Interview With the Vampire lets Sam Reid’s Lestat be the absolute worst

Anne Rice’s Interview With the VampireThis is the story of eternal love, immortality’s woes, and grief frozen. It’s also the story of Lestat de Lioncourt, the worst person of all time and also an eternal object of fascination and adoration.

Lestat is one of the most hated people I know. His charmed characters are just as dangerous as his menaces, particularly those he declares his affection for. In fact, you’re probably worse off as someone Lestat loves than one he hates: In AMC’s Interview, Lestat is so obsessed with his love Louis, he stalks him, emotionally manipulates him, and murders anyone that gets close to him, and that’s before Lestat makes him a vampire.

AMC’s adaptation of Rice’s classic novel makes several radical changes to Rice’s text. Instead of being a story about a plantation between Louis de Pointe du Lac, the owner of the plantation, and Lestat de Lecourt in 1800s Parisian plantation, this story moves forward to the 1900s. Louis, instead being a plantation proprietor, is actually a Black brothel owner in New Orleans. This allows him to manage his time between two different worlds. Fans have accepted these changes for the most part because they are true to Rice’s original characters. In particular, fans have taken to Sam Reid’s portrayal of Lestat, who plays the character with a recognizable, infuriating charm and a barely suppressed capacity for violence.

It isn’t that the fandom excuses or rationalizes this behavior away. Lestat can disappoint, so it’s easy to fall in love with him. The fandom has grown for the character recently. Interview with the Vampire television show found itself at a crossroads over Lestat’s actions in the series. Could you love a character that lies like he’s breathing, doesn’t care if he hurts people, and frequently deliberately causes harm to the people he cares about? Lestat has always been a case in point.

Photo: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

In the novels, which after the first book are told from Lestat’s point of view, he does things so terrible that describing them out of context feels like a joke. Lestat sexually assaults women after gaining a temporary human body. He turns to his mother as a young vampire and has an affair with her. It’s all throughout Interview, which is told from Louis’ perspective, he does things specifically to piss Louis off. Lestat threatens to kill Louis’ exclusionary victim, and Louis has challenged him to a duel. Louis confronts Lestat in the Louisiana swamp mud, while his victim wins. Then in a split second Louis releases his grip and Lestat frees himself and kills the poor man. As charming and horrifying as his pettiness is, Lestat’s theatricality as well as his theatricality are both delightful. As Lestat’s father dies, Louis asks that Lestat not play the piano, so Lestat resorts to banging on pots and pans.

Lestat can be described as a type of character that is adored by people. Anne Rice was clearly the creator of Lestat. He’s a blorbo from my shows — a fictional character one could talk endlessly about as if they are a real person, even if they are both fake and have, in their fiction, committed war crimes.

Lestat isn’t the only or most significant morally deficient blorbo, but for many other blorbos he might as well be the blueprint.

Followers of House of the Dragon have also grappled with one the show’s characters growing up into an evil blorbo. Aemond Targaryen lost one eye, grew his hair out, and became a heartthrob to some. House of the Dragon fans, but more than his looks, it’s the fact that he’s evil and crazy. Vriska is a webcomic. HomestuckShe felt that she had been created in a laboratory to infuriate, and the vocal fandom debated her actions for many months. Even Kilgrave, who is more clearly evil. Jessica JonesHe had a loyal fan base that loved him, even if it was because of his wickedness. They share a similar theatricality to Lestat and a remarkable ability to hold a grudge. And they also have the ability to do acts of violence that are almost impossible to conceal. What makes these characters fascinating is how, even after you’ve seen what they’re capable of, you still want to have them around.

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AMC

Lestat is finally seen in the movie adaptation. Interview with the VampireLouis is called a big whiner by him. You can’t help but laugh, because after two hours of Louis you may be eager for a change of pace. It feels like a trick — even after watching everything that Lestat has put Louis through, you have to admit when he’s making points. It’s not just that Lestat says the things we all long to say but don’t, due to polite society. As fans of Rice’s novels know, the appeal of Lestat is that he was wounded by the world in mundane ways like so many of us are, and in response he’s decided to take revenge on everything, everywhere, with every second of his remaining time on Earth. Lestat is so wrapped up in his own pain — his wounds festering into selfishness — that it gives him a kind of clarity one could mistake for empathy. He doesn’t like or trust other people, but he understands them, or at least understands how to act so that they give him what he wants. It’s a great lesson to learn how it feels to prioritize yourself over all else. He’s the answer to the question, “Aren’t you tired of being nice? Don’t you just want to go apeshit?”

Not everyone holds pain as deep as Lestat’s pain, but many of us in the world have, like Lestat, been abused, abandoned, treated cruelly, and watched loved ones die. If these situations gave us insight into our human nature, it would be a shame. But the tragedy of Lestat is that despite all his powers, his ability to read and manipulate people is not a dark gift given to him by the world’s ills. It’s merely self-protective, and it doesn’t even work very well.

Reid’s performance as Lestat in AMC’s InterviewHe captures his basic innocence and dangerous lack of inhibition. Every now and again, I find myself watching. Interview I marvel at the expressiveness of Sam Reid’s face; his eyes plead for love even as he kills people or insults his little chosen family. His face shows every emotion as Louis and Lestat battle with one another, both through his sadness and his anger. He’s still a young child, ranting at others and expecting them to abandon him. But he decides to give them reason. They agree to an open relationship after Louis discovers Lestat is cheating. Louis actually meets someone. Lestat finds out about this through spying and monitoring him. Louis confronts Lestat over his naivety. Although Lestat is completely in the wrong, it’s hard not to be a little moved when he cries out, near tears, “I heard your hearts dancing!” Despite this wound being completely self-inflicted, the pain is real.

The most recent InterviewWhat is most obvious about Louis and Lestat’s similarities, in spite of their differences, is adaptation. Both are two people who have been frozen in grief and cannot change their vampire natures. Lestat’s constant ruin of his life reminded me of how I behaved in high school. I was full of anger and pointed that anger out at anyone I came across. If I was trapped in that moment forever like an insect in a drop of amber I don’t know that I’d be different than Lestat, trying desperately to keep people from leaving me even if I had to kill them to do it.