- - “The Vampire Lestat” showrunner reveals Louis' 'heartbreaking' expanded role in season 3 (exclusive)

Sydney BucksbaumDecember 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM

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Sophie Giraud/AMC

Jacob Anderson as Louis on 'The Vampire Lestat'

Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) is, of course, the main character in The Vampire Lestat. Would you expect anything less from the Brat Prince? But don't worry, Interview With the Vampire fans — there's still going to be plenty of Louis du Pointe de Lac (Jacob Anderson) in season 3 as well.

In fact, The Vampire Lestat showrunner Rolin Jones tells Entertainment Weekly that the series has actually expanded Louis' arc from what's in Anne Rice's second novel of the same name, simply because they wanted to give Anderson more to do onscreen. But be careful what you wish for, because Louis' new story is going to be "very, very heartbreaking."

"It's a very different season," Jones says. "You can't really tell another origin story — so many of the beats are shared beats that we've already done with Louis — so it's been a thrilling, exciting challenge so far. What I can tell you after seeing all the footage, and this says nothing about all the wonderful performances that are in seasons 1 and 2, it's an absolutely iconic season of television. You're really not prepared. Nobody is."

Below, Jones reveals what fans can expect from not only Louis' expanded arc, but also Lestat's turn in the spotlight and the introduction of his mother, Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle). Plus, check out EW's exclusive first look photos from season 3 (returning in 2026 on AMC).

Sophie Giraud/AMC

Sam Reid in 'The Vampire Lestat'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you change the name of the show from Interview With the Vampire to The Vampire Lestat?

ROLIN JONES: I don't think it's huge, to me. All we're doing is following Anne's lead. That book was called this, this book is called that. It really focuses in on what this season is about. Hopefully with more and more seasons, you're going to see it's all a collective, The more we follow Anne's pathway, and the more honorable we are being to the source material. What are we going to call it? Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Lestat? You can't get that out. To me, [renaming the show] is a no brainer, but it's also probably bold. Nobody who watched the show, that really loved the show, is going to be confused about what the show is. I wanted to do it from the beginning, so I'm glad that marketing came around to it.

Does that mean you'll rename it again in future seasons as The Queen of the Damned, and so on?

There's a lot of very, very smart people above me who are making those decisions. Yeah, I think it should go that way, because then you'll know that's what that is. I guess, the bigger question is, have we done the whole book? There's parts of Interview With the Vampire that still might pop up. We're digging from all of the books right now. There's a satisfying [arc] for this season, but it definitely feels to me like part one of two parts, and people should be prepared for that.

It gets expansive and we leave a lot up in the air. Everybody's seen the pattern — there was a season 1 and there were a lot of unanswered questions, and then there was a season 2, and that mostly wrapped that up, but there were a lot of little things left over from that too. It's just a continuum.

That was literally my next question, so thank you for reading my mind. How closely are you following the book this season?

We looked at the framing device: "I'm going to do a concert and you're never going to see it until the end." Man, that didn't smell right for us. So we tried to open it up. What if we made it a tour? What if we went on tour with him and we did the Devil's Road, and even though we're doing it in the past, we're also doing the Devil's Road here and now in 2025. There are certain events that you remember in the past that we have decided to make active here in the here and now, but everybody who read the books will see that we have honored and loved the book the same way that we loved the first book.

But we're making a television show so there are a lot of big swings. We're not here to repeat moves we made in season 1 and season 2. You've got to go for it, man. It's Lestat front and center, which just means it ain't going to be as linear, it's going to be contradictory, it's going to be all over the place because he kind of is that way. It's a show about rock and roll, a rock and roll tour, just this train wreck of a tour, and everybody has sort of taken that note. It doesn't mean there isn't subtlety or elegance to it this year, but it's snotty first before anything else. It's about this examination of a person who really, really, really doesn't want to examine himself, but is forced to, so there's all this armor that he's putting forth to try not to look inside, because the looking inside is very, very, very hard and messed up.

What can you reveal about EW's exclusive photo of Louis absolutely covered in blood? What's happening in that moment?

