Caroline Preece has more than 15 years of experience writing entertainment content. Her work for outlets including Den of Geek, Backstage, Tom’s Guide, CultBox, and Starburst prioritizes sharp analysis and reader-first reporting with a particular interest in the ways storytelling, audience behavior, and digital culture drive modern entertainment trends.
AMC spent two seasons building one of the best critical track records on television, then did something genuinely risky with the third: it changed the show's name. Interview With the Vampire is now rebranded as The Vampire Lestat, handing the microphone to its most volatile character and trusting that viewers will follow him into far stranger territory. Early signs suggest the gamble has paid off.
At the time of writing, ahead of its Jun. 7 debut on AMC, The Vampire Lestat has landed a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 13 early reviews and still climbing. That continues a rare franchise streak — the first season scored 98% and the second settled at a still-stellar 94% — the kind of consistency most prestige cable never manages across a single run, let alone three.
The reinvention is built around Sam Reid, whose Lestat has graduated from a supporting menace to a full-fledged leading man. Showrunner Rolin Jones adapts Anne Rice's 1985 novel of the same name — the first sequel to her 1976 debut and the second book in The Vampire Chronicles — by making its title vampire a glam-rock star touring North America, furious at how he came across in the book Louis and journalist Daniel Molloy published about him. Reid performs his own vocals throughout the season, with the present-day storyline following newly turned Daniel (Eric Bogosian) as he trails the band to film a rock documentary.
Jennifer Ehle joins as Lestat's icy, aristocratic mother, Gabrielle, and the season reaches back to his pre-Revolutionary-France origins between tour stops. It's also a pointed do-over: the 2002 film Queen of the Damned squeezed this same novel into a generic nu-metal misfire, and Jones is plainly out to prove the glam-rock conceit can be played straight.
The wall-to-wall enthusiasm hasn't been quite universal, though. MovieWeb's own review gave the season a three out of five, calling it "a lot, for better and worse" while finding its early episodes almost too frantic before they settle into something steadier. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes have been warmer, repeatedly singling out Reid and the show's appetite for reinvention.
The strong reception arrives at a useful moment for AMC, as the series anchors the network's Immortal Universe of Anne Rice adaptations, which has had a bumpier year elsewhere. The spin-off Talamasca: The Secret Order was canceled in March after a single season, and Mayfair Witches has drawn softer reviews. A third near-perfect run for the flagship hands the wider franchise something steadier to build on, with Mayfair Witches Season 3 also expected this year.
What returns Jun. 7 is, by the show's own design, a louder and more chaotic proposition than the gothic chamber piece that started it. Whether that 100% score survives once all seven episodes of The Vampire Lestat are available to critics is still an open question — but, based on the evidence so far, it seems the show's big swing has paid off.