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.
09:10That's like 50 years ago.
09:12Let the right one in for me.
09:14Let's go.
09:16I'm trying to think now.
09:22We put so much pressure on you.
09:24Yeah, I know exactly.
09:26We're waiting all this time.
09:28What we do in the shadows.
09:30Thank you for joining us.
09:31Thank you for having us.
09:32Thank you for having us.
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