[Laughs] Very little. What I can say is it was very clear we had a very, very beautiful actor in that role and that the source material that we were working from, The Vampire Lestat novel, doesn't have a lot for him. So we dipped into other things that Anne wrote about Louis that's woven into the story we've told already, who we think he is, where he was at, and his relationship with the main character. Whatever he's telling you, it's important to Lestat.

We wanted to provide a really good arc for him, so there's stuff there. I wish I could tell you about it but literally if I give you two or three details, the dominoes begin to fall. I'll tell you this, out of all the stories that we're throwing up this year, it's the one that's working the best and quickest, and it is crystal clear and it's really divine and very, very heartbreaking.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

Jennifer Ehle in 'The Vampire Lestat'

We're also debuting the first photo of Lestat's mother, Gabriella. Why did you decide to change her name from Gabrielle?

She's Italian, and she hated being in France. [Laughs] It didn't seem like it was a huge thing. The author wrote a character, and then we are the a--holes who change one letter in it. She's a very, very smart woman taken out of a place at a very early age and stuck in a cold, weird place. She hadn't adapted to French life, and we wanted to put as much tension as we could, and we thought it was very simple that she just held onto whatever a woman could hang onto back then. Even if she was 15, maybe she had her first couple of years as Gabrielle, but somewhere very quickly into the marriage, she's like, "Call me Gabriella." That was it.

Claudia was a very significant, elegantly written character, but we needed some feminine vampiric blood in this show. We weren't going to make her a wilting flower, so it started there. I didn't mean to upset people or anything like that, but it just seemed quite logical, and in that small little gesture, it says a lot about who we're putting into the show.

I'll admit, when the character's casting was announced, I came up with some wild theories over that small change to her name.

Somebody in the [writers'] room was like, "Gabrielle, that's weird, isn't it? She's not French, she's Italian, and shouldn't we be leaning into that?" You'll still recognize her [from the book] and hopefully you'll really love her. She sets the roadmap that we're building on top of, and she had a lot of stuff to pull from.

Tell me what we can expect to see from her this season.

She's incredible. She is adding something that the show didn't have after two years. She's a monster and really, really goes for it. There are things that she does this year that you have not seen Jennifer Ehle do in her career. She's excited to deliver that kind of performance and that kind of character that she doesn't get to play it very often.

What can you say about how Delainey Hayles returns this season after Louis and Lestat witnessed Claudia's gruesome death last season?

I cannot tell you anything at all about it, other than it's the same with Jacob. We had an absolute beauty of an artist, and there wasn't a lot in The Vampire Lestat about that character. Delainey did extraordinary work and really changed a lot about our show for the better, and she's just a wise, old soul, and she deserved more for people to see. So we've given her stuff and she's really good in it. And I'm sorry, but I can't tell you a thing about it. You have to be patient, and then yeah, watch out. She's incredible. You'll see a lot more range, even more range than she gave you the first time.

What are the odds we'll get to see a Vampire Lestat world tour in real life? I would pay a ridiculous amount of money to see these performances live.

I'm sure Sam and [composer] Daniel [Hart] would love to do that. Those are logistical things, and those things are really hard to organize. I do believe that there are expectations and things, but I'm not really involved in those big macro conversations. But I do think that this will probably be a pretty dynamic bit of marketing this year. They're doing some things differently in an exciting way. Lestat front and center just means chaos, and chaos is coming.

And the songs are incredible. We recorded most of the things that were onscreen that we shot, and now we have a bunch of other things that Sam is recording in a couple of weeks to finish out the job. That's how massive it is. We have to have to have multiple versions of them because it ain't Glee, you don't see it suddenly come up with a song from nowhere. You watch some of them get built in primordial fashions, and someone will perform, and then some of them you'll only see a minute of it, but they'll probably release a four-minute song from it. But we also have songs that we play all the way through, because we have enough story to support the singing of that song. There will not be a show with more music on it than our show. And we're not going to have every song written for this season on this season. Remember: Part one and part two!

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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