‘Interview With the Vampire’ Star Sam Reid On Preparing for Lestat’s Rock Star Storyline in Season 3: ‘I’m Taking A Lot of Drugs and They’re Flying Me Around on A Private Plane’

Sam Reid, who plays Lestat du Lioncourt in “Interview With the Vampire,” said that when the show first debuted its full trailer at Comic-Con in 2022, he was terrified everyone would hate it.

“I remember just being backstage before we went on to that panel two years ago and just feeling like the world was ending,” Reid said. “It was so nerve-wracking because obviously people love the film, they love the book. It was scary.”

Reid, his co-stars Delainey Hayles and Assad Zaman, showrunner and executive producer Rolin Jones, and executive producer Mark Johnson sat down at the Variety Studio, presented by Google TV, at 2024 San Diego Comic-Con to discuss the upcoming third season.

“Interview With the Vampire” stars Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac — the vampire who reconnects with interviewer Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) nearly 50 years after their initial sessions. Assad Zaman appears as Armand and Delainey Hayles portrays Claudia in the second season of the show.

The series is one of the adaptations of Anne Rice’s gothic horror novel from 1976. The book was the first of Rice’s series of novels, “The Vampire Chronicles,” which was adapted into the eponymous film starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Kirsten Dunst.

According to the showrunner, the third season will explore the Devil’s Minion storyline from the books.

“We’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Jones teased, adding that “there will be story points leading towards the Devil’s [Minion].”

The third season will also see a more musical aspect to it, which Jones accredits to composer Daniel Hart. He said they’ll be working on writing songs together, all to be sung by Reid.

As for how Reid is prepping and bringing back up his musical chops, he quipped: “I’m taking a lot of drugs, and they’re flying me around on a private plane and I’m just living like a permanent rock star.”

Hayles discussed how she prepared for her character’s ultimate departure from the series: “Honestly… I don’t actually know.” After copious ideas with the director, the actor described her process as being very fluid, “You have all these plans, and then you get in the room, and it’s like, ‘OK, this is no longer the plan… I was bouncing off everyone’s energy in the room.”