'Interview With the Vampire' Finally Introduces the Real Lestat

Close-up of Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt in

Note: This story contains spoilers through Season 2, Episode 8

After two seasons and 15 episodes, "Interview With the Vampire" finally introduced the real Lestat in the Season 2 finale, "And That's the End of It. There's Nothing Else." The iconic vampire has appeared in the memories of multiple characters, in dreams and hallucinations, but now, he has finally appeared in a scene without subjective bias — and he might not be quite what audiences expected.

Seductively cruel in Louis' recollection, violent and manipulative in Claudia's, and cartoonishly callous in Armand's, Lestat is "a shell of himself" when we finally meet him, according to actor Sam Reid. But that's the real, objective Lestat, seen without the lens of an individual narrative for the first time in the series.

"By the time Louis finds out that Armand directed the play, the interview ends and he leaves and he walks out of it, and then we're outside of our first-person point of view," Reid told TheWrap. "We're in the Dubai timeline, and then he goes to Lestat. He's been waiting in New Orleans, since the metaphorical tower, when Louis tells Lestat that he's going to stay with Armand and that's how he's going to kill him. So yeah, that's as objective as we're ever going to get in this show."

Jacob Anderson, who stars as Louis, echoed that, saying, "It happened, it's objective."

Anderson also recalled the experience of filming Louis and Lestat's long-awaited reunion. The actor says he and Reid spoke very little about the scene beforehand, explaining that they "like to surprise each other."

"We had like, two takes each for that scene, so we just went through it, and we did surprise each other, and it was very emotional. To talk about these things in a complete way felt really emotional. When you're thinking about Delainey [Hayles] and Delainey's Claudia, it's like Delainey is very much in the room in that scene. You don't see her, but she's our other scene partner. Both of us, me and Sam, were like f–ked up thinking about the three of them. And this family that just couldn't work, and it resulted in the death of their adult child."

For what it's worth, Hayles thinks Claudia would have called BS on Louis and Lestat's emotional display. "I think she would have walked out," the actress said.

But all the same, Lestat is haunted by her death, according to Reid. "I think he loves Claudia and I think he always did. I think he wishes he probably didn't because, you know, it's so painful. And he will never recover from that. And he'll never recover from the guilt of making her, and then driving her to the point where she has to kill him, and he has to agree to it — because he agrees to it as well. He allows them to do that. And then for her to have subsequently died by going back to the world that he created."

"He's a shell of himself," Reid added, reflecting on the Lestat we meet in the present. "He's a broken creature, and verging on insane, so he's not really at his peak. But yeah, that's him."

Reid has played many versions of Lestat before this one, and the actor says it's a unique but fun challenge for him as a performer — and that's because so much thought has been put into the big picture of the character already.

"They're all challenging because there's so much unsaid, there's so much, and I actually know what it is," Reid explained. "It's frustrating because like, there's actually a larger timeline that exists in the whole universe of this show that I know what it is, but it's very convoluted."

"I know that certain choices that have been made that actually do affect certain timelines, and where people have been and where they're coming from," he continued. "So when you're walking into a scene, this character might have been with somebody directly beforehand. That has been decided. But you can't ever say it. So it's kind of challenging because you have to always find that line. If I walk in like this, the audience would be like, 'Why is he like that?' We've got no point of reference for that way it was. So there's always a bit of a balance about doing something to make sure that it's clear in terms of the narrative for this season, but then also is going to track when you start to look at it as a broader structure."

Was there any version of Lestat he enjoyed performing, in particular? "It was fun to do Armand's version of Lestat," Reid noted. "I really enjoyed doing that because — I got to work with Assad [Zaman] and I think he's fantastic — but he was also like, so swashbuckling. Everything was so silly."

Now that we've met the real Lestat, we'll also get to see things from his perspective. AMC announced Season 3 ahead of the Season 2 finale, and the next installment will tackle "The Vampire Lestat," letting the character finally tell his story in his own words — and perhaps start a rock band in the process.