Gird your loins: The Vampire Lestat is going there with a certain book plot involving Lestat de Lioncourt and his mother, Gabrielle, now called Gabriella in the first onscreen adaptation of Anne Rice’s second book in The Vampire Chronicles series. The official Vampire Lestat trailer, above, released on April 22, shows Sam Reid‘s Lestat and Jennifer Ehle‘s Gabriella leaning in for a kiss.
Interview With the Vampire has changed its name to The Vampire Lestat for Season 3, premiering June 7 on AMC and AMC+. The April trailer drop includes Reid covering Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” as Lestat. AMC shared new plot details about Season 3 on February 13, when it released Lestat’s first song, “Long Face,” as a single on streaming services.
“In the new rock and roll-centric season, the Vampire Lestat goes on an electric multi-city tour while being haunted by ‘muses’ from his wild and rebellious past,” the new description reads. “As his band’s popularity and star power rise, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and humans alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population.”
The band’s second single, “All Fall Down,” dropped on Friday, March 13, along with the premiere date and new title sequence.
Here, we’re breaking down all of the latest updates on the upcoming musical season.
When does The Vampire Lestat premiere?
The third season of the Emmy-nominated drama will premiere on Sunday, June 7, 2026, on AMC, streaming on AMC+. It will likely air at 9/8c like the previous seasons.
In a video released during IGN’s FanFest, featuring Lestat and Louis on a heated call as our favorite French vamp finds out about Louis’ (Jacob Anderson) writing endeavors, the tag at the end teased a release date of “This June.” The “All Fall Down” drop featured new teaser art that included the premiere date.
Is there a Vampire Lestat trailer?
Yes, there are two. The first trailer for The Vampire Lestat (below) was shown to fans in the San Diego Comic-Con 2025 panel audience, and then it was officially released after the New York Comic Con panel in October. In addition to the first looks at Delainey Hayles and Assad Zaman and other returning and new characters in Season 3, it shows Louis and Lestat in some kind of legal meeting.
The trailer reveals that Daniel (Eric Bogosian) is directing a documentary about Lestat, inspired by the memoir of his time with Louis, so the meeting could be about that. But Lestat is just using this time to pick apart information about Louis’ relationship with Armand.
Fans get their first look at Armand in Season 3 in the April trailer (at the top of the page). He warns that Lestat will get all of them killed if he continues with his tour that publicizes the existence of vampires. Louis is also seen decapitating a vampire, and there’s a tense shot where Lestat holds Daniel’s book up to Louis in defiance at one of his concerts. Anderson and Reid teased how the book and the music impact Louis and Lestat’s relationship to us at SDCC.
Regarding Gabriella, Rice’s Vampire Lestat novel details an incestuous dynamic between Lestat and his mother that features Gabrielle inappropriately referring to her son as her metaphorical “phallus,” and the parent-child lines between them get extremely blurred after Lestat turns her into a vampire to save her life. They kiss in the book, and the show is including that.
Additionally, Ella Ballentine‘s Baby Jenks is introduced in the trailer, along with Lestat’s bandmates. There’s still no sign of Sheila Atim as Akasha. They’re undoubtedly going to keep her debut a secret until further notice. Get more casting details below.
Why is Interview With the Vampire now called The Vampire Lestat?
Creator Rolin Jones announced to fans at SDCC 2025 that Interview With the Vampire has officially been renamed The Vampire Lestat. Their reason for the change is the fact that they’re adapting The Vampire Lestat novel in the third season, so they’re calling the show by its book name. They’ll presumably do this if/when they adapt book three in The Vampire Chronicles series, The Queen of the Damned, and so on.
How many episodes are in The Vampire Lestat?
There’s no episode count yet, but Season 1 was seven episodes and Season 2 was eight, so expect a similar episode count for Season 3.
The series hasn’t revealed if it’s covering the entire plot of The Vampire Lestat book in Season 3 or if it’s being split into two parts like Interview With the Vampire. But with the inclusion of QOTD characters such as Akasha and Baby Jenks, they’re already starting to bring plot from the next book.
Writer/executive producer Hannah Moscovitch also revealed at New York Comic Con 2025 that they’re pulling from book six, The Vampire Armand, this season as well.
What happens in The Vampire Lestat?
As shown in the first teaser at SDCC in July 2024, Lestat is going to have a brand new look in the third season. Jones shared during an ATX 2025 panel that there are at least 16 songs from composer Daniel Hart for the musical season, Lestat’s tour will have 50 stops, and Season 3 will pick up around stop 33 on that tour. The tour will be Lestat’s response to Louis and Daniel’s Interview With the Vampire memoir.
Playing with perspective is a core piece of this show’s design as the vampires reflect on their centuries of existence. Seasons 1 and 2 centered on Louis’ perspective, and now Season 3 will shift to Lestat’s as he tells his life story. With a new vampire at the helm of storytelling will come a new aesthetic for the show’s overall look. Jones told TheWrap in June that “you should imagine that aesthetically, and just the way the show feels, and moves, will feel like Lestat just hijacked the show. You will not feel like a 148-year-old guy talking to a 78-year-old guy anymore. That’s not happening.”
Louis is still going to play an important role in Season 3. “I’m not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner,” Jones promised in our Season 2 finale interview. “The next turn, center stage, is Lestat, but I don’t think we’re going to be pushing Louis to the side like he is in those books. I don’t think Louis, as we leave him, is going to be this guy who is suffering as much. Actually, I think he’s maybe beginning his legitimate vampire experience there at the end.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jones added about Louis to TheWrap. “What they should worry about is, if those people expect to see the same show, that’s never gonna happen. We’re going to go just as aggressively, Lestat front and center.”
Louis has new sources of revenue in Season 3. While Anderson can’t say much about Louis’ new business ventures, he told us at NYCC that the vampire has found a way to commodify vampiric existence. In a way, Lestat is doing the same with his music. Learn more in our interview with Anderson, Reid, and Moscovitch here. The actors discuss how Lestat’s music impacts Louis and Lestat’s relationship here.
Who is in The Vampire Lestat cast?
Frank W. Ockenfels III / AMC
Season 1 focused on Louis, Lestat, and Claudia in New Orleans. Season 2 centered on Louis and Claudia in Paris, along with Armand and his theatrical coven. Louis has been telling the story for the first two seasons. In Season 3, it’s Lestat’s turn, but Louis won’t be absent.
As Jones said he is “not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner,” Johnson added in our same finale interview, “The last line [of Season 2] is Louis saying, ‘I own the night.’ That is not an exit line.”
The Season 3 description says that the characters played by Anderson, Reid, Zaman, Bogosian, Joseph Potter (Nicholas), Justin Kirk (Raglan James, who appeared in Talamasca Season 1 Episode 4), Chris Geary (Sam Barclay), and Gopal Divan (Dr. Fareed from Season 1) will be back. Additional cast members were announced at San Diego and New York Comic Con.
Hayles will be back as Claudia (who appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in The Vampire Lestat trailer). Here’s the rest of the new cast and characters:
The singer Moses Sumney is also featured in the trailer, but AMC hasn’t revealed who he’s playing. Based on his nails and contact lenses, we know he’s playing a vampire.
TV Insider exclusively announced the casting of Amaka Umeh, who plays Dee Pharma, one of Lestat’s entourage.
“Depending on who you ask, she’s either his social media coordinator or his pharmaceutically enhanced blood source,” Jones told us.
See Lestat and Dee pick a groupie to drain in our Vampire Lestat exclusive clip.
The Vampire Lestat, Season 3 Premiere, Sunday, June 7, 2026, AMC, Streaming on AMC+
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
