Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat through episode one as well as what came before in the TV show and the books. Read at your own risk.

Intro

Lestat de Lioncourt is my boy. I feel the need to get that bias out of the way right away. I read his book when I was in ninth grade and knew I was home. My name comes from the second person to write Vampire Chronicles fanfiction (that we know of) saying that if Lestat is the Brat Prince, I am the Brat Queen. (And yanno, if someone gives you a nickname that cool you take it and use it for the rest of your life, apparently.)

When Tom Cruise got cast as Lestat I was right there with Anne Rice in saying it was an abomination. Then, like her, I watched the movie (and watched, and watched, and watched…) and had to tip my hat. He did it. He’d clearly done his homework and brought my boy to the big screen.

I also watched Queen of the Damned and yeah Stuart Townsend didn’t hit era defining highs but neither was he an embarrassment on the screen. All things considered (namely a movie that was only being done in a desperate bid to retain rights to the Vampire Chronicles and a co lead who died before the movie was finished) it could’ve been worse.

I say all this to both acknowledge that I can have strong ideas about how Lestat should be played but that they are not so strong that I allow for no other interpretation. If you show me you care about my boy I’m rooting for you. I do not need you, personally, to be lifting Lestat off the page. I need you to be embodying the concept of him.

And to that end let me say Sam Reid is doing great. He clearly cares about Lestat and wants to do right by him. I can see it in interviews with him and the way he’s trying to have fun with the role. It’s not the same as Tom Cruise’s performance by any means, but it shares the idea that the core of this character is that he’s very charismatic but dangerous. Both to himself and to others. If you get that, you’re golden. (Possibly in a timeframe of such a thing. IYKYK. But I’m assuming that’s coming in a future episode.)

I’ll also freely acknowledge that hey: I was wrong. Back in the very first episode of the series I said that Sam Reid wasn’t fully selling Lestat to me. But now that we’ve had two season to learn that Sam was portraying multiple versions of Lestat through the biased points of view of Louis and Armand, I get it now. It actually makes sense he was doing a lesser version of Lestat because that’s what Armand was forcing Louis to see. Kudos. I eat my crow in a big slice of humble pie.

You may be sensing a “but” coming.

Yeaaaaaaaaaah. The but is that as with any character, a good actor can only do so much with shitty writing. And here we are.

Let’s get into it.

Why The Vampire Lestat: Detroit Sucks

C’mon, I had to.

Look, as Daniel thoughtfully lampshades for us, this is a new show now. We’re not in Interview With the Vampire, we’re in The Vampire Lestat (that's what she said). Which means this episode is effectively a pilot of a spinoff show that’s meant to convince the audience to keep watching.

I sat through the whole hour and noticed fuck all had happened or been established besides “Lestat is a vampire who has a band.”

Seriously, what’s the plot? Yeah, the start gives hints that something bad happens but there’s not enough remotely resembling foreshadowing to say why. Trust me, I know the story. I know a thousand ways off the top of my head I would put that foreshadowing in and there was jack shit of it. Which then makes it even lazier writing that the only way they could set this up was to flat out tell you something bad happened. What’s that thing about good writing? Some kind of phrase about how you for sure what to tell your audience things instead of show it, right?

If you don’t know these people, why would you keep watching? I do know these people and adore Lestat and I was left wishing I could secretly squirrel Sam Reid and Eric Bogosian to something worthy of their talents.

Now, I will acknowledge: we’re in the home of the unreliable narrator and things that seem like plot holes are purposeful twists. It’s entirely possible that Lestat’s painfully “How you do, fellow kids?” song lyrics are because we’re hearing them through Daniel’s ears, or it’s symbolic of Lestat learning how to articulate his thoughts and feelings without facade.

But here’s the thing: there was not only a safe space “joke” but a pronoun one too. And as I told a friend of mine who didn’t watch, I didn’t even need to say what those jokes were because we’ve all heard them a thousand billion times before.

Who does Rolin Jones think watches this show? Are there that many in the MAGA transphobe crowd that are tuning in for the gay vampires fucking show? Or am I just that out of the loop on my queer media? Does Heated Rivalry have Shane and Illya mocking safe spaces too?

