AMC is taking another bite out of the Anne Rice Immortal Universe.
Just days ahead of Sunday’s season two finale, AMC Networks has renewed Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire for a third season.
The season three logline reads: “Resentful of the perfunctory portrayal in the trashy bestseller Interview With the Vampire, the Vampire Lestat sets his story straight in a way only the Vampire Lestat can — by starting a band and going on tour. Gabrielle. Nicholas. Magnus. Marius. Those Who Must Be Kept. They join Louis, Armand, Molloy, Sam, Raglan, Fareed and others we can’t tell you about yet on a sexy pilgrimage across space, time and trauma. No Auto-Tuning. No Trigger Warnings. All Feels Amplified.”
The second season stars Jacob Anderson, along with Sam Reid, Eric Bogosian, Assad Zaman, Delainey Hayles and Ben Daniels. The season two finale releases Sunday on AMC+ and at 9 p.m. on AMC.
The series is executive produced by Mark Johnson, who oversees AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe; creator, writer and showrunner Rolin Jones; and Mark Taylor; along with Christopher Rice and the late Anne Rice.
“When you buy the rights to 18 Anne Rice novels that have sold more than 150 million copies, in your wildest dreams you hope there’s a show as good as Interview on the other end,” said Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks, in a statement. “What Rolin has done with these stories and characters, working so closely with Mark, as the steward of this universe, has exceeded the loftiest version of our expectations. We can’t wait to see where this creative team takes the series from here and know we are walking alongside an incredibly loyal and passionate base of fans who feel as strongly about this material as we do.”
Jones added: “Thank you to the brilliant casts and crews of the first two seasons that got us to this day. Thank you to the rabid, beautifully unwell fandom that scaled the castle walls to get us to this day. Thank you to Dan McDermott, Ben Davis for the funds and tools to continue the great work of dramatizing Anne Rice’s extraordinary novels. And sincere apologies to the family and friends of actor Sam Reid, for the possession that continues to this day. Monsieur L extends his promise to return his body upon cancellation (may that evening never come).”
In a recent chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Reid teased what he was most excited to explore ahead.
“Because we have [composer] Daniel Hart helming the music of the show, I’m very excited to see whatever he creates, and to be working with him on that is astonishing,” he said. “For me, Gabrielle, Lestat’s mother, is such an amazing character. I really can’t wait to meet her and see what that character is like, and I also think the dynamic between Gabrielle, Louis, and Lestat is really interesting, so I’m very keen to see how that unfolds.”
Reid also elaborated on how a major event from the penultimate episode — spoiler alert: the death of Claudia, played by Delainey Hayles — will impact Lestat moving forward.
“Claudia is going to be the biggest mistake Lestat has ever made in his entire life — not the fact that she’s alive, but the fact that she died [in front of him at the show trial in episode seven],” he told THR. “The death of Claudia is going to be the thing that haunts him forever, and I wish that he did save her. I’m not sure if he knew that he could, but the fact that he saw her look at him with a pure connection at the end — and the two of them did share a connection at multiple times in their lives. I think he’ll never get that image [of Claudia dying] out of his head, and I think what it does is it also sets us up for a relationship with a haunting of Claudia and Lestat that is quite exciting.”
He continued, “I think we’ve got the potential of not letting Claudia go, because Lestat has not gotten any closure there, and he has a lot to atone for. He has done some really terrible things, and I think a wonderful motivation for a character going forward is shame.”
Interview is the first series in the AMC franchise. Anne Rice Immortal Universe now includes three series: Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, which is currently in production on season two, and the recently greenlit Anne Rice’s The Talamasca (working title).
Interview is critically acclaimed and boasts a 98 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes for seasons one and two.
Max Gao contributed to this story.