You think it’s bleak now? Just wait

After the first couple “Vampire Lestat” episodes, we’d be tempted to call the show bleak. Or grim or downbeat or such.
Lestat, after all, is a rock-and-roller (shown here) who doesn’t just rip up hotel rooms after the show. He also rips up bodies, barely survives an attack and reflects on his tortured childhood, 130 years ago.
But hey, that was just a warm-up. From here, said Sam Reid (who stars), “it gets pretty bleak.”
Rolin Jones — who created this show, which continues the two seasons of “Interview With The Vampire” — agreed. Starting with the third episode (9 p.m. June 21, on AMC), “it’s going to get about as dark as we’ve ever gone.”
Added Jacob Anderson, who plays Louis: “I didn’t really know how to be happy in this show.”
They were at a Television Critics Association press conference (via Zoom), describing a show that, in its own way, also wants to be fun. “That’s what Lestat is,” Reid said. “He wants people to have a good time.”
His monologues — reflecting Anne Rice’s novels — ripple with wit. And he’s now a rock star, in a style inspired by David Bowie and others.
“He comes in very confident,” Jones said, “thinking he can be glib and fun and keep (his pain) away.” But then “it gets deeper and deeper.”
That’s part of the show’s rhythm,” Reid said. “You get that very extreme whiplash, (when) the darkness sort of takes over …. There is a lot more vulnerability in him this season.”
The music itself is convincing — sharply written (by Daniel Hart), performed and filmed, catching the joyous bedlam of a strong rocker.
Indeed, on the night before this press session, Reid had a one-time event in a New York theater; he did a full-scale rock concert as Lestat.
The next day, we might have expected him to still be in head-banging mode, maybe hungover and semi-articulate. Instead, his conversation included such phrases as “artifice,” “metaphor,” “post-modern,” “operatic” and “French iteration of the commedia dell’arte.”
Like his character, Reid seems to assemble opposites. He grew up on an Australian cattle ranch, but also attended a prep school in Sydney and then the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
That’s the school that has produced countless Shakespeareans and others, from Richard Harris and Malcom McDowell to John Lithgow and Rita Wilson. And now it has a prominent vampire.