Sam Reid Became Anne Rice's Lestat at the Beacon Theatre and Fans Were Not Ready
Before a single episode of the new The Vampire Lestat season had aired on AMC, the show had already done something television almost never attempts. It made its fans feel like they were living inside the fiction.
On June 2, five days before the Season 3 premiere, AMC took over the Beacon Theatre in New York City for a one-night-only event billed as the final stop on Lestat's world tour. Fans who had scored complimentary tickets through an online lottery arrived to find the venue transformed into something between a prestige television premiere and a genuine rock concert. The cast sat in the audience alongside fans and press. After a screening of the new premiere episode, Sam Reid, fully in character as Lestat de Lioncourt, walked onstage and performed a 30-minute live set.
What followed has been described by everyone who was there in terms that go well beyond the usual superlatives of entertainment coverage. The TV Cave called it 'the best screening I have ever attended.' Bloody Disgusting wrote that Reid fed off the crowd's energy in a way that was 'a perfect distillation of the series' thoughtful relationship with its audience.' The Wrap reported that the theater's 2,894 seats were not enough; fans had traveled from Boston and Philadelphia just to be in the room, and hundreds more stood outside without tickets, unwilling to leave.
Reid had thought carefully about the strange meta-quality of the night. He told IndieWire beforehand, 'Lestat has a TV show, and then he also has a band. So if he's out in the real world, this is him promoting his TV show, but also, this is his band.' Series composer Daniel Hart (who wrote all the original music Lestat performs on screen this season) played onstage alongside Reid, making the night as much a genuine concert as a promotional event.
Review embargoes lifted the same day as the concert, and the numbers came in alongside the cheers: The Vampire Lestat debuted at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising Sam Reid's performance as the season's driving force. The Wrap's Kayleigh Donaldson called it 'a striking and nervy piece of work that goes there over and over again.' RogerEbert.com's Sherin Nicole wrote that it was 'both wicked and charming while remaining unrepentantly dangerous.' Screen Rant's Nick Bythrow called it one of the best seasons of television in 2026.
The series, based on Anne Rice's novel and originally titled Interview With the Vampire when it debuted on AMC in 2022, has now logged a 99% critical average across all three of its seasons, a consistency that almost no prestige cable drama has matched. Season 3 carries a new title, again drawn from Anne Rice's second Vampire Chronicles novel, highlighting a shift in the show. This is Lestat's story now, and judging by June 2 at the Beacon, he already owns it.
The Vampire Lestat airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.
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This story was originally published June 7, 2026 at 9:42 AM.