I know I’m going off on a rant here but hey: that’s what y’all read me for. This series does, genuinely, have so much good in it. It does. I love what it does with the idea of an unreliable narrator. I love what Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson and Eric Bogosian all bring to their roles. I love when it knows how to pepper in references from the books without making them Leo pointing meme delivery devices.

But what blows my god damn mind is how the producers of this show consistently shit the bed on the treatment of the audience and the themes of the show. They wanted people identifying with “Claudia is my coven” a thing that’s said by a Nazi sympathizer pedophile. They’re selling “Armand told the truth” hoodies when the entire point of two seasons of show is that he didn’t! This is the merch equivalent of “Norman Bates is innocent” and for some reason they want that as what their audience latches on to.

And I want to think that moving away from having Claudia and Louis front and center meant that the show would get away from its horrific handling of race, but we had an extended sequence in this episode of a naked Black woman in the background of a scene because…. seeing her bare ass was so crucial to that plot we got so many heaping helpings of?

And that’s just what’s around our lead character.

The Vampire Lestat’s Handling of Lestat

Look, after two seasons on an actual good, deft handling of proving we in the audience can’t always trust what we see, I am willing to give huge benefit of the doubt that this is what they’re doing with Lestat right now. I also want to say I don’t feel Lestat is a sacred text. Let’s be real, he’s a Mary Sue up to and including how his eyes change color depending on his mood.

You can absolutely change Lestat to reflect the needs, time, and place of the story. Anne Rice did it herself over and over. Lestat’s feelings on god, religion, and even homosexuality varied from book to book depending on Anne’s own feelings about the same. The argument can absolutely be made that if you’re writing him as your Mary Sue, you’re doing it right.

He’s also a flawed character. Though never officially said as such, he’s a perfect example of someone who struggles with being bipolar (another thing Anne could relate to). Highest highs of grandiose beliefs and ideas followed by the deepest crashes of depression. The abuse he suffered in childhood means there’s always a hurt little boy in there where it’s highly believable that his attempt at being Monsieur le Rock Star would be filled with I’m 14 and this is deep style lyrics.

Because he was written by Anne, he also had some incredibly flawed views on race and politics. Infamously he pops out into the modern world in 1984 and immediately starts parroting Reagan-esque talking points about welfare queens driving luxury cars.

The thing of it is though, as shitty as Anne’s writing got over the years, Lestat still had a core characterization. In the books he is The Brat Prince, the one who has the brashness and charisma (and not a little bit of a self-destructive nature) to laugh in the face of danger and somehow come out on top.

I am not yet sure what the show is doing in that regard.

To be clear: I don’t need this to be the same Lestat. I’m fine for a reinvention. And I’ll even lean heavily on that yet. Perfectly willing to give some time to see how this plays out.

That being said, right now it concerns me that Lestat’s behaviors don’t feel like a character, they feel like a collection of everything the writers put down on the white board under “What are stereotypical bad rock star behaviors?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: The drunk isn’t trying to fall down, the drunk is trying to stay standing. Lestat can absolutely be acting like a stereotypical bad rock star. The stereotypes didn’t come out of nowhere. But they are there for a reason. If Lestat is behaving this way: why?

Trust me, you can’t just say he’s a brat. Yes, he is, but he’s a brat for a reason. Now the reasons he’s doing this on the show doesn’t have to be why he did it in the books, but it still needs to be a reason. Is it a front to protect the real him? Is he doing it because he thinks that’s how he’s supposed to behave? Does he have his own checklist of bad rock star behavior he’s going through for shits and giggles?

I’d believe all of that of him and you could beautifully tie it into what’s going on inside of his head. I’m just saying that at this second I don’t have full confidence that we’re not going to get a scene of Lestat demanding all the green M&Ms be removed from his dressing room simply because that was on a white board somewhere too. He’s not a character with inner motivation to act this way, he’s a bad rock star trope delivery device.

