Love The Vampire Lestat and Want More? Here’s What You Can Do to Help!

The second season of Interview with the Vampire was announced in September 2022, just ahead of the show’s October series premiere. AMC had a lot of confidence about a bright future for the Anne Rice Immortal Universe and wanted to instill confidence in the fans that the show would be sticking around. However, there are no guarantees anymore. As fans, we need to do our part to ensure that The Vampire Lestat gets another season while paving the way for more vampires, witches and other supernatural creatures in the future.

Back in 2010, The Walking Dead debuted in primetime. No one knew whether a drama about the zombie apocalypse would survive in primetime so it was given a six-episode first season to test the water. The show became a massive hit, paving the way for HBO to throw the dice on Game of Thrones a year later. Soon, Sunday nights were a ratings race between zombies and dragons.

AMC granted The Walking Dead a longer 13-episode season for its sophomore campaign before the show settled into its permanent 16-episode format – eight episodes in the fall and eight in the spring, every year – in season 3. It stayed this way until the pandemic arrived and led to an extended tenth season and even more extended eleventh season, which happened to be its last.

I always hoped that after the first season, we would see a longer second season of Interview with the Vampire and, eventually, The Vampire Lestat. Imagine knowing that there would be 16 episodes per year, released on a schedule that was easy to predict and fairly regular to follow. In the case of The Walking Dead, that meant a premiere in October, hiatus in the winter and return in February. But that’s probably never going to happen. Like, ever.

Things haven’t been the same for television since the pandemic. The pandemic led to production delays across the board; actors’ contracts needed to be renegotiated because projects started to overlap (example: you have a contract that’s supposed to wrap up in November so you can film a new project in January, but all of a sudden the first project is pushed to April…so how do you make that work?) and the same issues arise with filming locations and the availability of crews.

Networks were scrambling to get their shows back on the air, and then Screen Actors Guild and Writer’s Guild of America strikes shut production down again. Once the strikes were settled and filming started again, the sad reality is that cost-cutting happened to an even greater degree and all of a sudden networks and streamers were determined to trim as much as they could from their budgets. Shows were cancelled, continuing seasons of shows continued to be shortened and projects in development (like the Night Island) were scrapped or never mentioned again.

Even when a show is popular, if it’s expensive to produce the networks have an obligation to justify costs to shareholders and that can lead to a show’s demise. You might remember how popular shows like Lucifer and Manifest were cancelled and given a very successful new life on Netflix to wrap up their stories for faithful fans. Or, in the case of NBC’s La Brea, it was cancelled by the network and now it’s in the Netflix Top 10.

Well, the bottom line is that nothing is safe anymore. Talamasca: The Secret Order was a great show but it was cancelled after one season. Despite the success of the Anne Rice Immortal Universe, AMC cut Talamasca short even though it was supposed to dovetail into the other shows in the franchise. Talamasca, like La Brea, might find success on Netflix when new viewers can find it and binge it after devouring IWTV and Mayfair Witches.

So what does all of this mean for our vampires and witches, and how can you help? The reality is that all data is tracked these days. Whether you’re watching live on AMC, as soon as the episode drops on AMC+ or a combination of both, including recording it and watching it later or watching on demand, all of these things help a show’s metrics. The metrics determine whether a show is successful or not. Social media interaction is helpful, but at the end of the day something can be wildly popular across social media but fail to have the numbers to support it because no one is watching.

The best thing you can do as a fan is to watch the show, either on AMC or AMC+, or wherever it’s available to watch where you are.

I’m not kidding when I say that when I love a show, I will turn it on a leave it on all day, playing in the background, because every time it comes on it is a positive uptick in the show’s metrics.

The unfortunate reality with a show like The Vampire Lestat, and even with Mayfair Witches and all of The Walking Dead spinoffs, is that these short seasons are expensive and require a lot of post-production work before they can air. That means we have to wait a year or more between seasons and that’s not easy to do. But the only way to make sure that the next season of any of these shows is made is to support it, and that means watching the show on official platforms.

I’m curious from my readers – where are you in the world and where/how do you watch The Vampire Lestat? Let me know in the comments or on social media!