“It’s the best, but it’s full-on,” says Anderson. “You don’t really get a lot of rest. And it’s dense writing, so you’re putting your whole body and brain into it.”
“We’re all hyperaware that it’s a dream job,” Reid adds. “You get to do everything that you could possibly ever want to do as an actor in one single show. It’s quite stressful with how fast we move and how much they want to do, but if you don’t pinch yourself every day and go, ‘Wow, how fun is this?’ then you’re wasting your time.”
The original Vampire Chronicles novels by Anne Rice have sold over 80 million copies, while the iconic 1994 film starring Hollywood juggernauts Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt grossed more than $200 million worldwide. The AMC TV show had, as showrunner and producer Rolin Jones tells it, much to live up to: “It was a remake of that thing from the ’90s, and the expectations are low.”
And yet his Interview With the Vampire exists entirely outside the formidable shadows of its predecessors, accumulating critical acclaim—and a passionate, ever-devoted fan base—on its own. It received a renewal for season two before season one was even out, expanding Rice’s first Vampire Chronicles novel into 15 episodes. Now, the series is ambitiously venturing into the first-ever onscreen adaptation of the second book, The Vampire Lestat. In doing so, it’s blowing up the formula it built its success on and taking bigger, gutsier, crazier swings, veering left of the stylistic choices that have made it so beloved, and layering in new stories in a wildly different tone.
“It’s quite joyful to be in the thing that does reinvent itself all the time, as actors,” says Reid. “It’s very joyful to be in a new show every season. You—”
“You get to play a slightly different character every time,” Anderson completes the thought.
When Sam Reid booked the role of Lestat de Lioncourt, he began making collages.
He had read Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series before the script for the show came across his desk, and when it was confirmed Reid would become the Brat Prince, he went back and reread them. Then he spent weeks cutting up old National Geographics, finding imagery that evoked the characters—old Venetian paintings, darker images of soldiers after war—and placing them together.
“I had stuck them all over my kitchen cabinets,” he tells me. “I think I was a crazy person, but I love collage.”
If you couldn’t tell from all the collaging and reading, 39-year-old Reid enjoys the simple life: being back home in Sydney with his partner and their dog, gardening, and going to local markets (again—not nearly as similar to his hedonistic character as some might imagine). He’s not new to period dramas and romances, but while shooting the first two seasons of Interview With the Vampire, he was also playing the male lead on something completely different, the Australian drama The Newsreader; right after The Vampire Lestat’s summer release, he’ll exchange Lestat’s tight leather pants for vestments, playing a priest in a stage production of Doubt: A Parable. He’s a chameleon, disappearing into roles with no trace of Sam Reid left behind.