Likewise, let’s be real: the purple prose of the books is either a feature or a bug depending on your point of view. And since Lestat is the most frequent first person narrator, he’s responsible for the majority of it. So you can absolutely make the argument that his dialogue is painful. But not in the way the show was making it painful. I get that his thoughts were supposed to be disjointed as he’s opining about swiping on a god and blah blah blah but again: drunk is trying to stay standing.

What’s the actual motivation behind his words? Why is he fixating on being grumpy about hallmarks of modern life like your drunk uncle or Tucker Carlson? It’s not necessarily a problem that he isn’t in love with modernity like his book self was, it’s a problem that I can’t tell why he feels this instead of saying this because the show’s being written by people who thought the pronoun joke was funny.

So yeah. I want to like this show, I really do! But I’m left at the end of this first episode wondering where the episode was. Hopefully it’ll get better?

Lagniappe

As always, things that don’t fit anywhere else:

• Jennifer Ehle is brilliant god damn casting and I clapped like a seal when it was announced. (We’ll get to the name change, believe me.)
• I figured out Lestat was texting his mom and not Louis in the very first exchange, but I’ll grant maybe some people - especially those who haven’t read the books - wouldn’t twig to that. So I give credit to some of the subtle acting choices that hint at what’s really going on. My particular favorite was Lestat curling around his guitar like a hurt child.
• I’m still gritting my teeth at “Mr du Lac.” That is NOT Louis’ name. It is de Pointe du Lac. I know I’ve said it before but I’ll keep saying it: You can’t and wouldn’t shorten it any more than you would shorten “Dr Frankenstein” to “Dr Stein.”
• Lestat, as a Frenchman, especially would not do this.
• I did appreciate the Phantom of the Opera vibes of the auction.
• The show may change it so I won’t get into this too much, but suffice it to say I was watching everything happening with our glasses wearing friend at the auction very closely, and will be continuing to do so.
• When you do adaptations like this there’s always the question of how much do you lift directly from the books vs how much do you make anew. There’s certainly arguments for both. I will say, though, that the fangirl in me was kinda hoping they would directly lift Lestat’s intro from the book. It didn’t necessarily have to be the first lines of the show, but at the start of his narration at least. (It's been in the trailers though so maybe it's coming later.)
• Personally I’m not a fan of Lestat being so directly outspoken about gay rights in the show (a thing he’s done in previous seasons as well) because in the books that’s not his character. Which, not that I think Anne intended it as such, is accurate for a man who grew up in his time period. The concept of gay rights would not have been on his radar. That being said, as I mentioned before you can absolutely adjust as needed. Plus, frankly, it makes a good counterbalance to pronoun “jokes.” I just wish it wasn’t so clunky.
• “Notaries don’t notarize in red ink” as a former notary I can tell you we don’t notarize if we don’t see you actually sign the document either.
• Related, the character of Christine in the books was based on Anne’s lawyer of the same name.
• I am more than fine with retconning that Lestat had Claudia be raped. Please retcon this, dear god.
• “Same potholes” - I wasn’t aware Montreal was on top of swampland but learn something new every day I suppose.
• “Which one of you’s ODed before?” made me laugh.
• I liked how the score turned classical before Gabriella’s arrival.
• I will get to that name change, believe me.
• Seriously though, “Lestat is in a shitty rock band singing ear bleedingly bad lyrics which we may or may not be having him do on purpose and also he’s fucking his mom” was what they thought was going to hook new viewers?
• On the topic of the lyrics: again I’m fine for how maybe that’s a plot point, particularly since it keeps getting called out. But the standard for “Reinterpretation of music to reflect characterization” is really god damn high. I’m just saying.
• A+ casting on Baby Jenks.
• In the books the Fang Gang was, yanno, a gang. I’ve no deep and passionate objection to the show applying that name to an actual proper old school coven but… why?
• I wondered if the “do do do, da da da” was a The Police reference. The mention of Stewart Copeland confirmed it. My guess is one of the writers is a fan of drummers, since let’s be real, the far more likely candidate for “Weird ass douchebag thing done at a party” is Sting and I’m pretty sure he himself would agree.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. I want to like this show, I do. But I really need some show in this show before I can fully form an opinion. Let’s see how it goes next week?