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The Vampire Lestat Review: Sam Reid’s Brilliantly Chaotic Takeover

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How do you cope with a breakup? A lot of people turn to music, singing their hearts out in the shower to weepie ballads or go-get-‘em empowerment numbers. If you’re Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), the vampire with a flair for the dramatic, and someone wrote a book depicting you as a tantrum-throwing narcissist, you become a full-blown rock star with an album of response tracks, and you take it on the road with your semi-bemused human band.

Most of the living world thinks it’s a cheap gimmick (and one that isn’t even selling out venues), but for Lestat, it’s a cry in the dark, and a chance to set the record straight. If only his own mind would let him.

Showrunner Rolin Jones proved a hell of a lot of doubters wrong with “Interview with the Vampire,” adapting Anne Rice’s legendary novel with a deft hand that offered some fascinating changes without losing the lascivious yet earnest tone of the book. Now, with a title change, the show’s third season takes on the second book in “The Vampire Chronicles,” the one that is widely considered to be the best of a very ambitious saga. This is the one where Lestat, the most famous vampire since Dracula, is in charge, and Jones and company are not playing it safe.

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Sam Reid in “The Vampire Lestat.” (Sophie Giraud/AMC)

Left furious by what he sees as egregious errors in the book of Louis’s story, as published by the now-undead Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), Lestat hires the fledgling journalist to make a documentary of his band. But the lion’s share of his perspective comes from a collection of recordings, called “Failures,” made in what is presumed to be the aftermath of a destructive event (book fans, you know what’s coming.) He’s sullen, cheeky, somewhat self-aware but not always willing to confront the most troubling excesses of his past.

The story he tells goes off on weird tangents, pauses and restarts as he so desires, and may not be the whole truth. As with Rice’s novels, which cover varied perspectives and weave a “Rashomon”-esque battle of duelling narratives, Lestat admits that he’s often spinning tertiary asides to pad out his story. He may not have been there when Daniel and Louis (Jacob Anderson), his on-off great love, talked about the book, but he has to include that detail somewhere. And, of course, sometimes he’s just too high to think straight. It all adds a delicious and very Rice-esque flavor to the series, even as it deviates from the source material.

Therein has lain one of the show’s greatest strengths. Even as it changes characters and plots whole-cloth from their originals, they retain their integrity. It’s something the other shows in AMC’s attempt at an Immortal Universe have struggled with. “The Mayfair Witches” is too timid to be as weird as the books, and the now-canceled “Talamasca: The Secret Order,” while intriguing as a standalone series, seemed tonally at odds with its supernatural siblings. “The Vampire Lestat,” mercifully, is pretty effing odd. Indeed, it goes into some pretty disturbing territory that many Rice fans thought would be impossible for a mainstream adaptation.

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Jennifer Ehle in “The Vampire Lestat.” (Sophie Giraud/AMC)

And yes, that means Lestat is doing it with his mother. The vampire Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle, larging it up with an Italian accent), his fledgling and sometime-lover, is here, and the show does not flinch in showing the full extent of their twisted relationship. Gabriella is a woman who escapes the stifling confines of her time to become a proud monster who rejects every facet of motherhood — although, alas, the show does not portray her full rejection of gender that made her so thrilling in the book, which is one of the series’s rare missed opportunities. Button-pushing stuff, yes? But it’s also extremely faithful to the books. Things aren’t much better for poor Louis, who finds himself falling into a rabbit hole of psychological desperation that would make Freud flinch. Rice’s work is at its most startling when she confronts the cold, hard truth that vampires do not care for human morality. What’s a little moral depravity now and then when you’re not even alive?

And at the center of the hurricane is Sam Reid, who relishes the opportunity to be the full spectrum of Lestat. He’s an all-powerful vampire who also sobs for his mommy/girlfriend, craves outside validation, and suffers from about five different kinds of trauma. In 2025, he’s a fun niche, not an arena-filling legend, one who inspires fangirl devotion and tin-hat conspiracies alike. Reid rises to all of the challenges set before him: the strutting rockstar who mangles modern slang; the lost little boy; the jealous ex; the troubled youth; and the manipulative interviewee. Where the first two seasons blurred Lestat through Louis’s memory, here he is in his own words, which probably aren’t any more trustworthy than his ex’s. There’s a reason the show needed a title change, for Season 3 is The Sam Reid Show.

