Interview With The Vampire Season 3’s Queen Of The Damned Reference Makes Me Even More Excited For Lestat’s Future

Summary The season 3 trailer of Interview with the Vampire at SDCC introduces a sassy, rock star Lestat with a nod to Queen of the Damned.

The show humorously parodies the 2002 movie while staying true to the source material, promising an even funnier season 3.

Expect season 3 to lean into comedy with a mockumentary style, exploring new character dynamics in a contemporary setting.

Interview with the Vampire dropped a surprise season 3 trailer at San Diego Comic-Con, showing off Lestat's new look and rock star lifestyle, along with a Queen of the Damned reference that had me in stitches. One of the most significant trailer drops from SDCC, this sneak peek at season 3 reveals Daniel interviewing Lestat on camera, taking a new journalistic approach since his interview with Louis in seasons 1 and 2, which was transcribed from audio recordings. The mockumentary-style trailer opens with Daniel complaining about Lestat's punctuality, with Daniel out of shot. The trailer is cheeky, like Lestat himself.

Fashionably late, Lestat's new rock and roll persona is on full display as he swaggers into shot, shooting down the producer who greets him with the quintessentially rock-star response "I don't remember you." Interview with the Vampire season 3 will adapt the second of Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles, The Vampire Lestat, introducing us to the Lestat of the 21st century that we saw briefly at the end of season 2. Before Lestat joins Daniel for the interview, I note someone sitting in his chair with a surprising resemblance to a certain someone from 2002's Queen of the Damned movie.

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Interview With The Vampire Season 3 Trailer Parodies Queen Of The Damned

The Season 3 Trailer Refers To The 2002 Movie

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This unidentified figure in the Interview with the Vampire season 3 trailer is a reference to Stuart Townsend's goth Lestat in Queen of the Damned. He has no dialogue or narrative purpose before being unceremoniously shooed away when Lestat arrives. This absolute takedown had me laughing even on what must have been my 74th rewatch of this visually stunning trailer, packed to the rafters with Easter eggs and love notes to Anne Rice. Maybe the lookalike is a backup, there to fake Lestat's part if he never appears, but he is certainly a tongue-in-cheek rejection of Townsend's gloomy Lestat.

Interview with the Vampire season 3 and Queen of the Damned both take elements from The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned (book four) as source material. This overlap in content ensures that the movie and season 3 may share a similar storyline. The show throws its hat in the ring with its bold critique of the movie, declaring its unflinching faith in its own vision. The message is clear - the world needs this story, and the right adaptation has never been made. But here it is. I'm inclined to agree.

Interview With The Vampire Pitch Perfect Parody Is Sassy Not Mean

The Subtle Sass Is On-Brand For Season 3

Times have changed since The Vampire Lestat's release year 1985, and since 2002, and now Interview with the Vampire season 3 will be telling its own story, with all the sass it deserves, as the trailer's parody makes clear. Queen of the Damned, as well as the other Anne Rice movie, Interview with the Vampire, took a fairly serious approach to Lestat, but Lestat had a wicked sense of humor. Unlike the Lestat of Townsend or Tom Cruise, Reid's Lestat is as queer as the Vampire Chronicles character, with appropriate sass, making the trailer's sassy parody perfectly on-brand.

Interview with the Vampire season 3 is expected to be released in 2025.

Sam Reid's already iconic Lestat vacillated between endearing romantic and gothic horror nightmare in seasons 1 and 2, which felt true to its source material, Interview with the Vampire. Anne Rice reinvented The Vampire Chronicles with each release, which kept the series current. The Lestat of 1985's book two had developed into a rock god, and I see how the show has applied contemporary insight to position its rock star Lestat as a diva media darling. The Queen of the Damned parody could have seemed mean, but it feels totally appropriate to the mockumentary humor of rock and roll stardom.

Interview With The Vampire Should Be Even Funnier In Season 3

Comedy Will Find Its Feet In Season 3

Judging from the trailer, the next batch of episodes will make me laugh even more than Interview with the Vampire season 2. Eric Bogosian's dry humor as Daniel Molloy often provided the comedic value in seasons 1 and 2. Now Daniel and Lestat are joining forces to make the rockumentary of the century, comedy is about to find its feet in the show to a whole new level. Interview with the Vampire genre-switched as was the way with Anne Rice, taking elements of romantasy, horror, and crime thriller, while making time for levity, but season 3 will build on the levity.

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Interview with the Vampire seasons 1 and 2 can be streamed on AMC+ and season 1 can be streamed on Netflix from August 19.

It looks like the show will be leaning into the comedy genre in season 3 to bring forward its funnier moments in line with the new, contemporary setting. The show's trailers before this had a romantasy and horror focus, but this trailer is taking comedy seriously, so it follows that this provides a taste of what we can expect in season 3. It will be refreshing to see the intrinsic hilarity of a focus on Daniel and Lestat taking place in a rockumentary context.

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The trailer for season 3 allows us a glimpse behind the scenes into Daniel's dialogue on-set, but it plays like a rockumentary overall. Mockumentaries like People Just Do Nothing have provided some of the best laughs of modern television, so I welcome a mockumentary season 3 of Interview with the Vampire - it is absolutely promising in the laughs department. While season 3 probably won't all be a mockumentary, it will likely dip its toes in for comedy value and exploration of character perspective, while ensuring it delivers the sucker-punch emotion of the first two seasons elsewhere.