Interview with the Vampire Teases Claudia’s Season 3 Return and What’s Next for Lestat
Exclusive: Delainey Hayles explains whether Claudia will ever return to AMC's Interview with the Vampire. Plus, Sam Reid and Assad Zaman talk what's next for Lestat and Armand.
| | This Interview with the Vampire article contains spoilers.
AMC’s Interview with the Vampire is the lavish and achingly sensual adaptation of Anne Rice’s classic novel that fans have waited decades for. With its second season done and a teaser trailer released for the third, featuring the vampire Lestat in full decadent rockstar mode, fans are clamoring for more details on where the series will go next, and how much it could deviate from the beloved novels it’s adapting.
In the Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, we got some exciting tidbits from the cast and creator, including a teaser that Claudia, our favorite perennial child vampire, might not be gone forever.
IWTV is one of the most acclaimed shows on TV right now, a testament to what Sam Reid, Lestat himself, says is the work of “a lot of obsessive people. Everyone is very very obsessively-compulsively driven to do the best thing that they can do, almost to a fault.”
“I think we’re all very compulsive about everything we do,” agrees Delainey Hayles, who plays Claudia.
The interview was a welcome reunion for Hayles and her cast, including Assad Zaman, who plays Armand, and showrunner Rolin Jones. The last time fans saw Claudia, she was burned to ashes after she, Louis (Jacob Anderson), and her companion Madeleine (Roxane Duran) were put on trial by the Paris coven for the murder of Lestat (he’s not dead.) “I’m having so much fun, and it’s really nice to see them again because I haven’t seen them in a very long time,” Hayles says.
But will Louis, Lestat, and Armand somehow cross paths with Claudia again in the future?
“Yeah, I’m trying to claw my way into season three,” Hayles says, although Jones then interjects that “she doesn’t need to claw.” Hardcore Vampire Chronicles fans will know (spoiler for non-book readers) that Claudia does make a brief comeback in one of the novels, Merrick, as a ghost. Given how much the series has changed from the novels, is it possible we could get a version of this in season three? Or will we see more of Claudia from Lestat’s perspective as they adapt his story, The Vampire Lestat? Stay tuned.
Season three will be a major change for Armand too, as the finale left him dumped by Louis after his lies caught up with him. He also fathered his first fledgling, journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), but much to the disappointment of Devil’s Minion fans everywhere, it happened offscreen. Zaman jokes that he and Bogosian had “decided to play the scene just so that he could get into character in the next scene” and that “it was hot and steamy but room to get hotter and steamier, is all I can say.” Prepare yourselves, shippers!
For many viewers, it’s the chemistry between Lestat and Louis that makes the show. A far cry from the subtextual glances of the pair in the 1994 movie, IWTV has Reid and Anderson in the full throes of passion, fury, and angst. When asked how he and his co-star built that chemistry, Reid was eager to share the glory. “We’re really good friends, we’re really close, but I don’t know if that chemistry happens before you become friends or after. There’s a lot of trust and we just have a lot of fun making the show. I think chemistry is the whole, it’s not just two actors or two people together. It’s the whole group. It’s everyone who makes a show. It’s the space, it’s the feeling when you come on set and you feel like you can do things, try things, be experimental, push the boundaries a little bit. And that creates a sense of play, of trust.”
Reid is now in preparations for rockstar mode, although his first Lestat single, “Long Face,” has already dropped to rapturous fan applause (and even started a few online fandom fights, Lestat would truly be proud).
Season three will also bring with it many long-awaited reveals, including characters like Akasha, the queen of the damned, Lestat’s mother Gabrielle, and Marius, Armand’s reclusive maker. Casting them is certainly going to be a doozy. Rolin Jones tells us what he was looking for when it comes to casting two of the ancient vampires. “I’m attracted to a lot of theater actors. I really respect theater training. It’s a lot about facility of language.” This makes sense given that Zaman, Bogosian, and Ben Daniels, who plays Santiago, are all seasoned stage performers. The upcoming characters “all have very very particular things they need to do and be and present. On our show, we make actors go through a lot to get those parts, and then it’s a full embrace and there’s a lot of collaboration going back and forth about it.”
Jones also reveals that they already have one actor “that we battle-tested” in season three: Joe Potter, who plays Lestat’s lover Nicolas in season two. “I know what that actor can do. We put them through a gauntlet, and in the end, you’re going to get the same lovely, exquisite casting we’ve had.”
There are still 14 more books in the Vampire Chronicles left to adapt, and while fans can speculate on which direction certain stories will take, Interview with the Vampire has proudly carved out its own route amid this beloved and often bananas canon. With the first novel concluded, all eyes are on The Vampire Lestat for the brat prince’s backstory, and Queen of the Damned, wherein the mother of all vampires rises and plans a deadly takeover. There’s so much to look forward to, and that’s before we get to all of the rockstar mayhem.