That’s not to say we’re denied time with our favorite vampires. Anderson is still excellent, here playing a somewhat more subdued Louis who is ready to move on but stumbles at the first hurdle. Eric Bogosian’s Daniel is an even more bitter pain in the neck now that he’s undead, directing the documentary and dealing with a few fledgling hiccups. His maker, Armand (Assad Zaman), has some apologizing to do, but how much can you trust a 500-year-old gremlin? The humans aren’t bad either, with Lestat’s band just trying to survive a North American tour without being drained by their lead singer.

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Jacob Anderson in “The Vampire Lestat. (Sophie Giraud/AMC)

Will fans get what they want from “The Vampire Lestat”? The series has never been one for fan service (another Rice-ian commitment), and its willingness to play around with its canon is what keeps audiences on their toes. Certainly, there are more than a few eye-widening shocks throughout this season that will surely inspire heated discourse, and the sheer glut of plot forced into a short season run leaves some moments in need of a deeper breath. It wouldn’t be an Anne Rice project without that. Still, this is a striking and nervy piece of work that goes there over and over again. Jones has proven that he could steer this show through the novels’ more unhinged deviations and make it gripping.

This “Vampire Chronicles” superfan is on the tour bus until the end.

“The Vampire Lestat” premieres June 7 on AMC and AMC+.

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Obama Relives Tan Suit Debacle In ‘Life, Larry & Pursuit of Unhappiness’

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As Larry David‘s comedic trip through U.S. history comes to an end, he took credit for one of the nation’s more recent presidential scandals.

On Friday’s season finale of the HBO sketch comedy miniseries Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance as himself in a sketch set in 2014, as David advised him to wear the now-infamous, outrage-inducing tan suit during his live press conference on military response to ISIS.

Following some banter on how the POTUS avoids stains, David accidentally spills juice on Obama’s suit jacket when he leaves the room. When the 44th president returns, the comedian recommends he wear the tan suit that Obama planned on taking it to Turin for NATO Summit, for “a daytime event, it’s outdoors, a little more casual.”

“First of all, it’s a gorgeous suit,” David declared. “And this is casual Friday!”

“It is a great suit,” admitted Obama, as David told him, “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move. … Old lips won’t let you down. You’ll thank me!”

As Obama models the look, David gives him his signature, “Pretty good! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.”

“You sure about this?” asks Obama, as David assures him, “Never been more sure about anything in my life. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”

Obama’s cameo in the finale comes as David marks the United States Semiquencentennial with the seven-part sketch comedy limited series, which recounts major events in U.S. history through the comedian’s signature observational humor.

David’s longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm partner Jeff Schaffer, who serves as an executive producer on Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, previously told Deadline that Obama, who produced under his Higher Ground banner, reached out to his buddy David to ask if he’d be interested in making the show to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.

“When you’re doing a show about American history, you want to do it warts and right now we have this orange saggy wart that we wish would go away,” said Schaffer. “But the nice thing about having President Obama produce this and be a part of it is that this country’s had a lot of fuck ups, we’ve seemed to have learned very little, but we’re still moving forward sometimes, and then we move back a little bit, but we always move forward again. While Larry’s pointing out a lot of the steps back, the President is telling us we can still step forward.”

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Matthew McConaughey Performs “Quill” From ‘Rivals of Amziah King’ — Watch

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Matthew McConaughey shows off his vocal skills (and some hidden banjo talents) with his latest role in The Rivals of Amziah King.

On Friday, Lakeshore Records released the single and music video for “Quill” from the original motion picture soundtrack, performed by the Oscar-winning and co-star Ben Hardesty, also featuring Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.

Set in the backwoods of Oklahoma, The Rivals of Amziah King follows the musically gifted Amaziah King (McConaughey) and his bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amaziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the chance to reconnect and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amaziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.

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Premiering Aug. 14 in theaters, the Andrew Patterson-written-and-directed drama also stars Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell.

Producers are David Heyman, Teddy Schwarzman, Jeffrey Clifford, Michael Heimler, James Montague and Will Greenfield.

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Jane Schoenbrun On Tackling “Toxic Soup” Of Slasher Genre In ‘Camp Miasma’

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With their latest directorial outing, Jane Schoenbrun used subtle pieces of nostalgia to deconstruct the slasher genre.

