In The Vampire Lestat, Lestat is begrudgingly unifying the Great Conversion, the movement to bring vampires together and into their power. Mostly, he’s doing it at the behest of his mother/lover Gabriella, who is the one who truly dreams of vampire unification. And while it’s clear Lestat is being cast in a leadership role among the vampire set, if you ask him, he’s just “gifting the Great Conversion an anthem,” with no intent to become a “dark monarch” or lead the vampires after his pièce de résistance concert. But what does Lestat imagine doing once he sheds his Lestat (rockstar/leader/Brat Prince) skin? Well, it turns out Lestat harbors secret ambitions to be a birder in The Vampire Lestat. And while we, ourselves, never imagined Lestat to be the birding sort, our interviews with Sam Reid in the run up to The Vampire Lestat shed a little bit more light on where this secret ambition may have come from. Sometimes, Lestat possesses Sam Reid. But it feels like sometimes Sam Reid possesses Lestat right back.
In episode six of The Vampire Lestat, Lestat shares his birder ambitions with Louis and Daniel. He notes, “I’ve been dreaming of forests. Every night this month, of pumpkins. I own a cabin right next to a forest, and I walk a path nightly with paper and pen, transcribing bird song. I could do that for a decade.” Louis grins at him and notes, “Iggy to Birder.” Well, in a sense, we guess birds are the original singers, and if singing is Lestat’s passion, then transcribing bird song in true birder fashion could be the purest form of capturing that love.
But, as we noted above, it feels to us like this new unveiling of Lestat’s birdsong passion comes the core of him, actor Sam Reid. In our The Vampire Lestat interviews, we asked Reid our signature Nerdist question: “What do you nerd out about?” And his answer sounds suspiciously close to Lestat’s. He offered, “I nerd out about plants. I really like gardening. I spend a lot of time doing that. I’m not a birder, but I’m definitely into spending time in nature. So that’s my nerd out time.”
To which Jacob Anderson responded with a grin, “I’m not a birder, but I’m not not a birder.” And Reid laughed, “I’m saying not I’m not a birder, but I’m not a birder. You know what I mean?”
To which we all laugh and promise that we only have the highest regard for birders. But all this talk of birder-hood from Sam Reid does seem to echo Lestat’s own secret nerdiness and sudden desire for forests, pumpkins, and birds. It feels too close to be a coincidence. And we’re kind of obsessed with it. Reid has talked at length about how playing Lestat in The Vampire Lestat has consumed him. So it’s only fair that a part of him gets to imbue Lestat as well.
At the end of episode six of The Vampire Lestat, birds and plants are revisited one more time. “If it was just the two of us again… A trailer park. Havana. Utah. The Desert. A couple folding chairs. Plant some flower boxes.” Louis muses, asking, “What blooms at night?” To which, Lestat, once again echoing Reid’s love of plants, immediately answers, “Evening primrose.” And Louis smiles and asks, “Got birds in the desert?”
Birding, planting, Louis and Lestat. “Could be nice.” Alas, the conversation is cut short for the moment in The Vampire Lestat… Literally. And for now, it looks like Lestat’s birder/gardener/wilderness dreams with Louis will have to be put on hold. But hopefully, one day in the future, the long eternity will yield such happy stretches. We hope to see it. In the meantime, we hope Sam Reid is enjoying both birding and gardening on behalf of Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat airs Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and midnight PT on AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to air.
Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She is ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail. But she wants Louis and Lestat to be happy too!
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