The following is a review of the third season of Interview with the Vampire — Series created by Rolin Jones.
Given my nostalgia for the 1994 Neil Jordan adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and, in general, my fascination with narratives about vampires (I have opinions on everything from CW’s The Vampire Diaries to Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, and beyond), it probably won’t surprise anyone that I fell head over heels in love with the Rolin Jones and AMC adaptation of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles once I finally got to see it. The first two seasons of the show are impressively sumptuous but also written and acted in ways that change your relationship with the iconic characters at its center. It is an all-around rich-feeling show that I cannot recommend enough to fans of the various subgenres it contains. At the center of the entire series, we have performances from Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid that are genuinely among the best acting on television I’ve seen in quite some time. Given the fact that I am particularly spellbound by Aussie actor Sam Reid’s devilishly complex portrayal of Lestat de Lioncourt, a larger-than-life French vampire that is older than the United States of America, I was so excited to find out what exactly a season all about him would be like, and that is exactly what the third season — titled The Vampire Lestat — was.
Although definitely a continuation of the events of the previous seasons, it also very much feels like a soft reboot in that it is stylistically quite different and sometimes outright irreverent in its approach to everything from remarks about culture to absurd visuals. Rather than the previous seasons’ interview-setting frame story around centuries-old events, this season is instead from the vampire’s own mouth, so to speak, as we see events from his own perspective, as based on his own recordings of his experiences titled the ‘failures.’ As Lestat gets to wax poetically about everything from the people in his life to the state of America, we follow Lestat’s journey to relative stardom as the frontman of a self-titled rock band whose very existence flies in the face of the great rules of vampirism. And, along the way, ancient relationships are further explored, including that of his boundary-crossing relationship with his own mother.
Although the first two episodes can take some getting used to given how different they sometimes feel, from the third episode on I was just as hooked as I was with the previous seasons. Reid is sensational throughout the series; Anderson is given plenty of room to further develop his portrayal (including in an episode that, in a way, references Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset); Eric Bogosian, now playing a vampire, finds new ways to do interviews, including in the unforgettable third episode of the season; and, finally, they do manage to find interesting ways to utilize Assad Zaman, who plays the vampire Armand, and his always great performance. Jennifer Ehle, who plays Lestat’s mother, is less successful in her portrayal, perhaps especially because of her cartoonishly Dracula-esque accent choice for the character.
Given that this is also a season about a rock band, and the frontman of said rock band no less, the music also has to be good, and I’m happy to say that it is. Sometimes the music is intentionally unflattering, which makes for a great confrontation between Reid and Bogosian’s characters in the aforementioned episode, but, in general, the ways the show uses music to give insight into the titular character are incredible. The kind of music video presentation of Lestat’s traumatic turning that the show provides viewers with is shocking and unforgettable in a terribly sad way that is, however, a powerful moment of television. To add to this, songs like “Loneliness” and “Stained Glass Eyes” are not only genuinely great songs that stick in your head, but they’re also great pieces of writing that are utilized perfectly in the series to cut through the bullshit, put bluntly, of someone who isn’t always willing to give the accurate account of events to the people asking the questions. Like with the previous two seasons, perspective and point-of-view are quite important aspects of the series.
The one demerit that I hold against an otherwise amazing season of television is that even though the season finale is a very good episode of television, it isn’t the most satisfying season finale, per se. This is a little bit of a spoiler, so steer clear if you haven’t seen the show yet, but the show goes all the way up to a crucial concert performance that is built up throughout the season, only to then not actually give us that major concert, instead pushing it to next season. This is a misstep similar to what happened with the second season of House of the Dragon. However, this is nevertheless a much stronger season as a whole than that season of the aforementioned Game of Thrones spin-off was. In fact, The Vampire Lestat is one of the most gripping seasons of television I’ve seen this year.
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
