AMC released the first full trailer Wednesday for The Vampire Lestat, the boldly rebranded third season of its hit Anne Rice adaptation, announcing a June 7 premiere date and signaling a dramatic tonal shift — from gothic romantic drama to full-blown rock spectacle.
Sam Reid returns as Lestat de Lioncourt, now cast as the world’s first immortal rock star tearing through a multi-city tour while haunted by muses from a turbulent past. As his band’s fame swells, so does his influence over vampires and humans alike, placing him at the center of the “Great Conversion” — an unnatural surge in the vampire population. The trailer opens with a voiceover reminding Lestat he has been “alive and undead for 265 years,” before Reid’s character cuts in: “I am The Vampire Lestat. It’s my era. I’m a rockstar now.”
One camera angle in the trailer catches the celebrity touring performer’s boots, with “Hate” stamped on one sole and “Me” on the other. The sequence, set to a performance of Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” captures the season’s confrontational energy and the character’s gleeful self-mythologizing.
The title change carries narrative logic. Furious over the way Louis and Daniel portrayed him in the bestselling memoir Interview with the Vampire, Lestat decides to set the record straight by starting a band and going on tour— a plot that mirrors the structure of Anne Rice’s second Vampire Chronicles novel, on which the season is based. The show first ran under the Interview with the Vampire title for two seasons before AMC announced the rebrand at San Diego Comic-Con 2025.
Jacob Anderson returns as Louis de Pointe du Lac alongside Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, and Delainey Hayles. Jennifer Ehle joins the cast this season, while Sheila Atim plays Akasha, the Great Mother and Queen of the Damned. New original rock singles, composed by series composer Daniel Hart and performed by Reid, have already landed on streaming services, with AMC treating the character as an actual recording artist across digital music platforms.
Reid told interviewers that at least one script moment provoked such a visceral reaction that he threw his computer across the room. “I put it down and said, ‘Fuck this. No way,'” he recounted, adding that after finishing the scene, his reaction shifted to: “Oh my god. It’s such a gift.”
