‘The Vampire Lestat’ Renewed With Major Change: Akasha Arrives in New Teaser

She is the answer. Sheila Atim‘s Akasha stars in a bone-chilling new teaser announcing the renewal of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire. The Season 4 renewal was announced during The Vampire Lestat panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24. And just like the ones before it, the upcoming season is named after the book it’s adapting. Season 4 is officially titled Anne Rice‘s Queen of the Damned, and executive producer Hannah Moscovitch is replacing Rolin Jones as showrunner.

Jones will continue as an executive producer on the series, but he will not be in the writers’ room, TV Insider has confirmed with AMC. Moscovitch and executive producer Mark Johnson were joined by series stars Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, and Sheila Atim at the Hall H panel on Friday in San Diego. Sam Reid is currently starring in a production of Doubt in Australia, so he couldn’t attend.

In the teaser above, Akasha urges women around the world to “get up” and rise against male oppression. “Women, get up,” she urges. “Out of the ditches where they have thrown you and come with me now to where the men are gathered and do what you have long longed to do: Kill them all.”

Atim recorded new audio for the teaser, but the footage of her is entirely from The Vampire Lestat Episode 5, when the Queen of the Damned made her debut in flashback. Akasha’s words are intercut with scenes of humans protesting in the streets. The teaser comes just days after The Vampire Lestat finale on July 19, which ended on a major cliffhanger that set up the apocalyptic events Akasha will bring in Season 4.

TV Insider had the exclusive first interview about Season 4 with Reid, Anderson, and Atim in our Vampire Lestat finale cover story. In it, Jones said that Akasha is “a terrifying figure. There’s not anything level-headed that’s coming. There’s something quite Old Testament that’s coming, the feminine version of it.”

Atim said, “There is something really interesting across storytelling, across cultures of the female archetype or the mother archetype that is both creator and destroyer. Akasha is absolutely that. You know sometimes, when parents are like, ‘I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it’? That’s very much her energy. That’s just fun.”

The Vampire Lestat stars Reid, Anderson, Zaman, Bogosian, Atim, Delainey Hayles, and Jennifer Ehle and is executive produced by award-winning producer Johnson, creator, writer, and showrunner Jones, Moscovitch, along with Christopher Rice and the late Anne Rice.

An accomplished writer and playwright, Moscovitch was a writer on the first two seasons of Interview With the Vampire and an executive producer on The Vampire Lestat, for which she specifically wrote the “Akasha” and “Gabriella” characters. Her previous credits include the critically acclaimed play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, for which she received the 2021 Governor General’s Award for English-language drama, and the Crave TV mini-series Little Bird.

“In The Vampire Lestat, Mark, Rolin, Hannah, and this extraordinary cast delivered an unforgettable season filled with propulsive storytelling that captivated the passionate and engaged fans of this franchise,” said Dan McDermott, Chief Content Officer of AMC Global Media and President of AMC Studios. “We can’t wait to continue the journey with Queen of the Damned, one of the most iconic stories in Anne Rice’s mythology, and watch our established and beloved characters confront Akasha with their world, and ours, very much hanging in the balance.”

See photos from the Hall H panel below.

Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, Premiere TBA, AMC