The Vampire Lestat is back, he’s in a band, his music kind of sucks, and he absolutely does not care what you think about it. Neither does this recap. Kwesi and I sat down to do a full postmortem—an autopsy, even—of Episode 1 of Interview with the Vampire, also known as The Vampire Lestat, Season 3. And our scalpels are as sharp as Daniel’s tongue. Spoilers ahead. You were warned.
Spoilers, darling! If you haven’t watched “Detroit” Episode 1 of AMC’s vampire alt-rock opera, go watch it and come back. We’re about to spill all the bloody details.
Kwesi’s opening verdict was unambiguous.
Kwesi: “Spending an hour in the mind of Lestat was every bit as entertaining as I was hoping it would be.”
The season opens with an auction—a posthumous sale of Lestat’s own recorded works—before diving headfirst into the story from Lestat’s POV, which is the whole glorious, chaotic point. The show has always played with the idea that the story fundamentally changes depending on who’s telling it, and Kwesi is here for all of it.
Kwesi: “They’ve taken the conceit of the story fundamentally changing based on the point of view of the person who’s telling it… just seeing the way that Louis changes and his reactions, or the things that he held back, were really, really, really interesting.”
And what is Lestat’s side of the story? In a word: grievance. In more words:
Kwesi: “A rock and roll, drug fueled, hyper narcissistic, chaotic good time” — watching Lestat evolve from a man depressed over losing Louis and Claudia into something more. A pop rock demigod, maybe? The genre debate got thorny.
Sherin: “He’s more like pop punk, but it’s really not pop punk because pop punk is very specific… it’s very much an alternative rock.”
We agreed that the music, at least in the beginning, kind of sucks. But I’ve seen most of the season so I can tell you:
Sherin: “The music sucking in the beginning is very much a part of the story.”
I called Lestat “a self-deprecating narcissist” in my no-spoiler review over at RogerEbert.com, and that tension is alive and kicking in episode 1. There’s a scene in a Montreal bookstore where Lestat eavesdrops on fans — and one girl makes it crystal clear that Armand is her Dark Prince, going so far as to take a selfie with a painting Armand barely appears in.
Kwesi: “Lestat is just so disgusted by the people’s reaction to the book and how much kids are dressing up like vampires for Halloween. He’s pissed.”
Sherin: “He’s like, that man killed my daughter. You don’t understand anything about that bastard.”
The unreliable narrator problem is one of the most delicious things about this season. Lestat has scars on his chest that Louis never mentioned. I think Louis “removed Lestat’s tattoos to make him more perfect so that Louis could get away with being seduced. We’re supposed to all think Lestat was always the villain.”
Now Lestat’s stepping forward with receipts. Meanwhile, viewers see Louis arrive at the auction with a prosthetic leg, and Armand has an eye patch covering significant facial damage — clues that the Queen of the Damned has already had her way with the children of the night. How did I miss the prosthetic entirely on first watch?
Sherin: “I just thought he was injured the first time. I didn’t realize it was a prosthetic until you told me.”
Threading all this chaos together is Daniel Molloy, played by Eric Bogosian, and he is the secret weapon of this season. The show’s Daniel is a far cry from his book counterpart.
Sherin: “In the books, Daniel is not an asshole. But in this series, Daniel’s got an A on his chest.”
Kwesi: “Daniel is a menace. He’s enjoying the thing… you guys are vampires. So what? Impress me. That’s his whole thing.”
Daniel is winning Pulitzer Prizes, angling for Peabodys, and basically heckling two ancient vampires about their love lives. I’m delighted by the whole enterprise. Can we get AMC to release an annotated edition of Interview with the Vampire with Lestat’s margin notes?
Sherin: “Do you know how that would sell? That thing would sell ridiculously.”
One of Kwesi’s favorite moments from E1 is the revelation that Lestat didn’t even know the book existed (Louis never told him)—we giggled.
Kwesi: “What really got me about episode one is the fact that he didn’t know about the book. He had to go to Louis about it, and Louis was like, ‘well, I thought I burned it up. I didn’t know about the cloud.’ And that just killed me.”
Sherin: “These old bastards — he really thought he got one over on Daniel.”
Kwesi: “Daniel is a menace. That old man vampire, Louis, got outsmarted by cloud storage.”
The episode also gives us the band, or Lestat’s “hostile takeover” of a band, which he promptly renames The Vampire Lestat, because narcissism. Through their music, he bleeds vampire secrets into the lyrics, thrilling human fans who think it’s all fantasy and absolutely enraging the local vampire community. Their name? We couldn’t remember until we did:
Kwesi: “Oh, I remember the name of the vampire gang. It’s the Fang Gang.”
Sherin: “Not as good as fang bangers, but still pretty delightful.”
The Fang Gang sends enforcers. Lestat tells his favorite human to turn her back because things are about to get messy.
Sherin: “What follows is a brawl that’s full-blown the Daredevil hall fight, but without the elegance of Daredevil.” (it’s so messy)
Kwesi: “Sloppy, messy vampire violence. A bunch of people who can’t really fight, just relying on their superhuman abilities and trying to break each other’s invulnerability.”
Sherin: “It’s basically who has the better skills and who has the oldest blood.”
In the Vampire Chronicles, your blood and your age determine your power, and Lestat was made by a very old, deeply insane vampire. He has an edge.
Then there’s the text message twist. All episode, Lestat is texting someone. Daniel keeps asking if he’s talked to Louis. Your brain fills in the blank. It’s not Louis.
Kwesi: “We get to the end of the episode. It’s his mom.”
Sherin: “More like the birth canal through which he was delivered. I wouldn’t say she’s a mom. We really begin to see why Lestat has so many issues after meeting his mother creature.”
The casting conversation could go on forever, and we let it rock. At the center of it all is the dynamic between Sam Reid and our beloved Jacob Anderson, “the most book-accurate Lestat we have ever seen,” alongside a Louis whose chemistry with him is what I called, “absolutely cataclysmic but absolutely incandescent.”
Kwesi: “The toxic dynamic of the relationship is made plausible because of them… these actors are so good. All of their baggage — they make it palpable.”
And the show itself? It’s bigger than any one performance.
Sherin: “A great adaptation requires, first of all, keeping the essence, but it also requires understanding the property.”
These creatives have done that, building a fully three-dimensional, fully inhabited world of the Vampire Chronicles. And the boldness of renaming the season, of letting each book become its own ride, is genuinely thrilling.
Sherin: “The Vampire Lestat is a lot of fun. It’s like an over-the-top, slightly gothic alternative rock opera.”
Kwesi: “Yeah.”
We’ll take that as a five-star review.
Sherin’s full no-spoilers review “AMC Turns “Interview With a Vampire” Into the Delicious, Malicious The Vampire Lestat” of the season is at RogerEbert.com.
For more from Sherin and Kwesi, check out Geek Girl Riot here or wherever you listen to podcasts (but it’s a radio show).
EPISODE DESCRIPTIONS
Episode 101: “Detroit” – Now available on AMC+
Lestat reflects on the events leading to his tour.
