'Interview with the Vampire' cast and crew stop by THR's studio at San Diego Comic-Con talk about what it's like to start filming season three after their big announcement at SDCC last year. Plus, the cast talk about how music influenced its third season and composer Daniel Hart describes how Chappell Roan helped influence Lestat's rockstar persona.
00:00It's important to make him feel like the Lestat we've always seen.
00:03So what would that character be like if he was a rock star?
00:05So it's not like what's Lestat's like if he's emulating, you know, David Bowie now and be kind of a boring show.
00:10And just add a bit of gyration and thrusting and...
00:14...see what comes out at the end of it. Yeah, did I say something inappropriate?
00:19The internet will tell you. Oh dear.
00:22So what is it like returning to Comic-Con after last year you made this big announcement about, you know, the rock star storyline in season three?
00:37Well, now we have like more actual footage rather than the kind of Comic-Con teaser, which is what we did last year.
00:44So yeah, it's kind of we're in the middle of it.
00:47So it feels a bit more real rather than this ephemeral kind of concept that we were trying to tease everybody with. Yeah.
00:53How much of the season have you shot so far?
00:5922 days of 70 days?
01:01We just started.
01:0222 days of 70 days. That's a lot of days.
01:04What's it like to kind of get a break from, you know, being in the onset world and come see the fans, you know, here at Comic-Con?
01:09What's it like? It's great. It's great. It's really, I mean, it's really fun.
01:13I mean, we're shooting night shoots at the moment. So it's quite a shift to go from the night to the day.
01:19But it's really lovely to, you know, meet people who watch the show and love the show.
01:23And it actually is kind of energizing and it gives you a lot of fuel to go back into it.
01:28Because you're like, yeah, we, you know, you meet the people who are making it for who's going to watch it.
01:32And it's exciting. It's fantastic.
01:34And fans of the show are so passionate. So I'm sure they're so excited to see you here at Comic-Con.
01:39And this season really sees a major vibe shift, it sounds like.
01:43What can you tell us about that and how the show is going to incorporate these musical moments?
01:48It's a very musical show now. We've been working on a lot of songs.
01:54Lestat is a rock star now and he's a brilliant songwriter.
01:58We've been spending a lot of time with Lestat, with his band.
02:07They will be doing some things in season three.
02:10I don't know what I can say about that or can't say about that, but it's all very exciting.
02:14What should we say, Sam? We've been working quite a lot on these songs that were written for the show.
02:22Spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a rock star in 2025.
02:27What conclusions did you come to, Sam Reid and Daniel R?
02:31Yeah, what conclusions did it come to? I don't really know, I mean...
02:34I think the question on our minds is, do people still care about rock and roll in 2026?
02:39That's what we're here to find out.
02:40Do people care about rock and roll? Do people care about vampires?
02:43You know?
02:45There's a lot of...
02:46Yes.
02:47Yeah.
02:48Yeah.
02:49A lot of swipe swipe, meh meh, you know?
02:51Daniel, when you went to compose the music for the season, where did you start?
02:55Started in the writer's room with Rollin Jones.
02:59We talked about musical influences that each of us had in mind.
03:03We made playlists for each other. We sent them back and forth.
03:06We sent them to Sam. We sent them to Jacob.
03:08I hope we sent them to Eric. I don't know if we actually did or not.
03:10Some.
03:11Oh, okay. Good.
03:12And then sat down and wrote down a bunch more songs, just sort of in the writer's room,
03:18talking to the writers, talking about plot, talking about ideas.
03:21What's important to keep in mind from Anne Rice's words that we want to bring,
03:25not only into the show, but also into the song lyrics themselves.
03:28What ideas are important for our specific take on these vampires?
03:32Show them to Rollin. Yes, no, yes, no. Swipe swipe, meh meh.
03:35It's all yes. It was all yes. It's all yes. There's no no. It was no no. It was all yes. All yes.
03:43And I read that some of the songs came first and then the script after.
03:47So how did the songs inspire the script?
03:49Daniel is actually a member of the staff this year.
03:51And he would just get up and disappear and go into another room and go,
03:55what the hell just happened? And then about three days later, a song would come back and you're like,
03:59oh, look at that. Listen to it and go, wow, we should build something around that.
04:03It's like no different than any pitch or a scene that someone's going to.
04:07It's like, this is a new building block for the show.
04:10And so we would absolutely put that like the came in with your little French song.
