‘The Vampire Lestat’ One Night Only Concert Was So Sexy I Could Die [Video]
I was already excited for The Vampire Lestat when I ugly-cried to the last episode of Interview with the Vampire. But seeing Sam Reid perform in character as Lestat de Lioncourt last night — not just in the first episode of The Vampire Lestat, but live, on stage, at New York City’s Beacon Theatre — sparked an entirely different excitement inside of me.
It started with my Uber pulling up to the Beacon. The last time I visited this venue was for a comedy show held last year. If I had been unsure where to get out, I knew I was in the right place from undeniable visual cues.
The finest leather, lace, and studs, scarlet and violet and slime green hair, and platform boots tickled my brain. The Interview with the Vampire fandom was a sight for sore eyes. And from the sea of goth baddies milling about Amsterdam and 75th, it was clear: The sick souls who could only be cured by Lestat de Lioncourt were here, in large numbers.
The energy was upbeat but a little antsy. I hunted down my ticket eagerly, excited that I had a physical reminder of the evening. As a ’90s baby, my days of collecting physical concert tickets ended in undergrad. The ticket to see The Vampire Lestat felt good between my fingers. Apart from being Instagrammable, the memento felt on-brand for the night. It reminded me of how, back in 2018, Nine Inch Nails decided to exclusively sell tickets to their Cold and Dark and Infinite tour in a physical format. Analog ticketing for a 2026 event seemed like something the vampire Lestat would dream up.
Physical media also felt emblematic of the first episode of the show, The Vampire Lestat. The episode deals with several recordings and vinyls from Lestat’s personal archive titled “Failure.” The show starts with a bidding war for those coveted bits of the vampire, with bids reaching millions of yen. The voiceover you hear this season isn’t Louis de Point du Lac spilling his guts to Daniel Molloy, but Lestat’s purr on wax. And as our immortal rockstar makes his public foray into the 21st century this season, he is constantly straddling new and old — and so were IWTV fans on Tuesday.
The Beacon Theatre was built in 1929, a year when only a vampire could have thrived. The venue still has its Art Deco shapes and nods to classic architecture. It’s a theatre that has seen the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and now the Vampire Lestat, who looked right at home under the crystalline chandelier and brass moldings.
Before that moment when the world bore witness to Lestat in the flesh, we all seemed cautiously optimistic. There had to be a reason why, within a block of the Beacon Theatre, Reid’s hard, shirtless body was writhing at you on every façade that could hold a poster. There had to be something special inside of Reid for us to get to this point, where women, like the lovely ones I met, were flying in from South Carolina to get a glimpse of this fictional god. On Tuesday, we found out that Reid’s divine je ne sais quoi was real.
Some actors can’t make the transition to musical artists. Likewise, the best musicians of our generation don’t always shine as actors. (I will name the main one who comes to mind, but ironically, we find out Lestat is a huge fan of them in the season premiere.) From the very first campy, sultry notes of “Long Face,” the lead single from Lestat’s band, I had no doubt that Sam Reid had been in the trenches — from vocal coaching to choreography.
I tried to be dutiful, like Daniel Molloy in the first season of IWTV. I observed the logistics of the show, Reid’s form, the lights, the blocking, the timbre of the music. But I felt myself start to slip a little. Like the fictional fans following this immortal rockstar from city to city in Anne Rice’s universe, I felt absolutely transfixed watching Reid. I could see him warming up, unfurling like the petals of a flower in bloom.
He became less rigid, slowly shimmying into a cadence that felt warm and loose and powerful. I could tell he was taking all the advice he had likely received to heart: He made sure to walk to each side of the stage, so everyone could get something good for TikTok. He took a moment to reach his fingers to the sky, acknowledging the left and right sides of the balcony in equal measure.
And then it was as if a switch flipped. Was it the endless roaring of the crowd when he lowered himself to the ground and started to crawl across the stage? Was it looking into the faces of the orchestra, delirious with pleasure, as he swung his hips and strutted across the stage? Was it the raucous screaming in between costume changes, when we could glimpse a bit of scarred chest or the unfair definition of his arms?
Whatever it was created a positive feedback loop. The more crazed with lust the audience was, the more alive Lestat — I mean, Reid — became. At one point, I couldn’t even think about content or capturing the perfect video. I had to lower my phone and truly think about what I was witnessing. I made this choice both because I was awestruck and because the line between fiction and reality was starting to blur.
Maybe Lestat isn’t real, but Sam Reid’s star power is. And maybe bloodsucking creatures of the night don’t exist, but the idea of Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman as vampires is powerful enough to make people shriek at the mere sight of them.
Hearing Daniel Hart and company shred, with a feather-clad and glitter-smeared Reid front and center, as an audience of die-hard fans melted at Lestat’s every move, was enough to put anyone under a vampire’s spell.
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