reveals that Daniel is directing a documentary about rock star Lestat, inspired by his memoir of his time with Louis, so the meeting could be about that. But Lestat is just using this time to pick apart information about Louis’ relationship with Armand (the girls are fighting).

When does The Vampire Lestat premiere?

An exact premiere date has not been announced, but it will come out in 2026. Anderson teased in an interview with Screen Rant at San Diego Comic-Con this summer that it’s premiering in April, but that remains unconfirmed, so take it with a grain of salt.

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. Filming wrapped by October 24. Jane Wu, who directed Season 3 Episode 6, posted a photo of her episode’s clapperboard on Friday to celebrate the end of filming (below). The board says Earle Dresner was the cinematographer. He worked on Season 2 Episodes 6 and 7, as well as The Newsreader, which also stars Reid.

 

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Why is Interview With the Vampire now called The Vampire Lestat?

Creator Rolin Jones announced to fans at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 that Interview With the Vampire has officially been renamed The Vampire Lestat. Their reason for the change is the fact that they’re adapting The Vampire Lestat novel in the third season, so they’re calling the show by its book name. They’ll presumably do this if/when they adapt book three in The Vampire Chronicles series, The Queen of the Damned, and so on.

How many episodes are in The Vampire Lestat?

There’s no episode count yet, but Season 1 was seven episodes and Season 2 was eight, so expect a similar episode count for Season 3.

The series hasn’t revealed if it’s covering the entire plot of The Vampire Lestat book in Season 3 or if it’s being split into two parts like Interview With the Vampire. But with the inclusion of QOTD characters such as Akasha (Sheila Atim) and Baby Jenks (Ella Ballentine), they’re already starting to bring plot from the next book into the story.

Writer/executive producer Hannah Moscovitch also revealed at New York Comic Con 2025 that they’re pulling from book six, The Vampire Armand, this season as well.

What happens in The Vampire Lestat?

The description for 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.”

As shown in the rockstar Lestat teaser at SDCC in July 2024, Lestat (Reid) is going to have a brand new look in the third season. Jones shared during an ATX panel this summer that there are at least 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 (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).

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.

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

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

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 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.”

Louis has new sources of revenue in Season 3. While Anderson can’t say much about Louis’ new business ventures, he told us at New York Comic Con that the vampire has found a way to commodify vampiric existence. In a way, Lestat is doing the same with his music. Learn more in our interview with Anderson, Reid, and Moscovitch here. The actors discuss how Lestat’s music impacts Louis and Lestat’s relationship here.

Who is in The Vampire Lestat cast?

Season 1 focused on Louis, Lestat, and Claudia in New Orleans. Season 2 centered on 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, who will be seen in Talamasca Season 1 Episode 4), Chris Geary (Sam Barclay), and Gopal Divan (Dr. Fareed from Season 1) will be in the third season. Additional cast members were announced at San Diego and New York Comic Con.

Delainey Hayles will be back as Claudia (who appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in The Vampire Lestat trailer below). Here’s the rest of the new cast and characters:

• Jennifer Ehle as Gabriella, Lestat’s mother, whose name is being changed from Gabrielle
• Ella Ballentine as Baby Jenks from The Queen of the Damned
• Jeanine Serralles as Christine Claire, who works with rock star Lestat
• Christopher Heyerdahl as Marius de Romanus, Armand’s maker
• Damien Atkins as Magnus, Lestat’s maker
• Lestat’s band members: Noah Reid as Larry, Ryan Kattner as Salamander, Seamus Patterson as Alex, and Sarah Swire as TC
• Sheila Atim as Akasha, the mother of all vampires
• Damon Daunno returning as the vampire Bruce from Season 1
• Bally Gill returning as Rashid

The singer Moses Sumney is also featured in the trailer below, but AMC hasn’t revealed who he’s playing. Based on his nails and contact lenses, we know he’s playing a vampire.

The other shows in AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe are Mayfair Witches and Talamasca. Mayfair Witches Season 3 started filming on October 14. Talamasca premieres with two episodes on Sunday, October 26, at 9/8c.

The Vampire Lestat, Season 3 Premiere, 2026, AMC, Streaming on AMC+