The Vampire Lestat Team Answers Our Burning Questions About Gabriella, Sam Reid's Dual Role, And More — Grade The Premiere!

"Interview With the Vampire" is dead. Long live "The Vampire Lestat."

AMC's Anne Rice adaptation returned for its third season on Sunday, June 7 with a new title, a new vibe, and, most importantly, a new narrator — Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), who is so appalled by the inaccuracies of Daniel's (Eric Bogosian) book that he invites the now-undead journalist to film a documentary about him while he hits the road on a multi-city rock tour.

"Lestat isn't like Louis," executive producer Hannah Moscovitch tells TVLine of the show's narrative shift. "He doesn't not remember big chunks of his own experience, so there is a difference between how their subjectivities work in the show. Lestat's version of not dealing with his own memories is just to go forward and to not think about any of it. Then he starts to do art, and then all of his memories of his 265 years start to come out of him. Art is undoing him. It's making him understand and see himself. And all of that happens. That's like his version of subjectivity, whereas Louis' was more like, he doesn't see it, he won't look at it, or he misremembers it.

Speaking of that art, we join Lestat in the Spring of 2025 in the middle of his "hedonistic pursuit of extremity," captivating audiences with deeply personal songs inspired by his centuries of emotional torment. His bandmates don't know that he's actually a vampire — as Lestat tells us, "most of humanity moved on" from the shock of Daniel's book release — but that secret, along with countless others, won't last for long.

Of course, Lestat's rock star life does come with its share of dangers. When Lestat turns down the Fang Gang's invitation to join their coven after putting on a concert in Detroit, things get messy, and most of the coven's members end up being strewn about the hallways of a hotel.

At the end of the premiere, Lestat is reunited with Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), a mysterious woman he's desperately been trying to contact. "Mon cher, very kind of you to come," he tells her. "I got myself into something I can't get out of." They come together with a steamy kiss, and it's all very well and good — that is until Lestat refers to her as "fledgling, lover, mother." Wait, mother?! Yes, you read that correctly.

And that's just scratching the surface of the premiere, which leaves us with a number of burning questions. We posed five of our top queries to the show's cast and creative team, so read on to find out what they have to say. When you're finished, grade the episode and drop a comment with your thoughts on the premiere overall. Do you prefer "The Vampire Lestat" to "Interview With the Vampire" so far?

The premiere technically begins after the events of Season 3, at an unspecified time in the future when Lestat is believed to be dead. The legendary vampire's recorded works are now up for auction, and there are quite a few familiar faces — including Armand, Louis, Daniel, and even Talamasca agent Raglan James (Justin Kirk) — in attendance. But right now, we're less concerned with the items up for bid than we are on the sexy pirate accessory Armand is rocking in the flash forward.

When asked by TVLine if we'll find out how Armand came to need an eyepatch, actor Assad Zaman answers coyly, "I mean, maaaybe. Or maybe it's fake! Maybe his eye is absolutely fine and he's just decided to sport it."

While it's true that there's no easier way to make a character mysterious than by giving them an eyepatch, something tells us that Armand's is more than just a fashion choice. But good luck getting an answer out of Zaman about this — he genuinely doesn't know.

"I think there were events that happened that are beyond our season, and we don't even really know that much about them," Zaman admits. (Well now we need a fourth season, if only to solve this eyepatch mystery once and for all.)

It might seem like a small detail to mention, but as confirmed in the premiere, vampires indeed urinate — something Lestat feels was misrepresented in the story of the undead as told by Louis in the first two seasons.

Giving all credit to showrunner Rollin Jones for the idea, executive producer Hannah Moscovitch explains to TVLine, "The difference between Louis and Lestat is that Lestat is a little bit more of the body. Things are more primal. He's going to either unpack or undo a lot of the lore that had been invented by Anne Rice and had been in Seasons 1 and 2. It was another fun subversion for us."

No, your eyes did not deceive you — Jarda, Lestat's bumbling body double, is also played by Sam Reid. If you couldn't tell that it was Reid under all that VFX makeup, consider it a mission accomplished.

"That's the dream, isn't it, that you don't want people to recognize him?" Reid tells TVLine. "We do have a little bit of prosthetics to try and distort me a bit, but he exists for a reason."

Reid admits that when showrunner Rollin Jones first pitched the idea of him playing Jarda, the actor was hesitant to take on the dual role, fearing that "it could go so badly."

"It's such a fine line, and I'm really grateful for the editing and all of that which allows me to walk on the thinnest edge imaginable to hold him together," Reid says. He's a wild character."

Adds Jones, "We have so much on the cutting room floor that is gold. I'm trying to figure out how to get it out there."

We hope you enjoy foreshadowing, because there's a lot of it this season, beginning with the mention of "consequential global catastrophes" in the premiere flash forward. The extent of the chaos and damage that occurs as a result of Lestat's tour will be massive, no matter how long it takes for the show to finally bring it to fruition.

"Throughout the season, they keep alluding to something really massive that we don't get to see yet," Armand's portrayer, Assad Zaman, tells TVLine. "We're building towards 'Queen of the Damned,' and I would think that this has something to do with it."

(For those who aren't familiar with Anne Rice's original novels, "Queen of the Damned" tells the story of OG vampire Akasha, played on the show this season by Sheila Atim.)

The premiere concludes with a reunion between Lestat and Gabriella, a mysterious vampire he's been dying to see for quite some time. More information will be revealed about Jennifer Ehle's character in Episode 2, but for now, we have Lestat's three words to go by: "fledgling, love, mother." And make no mistake, she is all three of those things to him. 

"I don't try to get past it," Sam Reid tells TVLine of the characters' complicated (and would say horrifying) relationship. "I think that's one of the joys of that dynamic. They're a maker and a fledgling, so that's one dynamic in its own right, particularly because it's the first vampire that Lestat ever made. He's very lonely, and he goes looking for his mom to help him through life as she's always helped him through life, even though she has always guided him in a way that she can control his life."

Reid continues: "And then, of course, they're mother and son, and then they're lovers as well, so to play that is an is an amazing gift. Jennifer and I could kind of bounce those things around in every scene and play the dynamics and have the status change and see where you can go. I don't justify it, because it's horrendous, but I think it's a really fun thing to play. It's a big part of his awakening and realizing who he is, the fundamental building blocks of who he is and why he operates."