We’ve already gotten a solid dose of actor Sam Reid performing the rock star version of Lestat. There are the teasers we get in the trailers, of course, and you can listen to original songs “Long Face” and “All Fall Down” to get an extra dose of the vampire’s angst. It’s enough to make clear that Reid embodies Lestat’s musician persona well, and in a press conference hosted by the Television Critics Association that I attended, he shared how he channeled that sexy rockstar energy.
In Reid’s mind, the core of Lestat’s penchant for performance goes back centuries. “His onstage persona is built in the 18th century… it is the French iteration of the Commedia dell’arte, and that’s where I place him as a performer,” he said. “Anything that goes beyond that is an extension of that character, because I feel like that’s where he built his stage presence.”
One of those extensions involved Reid watching David Bowie perform “Cracked Actor” at live concerts. He did so, however, to “remind myself that [Lestat’s] not human… I just got to make sure that I don’t forget that sometimes, because there is a lot more vulnerability in this season than we’ve had before, so I just wanted to make sure we maintain that he is a kind of other thing, which I thought David Bowie just does extraordinarily.”
Lestat’s stage presence also changes as the season goes on. “I wanted to make sure it felt still theatrical in a way, because he’s still performing the idea of a rock star, at least at the beginning. And as the show progresses, the performance starts to disappear, and then I just really focus on the books and [showrunner Rolin Jones’] work, and the songs that Daniel Hart wrote, and trying to hone in on that, and pull the guy out of those things.”
You can see Reid’s performance of Lestat’s performance (and then his performance of Lestat’s vulnerability) when The Vampire Lestat premieres on AMC and AMC+ on June 7, 2026.