04:13We're like, what is that? This is beautiful. What are we going to do that?
04:16And we'd start building a scenario around that so that the songs would organically move in.
04:21So not these things that were dropped in.
04:23One of the singular things about the season is we have story and character development built around songs.
04:29The songs are really meaningful and that there are a lot of emotion.
04:32You sometimes underwrite because you know what this song is going to deliver.
04:36And so you want actually the story to sort of come to that moment and then release with the song.
04:41This show sounds fucking awesome.
04:44Excuse my language.
04:45We're very excited for you to join it eventually.
04:48I think one of the things about this show and the music plays into this totally is just sheer intensity
04:56and the vampiric violence that happens is sheer intensity.
05:01Sam, what rock stars did you look to for inspiration for rock star Lestat?
05:05You know, interestingly, like Daniel and I talked about Kurt Cobain quite early,
05:09which was a bit of a weird thing because the music wasn't necessarily within that vein.
05:14But I think it actually did massively help David Bowie, obviously, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison.
05:23But I think it's also important to make sure he's not feeling like an imitation or a copy.
05:28Lestat is quite a singular character and it's created by Roland and Rice, of course.
05:34And so it's important to make him feel like the Lestat we've always seen.
05:39And so what would that character be like if he was a rock star?
05:42So it's not like what's Lestat's like if he's emulating, you know, David Bowie now and be kind of a boring show.
05:47Yeah. And just add a bit of gyration and thrusting and see what comes out at the end of it.
05:53Yeah. With the beautiful music that Daniel Hart's written, you know, I just heard a crazy innuendo.
05:57Sorry, what was the next question? Did I say something inappropriate?
06:04The internet will tell you.
06:06Oh, dear.
06:08He said thrust.
06:10Well, sorry.
06:11Did Eric Bagozy did a Beavis and Bud?
06:14How great is that?
06:15And Eric told me today that somebody has made an AI animated version of a photograph that we recently released.
06:22They took the photo view and they put them to life.
06:23Yeah. So I think, you know, whatever I've just said.
06:26Feel free. Go for it. Go wild. It's all happened already.
06:30There's nothing like the real thing.
06:31Yeah.
06:32When people are writing musicals, they say that by the end of a musical number,
06:36you should learn something new about the character.
06:38So there should be some kind of development.
06:40For the songs in this show, did you approach them the same way of,
06:43oh, we're, you know, learning things about Lestat and the characters, you know, through these musical numbers?
06:47When we would try to do that in the way that musicals do, where plot is involved in the storytelling of the lyrics,
06:55it slowed us down. It sort of dragged the songs into a space that was very limiting and didn't feel very much like rock and roll to us.
07:04Did not allow for the kind of improvisatory nature that we wanted Lestat to have because he's such a mercurial figure.
07:11You can't force him to tell you anything he doesn't want to tell you in the moment.
07:18So we tried to avoid doing that musical thing and make the songs more emotive.
07:24There's always a story that's being told while he's singing that song.
07:27Every concert piece has a built-in story when we're performing.
07:32I read that Chapel Rhone also might have provided some inspiration because it sounds like Lestat is, you know, releasing only bangers.
07:39They're all going to be hits. And obviously, you know, she is the queen of hits right now.
07:43I think she's one of the better lyricists working today. Her pop songs are unbreakable in a sense.
07:52They're so well constructed and so well thought out, but at the same time have this very personal and vulnerable feeling to them.
08:01Also, incredible stage persona, incredible costume, makeup, every, you know, and very unafraid to say things in public that other people might be afraid to say.
08:12All of that felt like things that Lestat would like.
08:15And I'm sure incredible hair.
08:18Incredible hair.
08:20I'm so close to it right now.
08:22And finally, you were saying, you know, are vampires still relevant in 2025?
08:26It feels like they are. I mean, vampires continue to pop up in pop culture.
08:30What's another depiction of vampires in pop culture that you love or can appreciate?
08:36I love the Smokestacks twins.
08:38I mean, actually, it's only Stack, isn't it?
08:41But, yeah, Sinners was, I think it's probably my favorite film this year.
08:47Yeah.
08:48I love Gary Oldman's Dracula.
08:50I would cross oceans of time to find you.
08:54I love it so much. I think about him all the time. Yeah.
09:02I'm from the last century. Frank Langella doing Dracula on Broadway was amazing and inspired me and made me want to be a vampire.
Be the first to comment