6 New Anne Rice Characters In Interview With The Vampire Season 3 Explained

Summary

• Lestat is taking center stage in
  Interview with the Vampire
  season 3, starting a band and going on tour.
• New characters like Akasha, Enkil, Magnus, Marius, Nicholas, and Gabrielle will join the adventure.
• The show stays true to Anne Rice’s characters, diving into their complex relationships and psychological depths.

Interview with the Vampire arrived in 2022 to high praise for its faithful rendering of the spirit of Anne Rice, and now a whole host of new characters from Anne Rice books have been revealed for Interview with the Vampire season 3. The season 3 press release announced that Lestat would be “starting a band and going on tour“, looking to The Vampire Lestat for its source material. It also confirmed which characters would join Lestat on this adventure. This horror-fantasy book series turned romantasy TV show somehow perfectly translated Rice’s characters thus far.

The Vampire Lestat is the second book in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles book series, which documents the exploits of Interview with the Vampire characters Lestat, Louis, Daniel, Claudia, and Armand. A vast web of other characters is involved in this book, and the next, The Queen of the Damned, which Interview with the Vampire season 3 may touch on. Showrunner Rolin Jones said “Lestat will be front and center telling the story” in season 3, just like he was in The Vampire Lestat, so all characters will be shown through Lestat’s eyes (via Variety).

6 Akasha

The Queen of the Damned

AMC cited “Those Who Must Be Kept” as new characters for Interview with the Vampire season 3, which book readers will know refers to Akasha, the Queen of the Damned. Namesake of the third book in The Vampire Chronicles, The Queen of the Damned, Akasha was one of the most ancient vampires alive. She appeared towards the end of The Vampire Lestat, securing her place in Interview with the Vampire season 3.

Interview with the Vampire
season 3 is expected sometime in 2025.

Akasha was tragically Aaliyah’s last role in cinema in the 2002 movie adaptation Queen of the Damned, as she starred alongside Stuart Townsend’s Lestat. Her seductive Akasha hit all the right notes, so Interview with the Vampire season 3’s Akasha has big shoes to fill. If the source material is anything to go by, the show’s Akasha may involve a trip to a sunny island of some kind for Lestat. It looks like he needs a holiday, but this may not be the R&R opportunity normally associated with sunny islands.

5 Enkil

The Queen of the Damned

The other half of the “Those Who Must Be Kept” moniker, Enkil plays a central role in both the origin of vampires and the plot of The Vampire Lestat, although not appearing throughout most of it. Vampire lore fiends will be pleased to learn of the existence of Enkil, as they get to learn more about where vampires come from and how they function. Enkil wasn’t in the Queen of the Damned movie, so Interview with the Vampire season 3 has a fresh slate to adapt from.

Enkil’s villainy could make an important foil for the show’s suite of anti-heroes.

Enkil could join the show as a powerful threat to Lestat and whatever friends he may have at the time – he’s an example from The Vampire Chronicles of a supporting character that plays a mostly antagonistic role throughout. Putting another vampire villain of true Anne Rice caliber on the table would make Lestat, Louis, and Armand look nice in comparison. Enkil’s villainy could make an important foil for the show’s suite of anti-heroes. Then again, Anne Rice and Rolin Jones both tapped the joy and humanity of giving every villain a chance to speak, and that is never unwelcome here.

4 Magnus

The Vampire Lestat

A most contentious character alluded to briefly in Interview with the Vampire, Magnus was presented by Lestat as a Silence-of-the-Lambs-type serial killer of a vampire who “collected” young men of Lestat’s physical type. One of the characters confirmed to join Interview with the Vampire season 3, Magnus, will likely be a character used to explore Lestat’s past, like in the books. However, he may appear in more than just flashbacks – the show has gone off-script before, and it will again.

Presenting a vampire in this light raises interesting questions in the show – after all, they are all essentially serial killers. This was a point pressed by the ever-real Daniel Molloy in the first two seasons, and it was an absolutely critical point for the show to nail, and it did so with aplomb. The show’s self-awareness is what sets it apart from previous adaptations and makes it feel most like an Anne Rice novel, with the novels’ profound psychological portraits coming from looking at their characters from multiple angles and character perspectives.

As vampire-fronted horror-fantasy, the show and books romanticized killing and death, often in suitably romanticized period settings. But when Daniel brought the show and viewers back to the present day, he whipped the show out of horror-fantasy and into police procedural mode, slamming the serial-killing reality of vampires onto the table. This genre-switching is as Anne Rice as it gets, and frees the show from the constraints former adaptations suffered. Perhaps the only difference between Louis and Magnus is their eye color – but that will be for audiences to decide in Interview with the Vampire season 3.

3 Marius

The Vampire Lestat

The maker of the show’s premiere bad guy, Armand, Marius has a lot to answer for and a story to tell in Interview with the Vampire season 3. As anyone who has read the books knows, Armand is far from a “bad guy” in the grand scheme of things. But anyone who has seen the show could probably attest to this too, with Jones and Armand actor Assad Zaman both painting layer upon layer of sympathetic nuance onto him. Like father, like son – Marius is as far away from a clear-cut villain as Armand, and indeed, most Anne Rice characters.

Marius’ entry to Interview with the Vampire season 3 may blow up events in a big way, with his power in The Vampire Chronicles a social one as well as a physical one. One of the oldest, but also one of the kindest, he was imbued by Rice with the kind of maturity that invited cheeky, apologist reactions to his ancient pederasty (Medieval times don’t count). Marius was a rare diplomat in a hostile world, and it will be interesting to see how he comes across in Interview with the Vampire season 3.

2 Nicholas

The Vampire Lestat

Nicholas will be another intriguing figure to bring to the small screen, as Lestat’s old flame. If Interview with the Vampire season 3 will tell Lestat’s story, Nicholas can be expected to play a major role. Lestat spent a lot of The Vampire Lestat telling his origin story in an autobiography that was embedded into the text, representing the work created and published by Lestat in-universe, in response to the publication of Louis’ interview with Daniel. In this part of the book, Nicki was Lestat’s first great love and first great heartbreak.

The first great love and the first great heartbreak, normally involving the same person, remain a cosmic connection for life, and it is this formative influence that Nicholas had on Lestat. His presence is therefore non-negotiable in Interview with the Vampire. Nicholas actually already cropped up in the show, making an appearance in Interview with the Vampire season 2.

1 Gabrielle

The Vampire Lestat

Gabrielle must be one of the best characters in Anne Rice’s world, and is an important character in The Vampire Lestat, so her addition to Interview with the Vampire season 3 was inevitable. Some would argue that it’s a shame that the books didn’t spend longer on her and instead ruminated on the Mayfair witches from Anne Rice’s other series, Lives of the Mayfair Witches. Now confirmed by AMC, her inclusion could make for one of television’s best explorations of motherhood, if she gets the same psychological depth and realization as other Interview with the Vampire characters.

Anne Rice’s
Lives of the Mayfair Witches
book series was consecutively
The Witching Hour
,
Lasher
, and
Taltos
.

Described by Anne Rice as an intrepid explorer, Gabrielle made up an exploration of gender in The Vampire Lestat which reflected Anne Rice’s own gender confusion. This is a pertinent topic for a contemporary audience that the world is ready for, after Hollywood’s fair but drab-in-comparison attempts to adapt Anne Rice thus far. What’s most exciting is how on earth Lestat expects to juggle Louis’ love-hate energy with the love-hate energy of Gabrielle – his very own mother – in Interview with the Vampire season 3.

Sources: Variety, AMC