Sam Reid says Lestat’s live gig came with vampire-eye chaos
The actor told Mashable that contacts and in-ear monitors left him barely able to see or hear during the one-night concert.
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
Sam Reid’s one-night turn as Lestat de Lioncourt came with a very vampire problem: he could barely see or hear while doing it.
The actor told Mashable that The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only - LIVE, the concert tied to AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, was harder to process in the moment than it may have looked from the crowd. Reid performed in character as Lestat, singing songs written by Daniel Hart before a live audience.
According to Mashable, the event gave Reid a real-world taste of the attention his character chases onscreen, where Lestat pursues rock stardom on a violent, unruly tour across North America.
Reid, though, framed the concert as a job rather than a personal rock-star reveal. “These things, it’s very work for me,” he told Mashable. “I am not a touring musician. I’m an actor, and so I’m playing a character. I’m going out there, promoting a show.”
He said the night gave him a chance to perform Hart’s music with the musicians involved, specifically naming Hart. Reid told Mashable he was “really proud” of the music and said Hart “worked his ass off” on the season.
Reid leaned on Lestat, not his own nerves
For Reid, the character helped create distance from the vulnerability of singing as himself. He told Mashable that playing Lestat is “quite easy” for him, which gave the live performance a sense of comfort.
“There was a level of ease about it, because I’m not having to go out and share my own personal music and bear my soul,” Reid said.
That separation let him treat the show as a performance inside a familiar role. Reid described it to Mashable as the “joyful” experience of working through a character he already knows how to play.
Mashable’s review of the concert described Reid’s stage presence as drawing from David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler, noting that he sang, strutted, tossed his hair, threw a scarf and played the crowd with Lestat’s swagger.
The vampire look came at a cost
The glossy undead effect also created the night’s biggest practical headache. Reid said he wore contact lenses for Lestat’s vampire eyes, while also using in-ear monitors for the concert.
“I couldn’t really hear much or see much,” Reid told Mashable.
That left the actor with a blurred memory of the night itself. As AMC prepares the concert for release through its app, Reid said he has recently been watching recordings of the performance.
“I was like, ‘Wow, look at that. We did that!’” he told Mashable. “Because I don’t really remember it.”
Reid added that the experience is difficult to describe because he was “partially blind and deaf most of the time.”
The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only - LIVE debuts on AMC+ on Aug. 23, according to Mashable.
This story draws on original reporting from Mashable.