The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer/director explained to Deadline that they wanted to create “a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary,” noting the frequent symbolism of candy and junk food as providing an atmosphere “that’s actually safe” while diving into a horror movie or exploring sexuality after trauma.

“There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe,” said Schoenbrun, who is non-binary. “Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, ‘Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.’”

In Schoenbrun’s latest film, Hannah Einbinder stars as queer director Kris, who is tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. While courting Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, to reprise her role, the pair spirals into a psychosexual frenzy as the slasher’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), comes to life.

Acknowledging the problematic trans representation of horror films like Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Schoenbrun admitted the genre has been “catnip to me since I was 10 years old,” and they jumped at the chance to direct their own.

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Jane Schoenbrun attends the ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ premiere on Aug. 5, 2026 in New York City.

“So many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals … And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy,” they explained.

“But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants,” said Schoenbrun. “It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.”

Read on about Jane Schoenbrun’s love letter to the slasher genre with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, now playing in theaters.

DEADLINE: It was really fun to see the slasher genre through your eyes. Tell me about finding inspiration in that genre and “final girls.” 

JANE SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world because it’s just one of those genres that has been catnip to me since I was 10 years old. I just raided the horror section of the video store as a kid from an age when I really shouldn’t have been doing that, like in 5th grade, I watched in the span of about one week, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think that I was always drawn to movies and really anything entertainment where it felt forbidden in some way, like the thing on the tape, how is that even allowed? And that’s the thing that I love about a lot of my favorite slashers. Don’t get me wrong, I love like brutal ones, like I love Texas Chainsaw, that’s a nasty movie at its core, and that’s what’s so special about it. But so many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals of, OK, what’s the most outrageous way that like these like dumb kids can get killed? But watching it, it’s not about fear a lot of the time, it’s about joy and celebration. And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy. But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Sleepway Camp or Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface in drag. It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language. 

‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026)

DEADLINE: I’m curious about the symbolism of all the processed junk food and the chandelier of wrappers.

SCHOENBRUN: The junk food in the movie, I forget when it found its way in there. It’s like so much of the movie is about, like I said, ritual, about being in a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary, whether that be Kris [Hannah Einbinder] in bed, with, you know, with Raisinets and the popcorn, watching a schlocky horror movie, or the two characters learning how to be present and enjoy sex after a lot of trauma. There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe. Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, “Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.”

DEADLINE: And one thing I really love—I just feel like it’s a theme in your work—is how it depicts the way media and entertainment influence us. Why does that inspire you? 

SCHOENBRUN: I think it comes from a fascination and sensitivity to the complex relationship between what we think of as fiction and what we think of as reality, which we tend to, as a society, think of as pointing in one direction. Like, reality dictates fiction, not vice-versa, but when you actually look at the way the world works, it’s like one echoes off the other. And I think a complicated, sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful way, where the fiction, the cultural norms, the things we grow up looking at on our screens, the roles that we’re told people play, they kind of inspire us to create reality. There’s something liberating when you start thinking in that way. I think it’s a way of thinking that we as a culture, could do a lot more of. To think about the idea of fiction inspiring reality just as much as reality is inspiring fiction, is a potential path to liberating us from this hellscape that they’re telling us is the only way the world can be. 

Gillian Anderson in ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026)

DEADLINE: And I know you have the Secretary reading. Tell me what it’s been like prepping for that and why you all chose that movie. 

SCHOENBRUN: I mean, that was such a huge influence on on Miasma. There just aren’t that many fun and funny movies about deviant sex. And just the way that movie is like feather light while talking about really raw and taboo things, it is just really inspiring to me. And the dynamic between those two main characters is definitely one that had a lot of influence on on Kris and Billy’s [Gillian Anderson] relationship in Miasma. And it’s already to me a very queer movie in its way, but having Gillian reading the James Spader part and Hannah reading the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, I think it’s just gonna be like a very unique joy. Honestly, we’ve been prepping a little bit, but I think it’s just gonna be about getting up there and feeling the chemistry of it all, and just letting these folks who we have all gotten to know each other really, really well, but we haven’t actually done anything wacky and creative like that in a while, like as a reunion, it’s gonna be a real blast, I think.

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