{"id":521812,"date":"2026-07-12T03:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T03:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/521812\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T03:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T03:46:12","slug":"sam-reid-the-vampire-lestat-interview-with-the-vampire-star-reveals-why-he-returned-to-australia-for-theatre-stint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/521812\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Reid: The Vampire Lestat, Interview with the Vampire star reveals why he returned to Australia for theatre stint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Sam Reid had just hit a new peak of Hollywood fame<\/a> when an unlikely job offer hit his proverbial desk and brought him home to Sydney<\/a>, Australia.<\/p>\n

The 39-year-old actor \u2013 best known for The Newsreader, Interview with the Vampire, and The Vampire Lestat \u2013 hadn\u2019t even auditioned for the part he was being offered, but knew he couldn\u2019t turn it down.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Australian actor Sam Reid was riding the high of his success in ‘Interview with the Vampire’ and ‘The Vampire Lestat’ when he got a job offer he couldn’t refuse.\u00a0Marleen Moise<\/p>\n

After all, one famous Aussie Sam had already stepped away from the gig.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really audition, but I probably should have,\u201d Reid tells nine.com.au in a quiet corner at Roslyn Packer Theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just felt like it was one of those things that I couldn\u2019t not do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s dressed down in a black shirt and jeans for our chat, but in a few hours\u2019 time Reid will take to the stage in full religious garb to play Father Flynn in Sydney Theatre Company\u2019s revival of Doubt: A Parable.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The part was originally bestowed upon Sam Worthington<\/a> but when he withdrew for personal reasons, Reid was asked to step in. <\/p>\n

There were just two problems.<\/p>\n

First, Reid had already committed to the press tour for The Vampire Lestat, the hit series that has taken over TikTok and won Reid an army of fans around the globe.<\/p>\n

Second, that press tour would require him to be on the other side of the planet during rehearsals for Doubt.<\/p>\n

Rather than miss out on Reid, Sydney Theatre Company reorganised the entire production\u2019s schedule around his work in the US.<\/p>\n

Having now witnessed the craze that followed him home to Australia \u2013 like lines of fans waiting to meet him outside the theatre every night \u2013 it\u2019s easy to see why.<\/p>\n

Have you got a story? Contact\u00a0reporter Maddison Skipper:\u00a0mskipper@nine.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Sydney schoolboy to Hollywood heartthrob<\/p>\n

Raised on a cattle farm outside Canberra, Reid attended Cranbrook School in Sydney and made his TV debut in All Saints before moving to London.<\/p>\n

Since then, he\u2019s played everything a news presenter (The Newsroom), a priest (Lambs of God), Prince Harry (The Taking of Prince Harry), and even appeared in the music video for Flume\u2019s hit tack Never Be Like You.<\/p>\n

But it was a vampire from the \u201970s that finally shot him to international fame.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Originally a side character, Reid’s Lestat takes centre stage in The Vampire Lestat, which is currently airing on AMC+.\u00a0Sophie Giraud\/AMC<\/p>\n

In 2021, Reid was cast as Lestat de Lioncourt in AMC\u2019s Interview With The Vampire, based on Anne Rice\u2019 The Vampire Chronicles novels. <\/a><\/p>\n

The series was a hit and its third season was renamed The Vampire Lestat to reflect Reid\u2019s new role the leading man, a change many fans welcomed.<\/p>\n

The cult following Reid has amassed as Lestat has inspired fans to start social media accounts dedicated to his career and tattoo his famous lines on their skin.<\/p>\n

No one expected him to follow up that kind of success with a stint in Aussie theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn film and television<\/a>, often you\u2019re on a much faster time frame. You only have one or two takes a lot of the time,\u201d Reid says. <\/p>\n

Doubt has given him the chance to finally slow down and really live in a role.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

As Father Flynn, Reid has to plead his innocence while still planting little seeds of doubt in the audience’s mind each night.\u00a0Sydney Theatre Company<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the theatre, every night you come back and you have the opportunity to explore it again,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a lot more time to discover things and allow tangents to unfold. It\u2019s much more of a slow process.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a welcome change of gears for Reid and the fans have followed him, some travelling interstate or overseas just to see him on stage.<\/p>\n

One told nine.com.au she travelled from the US to Sydney for 48 hours just to attend two back-to-back performances of Doubt; such is the dedication Reid inspires.<\/p>\n

Fresh star power for Australia\u2019s theatre sector<\/p>\n

Doubt is Reid\u2019s Sydney Theatre Company debut and his first live theatre outing in close to a decade. It couldn\u2019t come at a more precarious time for the sector.<\/a><\/p>\n

Beetlejuice: The Musical and Waitress both cut their national tours short last month, and Anastasia: The Musical has been quietly cancelling shows as the industry buckles under the weight of high costs and poor ticket sales.<\/p>\n

Global economic upheaval and Australia\u2019s cost-of-living crisis have put the arts in a precarious position as audiences are forced to cut down on discretionary spending.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re not giving up on theatre \u2013 they\u2019re just being more selective about the shows they\u2019re willing to pay to see.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe experience of being in an actual room and having a story told to you is like no other experience,\u201d Reid says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople crave it more than they might have before because we\u2019re living in a time now where we have so much interface in front of us all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the theatre and live performance is going to become more and more vital, particularly as we enter this age of artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

His own star power is also drawing in new audiences for Doubt, especially Gen Z\u2019s and Millennials who otherwise might have skipped a stage drama about sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Church in 1960s New York.<\/p>\n

The power of a 2004 story in the TikTok age<\/p>\n

Written by American playwright John Patrick Shanley in 2004, Doubt follows stern Catholic school headmistress Sister Aloysius as she accuses Father Flynn of sexually abusing the school\u2019s only Black student.<\/p>\n

\"Pamela<\/p>\n

Reid – pictured here with Pamela Rabe as Sister Aloysius and Shannen Alyce Quan – is confident Australia’s theatre sector will only become more vital in the years ahead.\u00a0Sydney Theatre Company<\/p>\n

American playwright John Patrick Shanley left the ending intentionally ambiguous, forcing audiences to question where the truth really lies.<\/p>\n

Even Reid doesn\u2019t know if Father Flynn \u201cdid it\u201d, and that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of preconceived notions about the Catholic Church when you come in to watch a play about sexual assault within the Catholic Church,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the play is doing, is saying: \u2018Don\u2019t forget to question what you\u2019re seeing. It\u2019s absolutely OK to not know. It\u2019s OK to not have an answer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the play was written more than 20 years ago, its message is particularly relevant today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internet today encourages people to have concrete perceptions,\u201d Reid says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Though Doubt: A Parable was written two decades ago, its star believes its just as relevant to a 2026 audience.\u00a0Sam Mooy<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are algorithms that actively work with the audience\u2019s sense of outrage, and so the more outrageous the post, the more aggressive the response, the higher it gets pushed up the algorithm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a feedback loop of online outrage in which empathy and nuance are afterthoughts, and having a strongly held conviction is often mistaken for being objectively or morally correct.<\/p>\n

Doubt is a cautionary tale about what can happen when that goes too far.<\/p>\n

Doubt: A Parable is now showing at Roslyn Packer Theatre, with the season scheduled to run until August 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Sam Reid had just hit a new peak of Hollywood fame when an unlikely job offer hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-521812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}