Inside The Vampire Lestat’s Brilliant Production Design
Blood farms and custom guitars: TVL production designer Andres Cubillan shares insights into the season’s most memorable setpieces.
Mara LaPere-Schloop’s work on the first two seasons of Interview with the Vampire is a triumph of TV production design, from the gothic atmosphere of New Orleans flashbacks to the cleverly curated backdrop of the Dubai interview sequences, where Louis’ and Armand’s penthouse gradually revealed itself to be something between a mausoleum and a gallery of suppressed memories.
Taking over as production designer for season 3, aka The Vampire Lestat, Andres Cubillan offers us a similarly impressive level of attention to detail. In the layout of Lestat’s tour bus, we see a physical manifestation of the tensions among the band and entourage, as the humans sleep in cramped bunkbeds while their vampire frontman enjoys a luxurious floor all to himself. During flashbacks to Lestat’s childhood home in Auvergne, France, the decor offers eerie hints of his violent upbringing and his family’s money troubles. And in the Fang Gang’s dungeon-like basement, Cubillan’s design team created a gory house of horrors, reiterating the show’s ability to pivot between radically different emotional tones.
One of the many recurring compliments paid to Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat is the sheer volume of information this show can pack into every episode. This season in particular is full of clever creative choices that may only become apparent on repeat viewings, so it was a true pleasure to speak with Andres Cubillan after the finale, sharing his thoughts on some of the show’s most compelling design choices. And yes, that obviously includes Lestat’s blood shower—which turned out to have a rather unexpected origin story.
Lestat’s Montreal apartment
Season 3 is bookended by scenes in Lestat’s beautifully decorated Montreal apartment, a space that reflects the less chaotic side of his personality, as a wealthy aesthete who, like Louis, appreciates the finer things in life. Before now, we’ve seen his shared home with Louis and Claudia in early 20th-century New Orleans; the only time we’ve seen him in the present day is in a barren shack in the season 2 finale. This new apartment is our first real look at his tastes as a single man on a relatively even keel, decorating for himself rather than performing for outside consumption—although there’s a telling moment in the season premiere when he asks Louis via video call if he can recommend a painting to hang in the guest room. So maybe he’s hoping to impress one person in particular.
