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

Anne Rice Interview with the vampire is an enduring story about eternal love, the sufferings of immortality and the freezing in grief. It’s also the story of Lestat de Lioncourt, the worst man of all time and also an eternal object of fascination and adoration.

When I say Lestat is the worst person ever, I’m not exaggerating. He threatens characters as much as he charms them, especially those to whom he professes his love. In fact, you’re probably worse off as someone Lestat loves than someone he hates: In AMCs interviewLestat is so obsessed with his love Louis that he stalks him, emotionally manipulates him, and murders anyone who gets close to him, and that’s before Lestat turns him into a vampire.

AMC’s adaptation of Rice’s classic novel makes several radical changes to Rice’s text. Instead of being a plantation story that took place in the 18th century between plantation owner Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt, the story is timelined to the early 19th century. Instead of being a plantation owner, Louis is a black man living in New Orleans as a barely tolerated brothel owner and is already balancing his life between two worlds before he meets Lestat. Fans of the series have largely embraced these changes because the characters still feel so faithful to what Rice wrote. Fans have particularly enjoyed Sam Reid’s portrayal of Lestat, who plays the character with a recognizable annoying charm and a barely suppressed capacity for violence.

It’s not that the fandom condones or rationalizes this behavior away. Loving Lestat means knowing that he will disappoint you. Recently, the fandom for the Interview with the vampire

Photo: Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

In the novels, which are told from Lestat’s point of view after the first book, he does things so horrific that it feels like a joke to describe them out of context. Briefly given a human body, Lestat immediately sexually assaults a woman. As a young vampire, he flips his mother and makes out with her. All the whole interview, which is told from Louis’ perspective, he does things that specifically annoy Louis. At one point, Lestat wants to kill someone Louis has declared taboo, but that person has also been challenged to a duel to the death. Louis attacks Lestat in the mud of a Louisiana swamp while his victim wins the duel, and in the split second that Louis loosens his grip, Lestat wriggles free and murders the poor mortal. His pettiness and theatricality are as delightful as they are terrifying. When Lestat’s father dies, Louis tells Lestat not to play the piano, so Lestat bangs on pots and pans.

Lestat is just a type of character that people are obsessed with. Anne Rice clearly did, and she was the one who invented it. He is a Blorbo from my shows – a fictional character who could be talked about endlessly as if he were a real person, even if they are both fake and committed war crimes in their fiction.

Lestat isn’t the only or most notable morally flawed Blorbo, but he might as well be the blueprint for many other Blorbos.

fans of house of the dragon also dealt with one of the series’ characters growing into an evil Blorbo. Aemond Targaryen, after losing an eye and growing his hair out, has become a certified heartthrob among some house of the dragon fans, but more than his looks, it’s the fact that he’s evil and insane. Vriska, from the webcomic homesicknessShe felt like she was engineered in a lab to infuriate when months of active and vocal fandom bickering over her actions. Even the definitely badder Kilgrave out jessica jones had a fandom that liked him, if not despite that, then because of his evil. Like Lestat, these characters have a theatrical nature and an almost admirable ability to hold a grudge, as well as an ability to commit acts of violence that they barely try to hide. What makes these characters so intriguing is that even after seeing what they’re capable of, you still want to be around them.

Image: Warner Bros.

Image: AMC

When Lestat finally shows up in the present in the previous film adaptation Interview with the vampire, he calls Louis a big nag. You can’t help but laugh, because after two hours of Louis you might feel like a change. It feels like a trick – even after you’ve seen everything Lestat Louis has been through, when he scores points you have to concede. It’s not just that Lestat says the things we’d all like to say but don’t because of polite society. As fans of Rice’s novels will know, Lestat’s appeal lies in the fact that he has been wounded by the world in the most mundane way, as so many of us have, and in response he has decided to devote every second of his remaining time to anything, anywhere to avenge earth. Lestat is so wrapped up in his own pain – his wounds festering in selfishness – that it gives him a kind of clarity that might be mistaken for empathy. He doesn’t like or trust other people, but he understands them, or at least understands how to act in order for them to give him what he wants. Watching him is a lesson in really understanding what it means to put yourself above everything else. It’s the answer to the question, Aren’t you tired of being nice? Won’t you just run away?”

Not everyone hurts as deeply as Lestat, but many of us around the world, like Lestat, have been abused, abandoned, cruelly treated and watched loved ones die. It would be a blessing if these experiences gave us great insight into human nature. But the tragedy of Lestat is that, for all his powers, his ability to read and manipulate people is not a dark gift given to him by the ills of the world. It’s purely for self-protection and doesn’t even work very well.

Reid’s performance as Lestat in AMCs interview captures both his dangerous lack of inhibitions and his underlying immaturity. So many times when I’m watching interview I marvel at the expressiveness of Sam Reid’s face; his eyes beg for love even as he kills people or offends his small chosen family. Any emotional wound when Louis and Lestat fight each other shows on his face, not only through his sadness but also through his anger. He’s still just a kid who hits on people, expects them to leave him, and decides to give them a reason. After Louis Lestat catches cheating, they agree on an open relationship. Louis has the audacity to actually meet someone, which Lestat learns by spying and watching them. Lestat confronts Louis about his dalliance. Though Lestat is utterly wrong, it’s hard not to be a little touched when he tearfully exclaims, “I heard your hearts dance!” Though this wound was entirely self-inflicted, the pain is real.

In this latest interview Matching what’s most likely to surface is how similar Louis and Lestat are, despite everything. They are both two humans frozen in a moment of grief, unable to change or move on due to their vampiric nature. Watching Lestat repeatedly ruin his own life reminds me of the way I acted as a teenager, full of anger at the world and directing that anger at everyone I met. If I were trapped in this moment forever like an insect in a drop of amber, I don’t know that I would be different from Lestat, trying desperately to keep people from leaving me, even if it meant killing them.