Spoilers follow for The Vampire Lestat Season 3, Episode 3 – “Toronto,” which is on the market on AMC and AMC+ now.
In “Toronto,” the most recent episode of AMC’s series formerly often known as Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, audiences get to witness a sampling of each version of Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) roiling within him. The memories of his life in Paris as much as when he was turned are juxtaposed against his current, combative on-camera interviews with vampire documentarian Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), making us voyeurs to his tempest of memories and emotions.
Reid commands the screen from starting to finish in a performance that showrunner Rolin Jones admits to IGN is his personal favorite of the actor’s this season. “He’s extraordinary in [Episode 3],” Jones tells IGN with awe. “He’s so fucking good in 3.”
Jones explains that they staged the documentary interviews with Reid looking straight into the camera in such a way that put Bogosian, his scene partner, about 30 feet away in a dark void. “When these scenes line up on the decision sheet and also you’re doing this from page 40, that may be really disorienting,” Jones says about what Reid faced. “And also you’re block shooting, which suggests you are doing [Episodes] 3 and 4, so you do not know where you’re [in the story]. For an actor to give you the chance to carry a screen like that, in tight close-up, as if you happen to’re an Errol Morris subject, I feel there are only a few individuals who can pull it off. The variety of mini beats which are in there – outrageous and insane!”
In reality, Jones says Reid questioned his ability to tug it off successfully. “He’s sitting there alone, staring into this box,” Jones says. “After those two days, he involves me and goes, ‘I do not know… I do not know what I’m doing.’ So I used to be like, ‘I’ll go look.’ I checked out the dailies that day, and I’m like, ‘You are gonna be lost a few of this time of the yr, [just] proceed to do [it]. Just take the massive risks. Take all of it, go for it.’ After which I just secretly whispered in his ear, ‘You are very, very good.’
“So, I feel he was okay,” Jones chuckles.
Lestat’s First Love Redux
Within the flashback portions of “Toronto,” Jones unspools a nonlinear dissemination of what happens to Lestat after he moves to Paris, falls in love after which gets violently turned against his will. Within the book, Lestat relocates to Paris along with his childhood friend Nicolas de Lenfent. Within the series, Lestat by chance reunites with Nicolas (or as he calls him, Nikki) in Paris when he spies him busking as a violinist. They fall right into a passionate two-year relationship where Nikki (Joseph Potter) plays within the theater pit orchestra and Lestat cleans the theater and acts. However it all goes to hell after Lestat is turned by a stalker fan, the insanely obsessive vampire, Magnus (Damien Atkins). Afterward, Lestat goes back to Auvergne to show his ailing mother, Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), only to return to seek out an increasingly depressed, distrustful and erratic Nikki. Tragedy ensues and leaves Lestat permanently anguished, as evidenced in his confessional retelling of his lover’s death.
Jones acknowledges that changing Anne Rice’s course of events is something he knows will “probably be just a little disappointing” to book readers. Nevertheless, the showrunner explains that it was mandatory. Going back to after they opened the writers room for Season 3, he says the team knew episodes would should be “tighter and faster” to be consistent with their rock-and-roll, roadshow energy.
“The choice we made about Lestat’s family in Auvergne made it very difficult to come back back the subsequent episode and still be in Auvergne,” he says of the revised pacing of Lestat’s history. “So I said, ‘He will Paris, go to Paris.’ We re-engineered a few of those given circumstances, and squeezed in as many golden moments as you may. But within the version of the story we’re telling, it was still incredibly necessary that Nikki had standing, and was something that will, to at the present time, haunt [Lestat].”
In reality, Jones says the audience should return to Season 1 and revisit Lestat meeting Louis in light of what happens on this episode. “[Maybe], give it some thought less when it comes to Louis’ version of regardless of the predator was taking, and more about trepidation?” he says of Lestat seducing Louis. “Why it took six months, since the last time he was deeply in love with any individual, it didn’t end up well. So, hopefully these items keep talking to one another.”
Jones can be quick to praise how well Nikki actor Joseph Potter was capable of sell with Reid their tragic love affair in so few scenes. “I knew what he could do, and so I knew I could probably tell this in fewer and fewer scenes because I had such a volcanic actor,” Jones explains. “He’s incredible.”
Their scenes together, and the way Reid portrays Lestat reliving those memories, is a window into essentially the most broken parts of the vampire in line with the showrunner. “This concept about [Lestat] being the individual that didn’t love the opposite as much as they loved him, I feel that is what haunts him essentially the most about Nikki,” Jones says. “Nikki loved him more and he understands that, and it hurts him lots. I feel it dimensionalizes Lestat.”
Setting the Stage for Louis and Claudia
The opposite big revelation in “Toronto” is how Jones begins to string Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) back into the story. Per the knowledge laid out by Talamasca agent Raglan James (Justin Kirk) in “Toledo,” Louis goes after Bruce (Damon Daunno), the vampire who assaulted Claudia after she went out on her own in 1923.
Jones says they knew from Season 1, after they showed the ripped-out journal pages from Claudia’s diary, that they might revisit this story thread down the road. “It goes back to after we made the choice to try this assault on Claudia – that it may’t be a plot point,” Jones says of the subplot’s importance to the overarching story.
In portraying Louis’ vengeance intimately, Jones says it reiterates the vampire’s unresolved business along with his dead daughter. “We knew how this scene would go, and we knew very instinctively that it needed to be a dissatisfying thing,” he says of the hollowness to Louis’ revenge. “It was not going to be the achievement that he thought it could be.”
However it results in some major revelations next week…
Remember to check back at IGN every Sunday for post-morts of The Vampire Lestat with Rolin Jones!