A NEW ERA BEGINS! INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE EVOLVES AS SEASON 4 EMBRACES THE VAMPIRE LESTAT.K2 🩸

The show will now be called “Queen of the Damned,” based on Anne Rice’s book of the same name.

Sheila Atim as Akasha on ‘The Vampire Lestat’.Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) had his rockstar moment in season 3 of Interview With the Vampire (a.k.a The Vampire Lestat), but now it’s a woman’s time to shine.

Not only has AMC renewed its first Anne Rice series for season 4, but it’s once again changing the title to fit the season’s center. This time, it’s the one and only Akasha, played by Sheila Atim. Season 4 will officially be titled Queen of the Damned, based on Rice’s third book of the same name.

The news was announced during the show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel on Friday, featuring series executive producers Mark Johnson and Hannah Moscovitch, along with stars Atim, Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, and Eric Bogosian.

“In The Vampire Lestat, Mark, Rolin, Hannah, and this extraordinary cast delivered an unforgettable season filled with propulsive storytelling that captivated the passionate and engaged fans of this franchise,” Dan McDermott, Chief Content Officer of AMC Global Media and President of AMC Studios, said in a statement. “We can’t wait to continue the journey with Queen of the Damned, one of the most iconic stories in Anne Rice’s mythology, and watch our established and beloved characters confront Akasha with their world, and ours, very much hanging in the balance.”

The renewal and title change also came with a brief teaser to give fans a peek at what’s in store when Akasha takes over the main stage.

In the video, Atim speaks over clips of women protesting, and flashes of her portraying Akasha. “You who have called to me, not knowing my name. You, with your dresses stained, your faces down in the mud. I have heard you,” she says.

“And I say this to you now: Do not let them shape you into the size of their cage. Women, get up out of the ditches where they have thrown you, and come with me now to where the men are gathered, and do what you have long longed to do,” Akasha demands. “Kill them all.”

In the final seconds of the teaser, Akasha’s cry from her moment of awakening in season 3 rings out, “I am the answer!”

Queen of the Damned will be executive produced and showrun by Moscovitch — who was a writer on the first two seasons of Interview With the Vampire and an executive producer on The Vampire Lestat, for which she specifically wrote for Akasha and Gabriella — along with executive producers Johnson and Rolin Jones.

The series’ renewal closely follows Sunday’s season 3 finale, which AMC notes in a press release is among the highest-rated TV shows of the year on Rotten Tomatoes.

In the final moments of the episode, Lestat is shown recording “The Failures” while smoking a cigarette in a silk robe, wondering aloud to the listener whether he’s done a good job of conveying how he felt. Lestat continues in voiceover: “What did I say at the start of this as to the queen, as to destruction unleashed? Something about the regretful dead and, hmm, what was it? Traumatized alive? That I had made a contribution?”

At this, Lestat opens a balcony door and sees New York City in a truly post-apocalyptic state. “I take that back,” he adds. “The fault was mine.”

Season 3 showrunner Rolin Jones has already said that he considers the installment as part one of two, but when asked what’s left to dig into after the events of Sunday’s finale, Jones told Entertainment Weekly, “The fun part is how do you get from that scene to the opening season auction when [Armand and Louis] are in the same room? How do we get there?”

Furthermore, he said that season 3 was so centered on Lestat that “there’s a lot of stuff that happened off-screen this year,” hinting that those stories could be explored.

And, of course, there’s Louis and Lestat, who had finally maybe started to rekindle something before they both (literally) lost their heads. Jones said he thinks fans will likely find them “in a pretty good place” in a future installment. Not that that will last for long.

All episodes of The Vampire Lestat are now streaming on AMC+.