Swifties have waged plenty of stan wars on behalf of their idol over the years, against targets ranging from noted “flop era” connoisseur Katy Perry to Flushed Away extra Matty Healy. This week, though, they’re taking on a brand new threat: a bisexual vampire rock star.
Okay, admittedly they’re not beefing with a real vampire. The target of this fan ire is none other than Anne Rice’s iconic Interview with the Vampire character Lestat de Lioncourt, who’s currently being played by Sam Reid in AMC’s TV adaptation of the same name.
Over the weekend, AMC released a teaser for the show’s upcoming third season, in which known diva Lestat takes things to the next level and becomes a famous glam rocker. You might recognize this deliciously campy plotline from the 2002 film Queen of the Damned starring Stuart Townsend, who managed to serve far less cunt in a two-hour movie than Reid does here in four minutes. His version of Lestat even dropped a debut single entitled “Long Face,” which I expect to hear brat remixes of before “brat summer” is well and truly dead.
Naturally, fans were excited that a show that had already embraced queer theatricality so expertly over its first two seasons was adding this meta twist. As soon as the season three teaser hit the internet, Lestat — who, again, is fictional — started trending on X, as memes about his undead A-list ascent began circulating.
Now here’s where Taylor Swift came in: In a since-deleted post, an X user shared side-by-side photos of rock star Lestat and Swift in her “Blank Space” music video with the song lyric “I’ve got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane.” It’s an apt comparison given that Interview with the Vampire hinges on the all-consuming toxic love affair between Lestat and the show’s titular vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson).
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It turns out that some Swifties didn’t appreciate the comparison or even seem to realize that Lestat isn’t real.
“Thought the quotes would be telling whoever this hideous loser man [is] to stay away from princess,” one X user who quote-tweeted the aforementioned “Blank Space” post wrote. “But nope, of course they’re all deranged, male-obsessed lunatics trying to pretend whoever this is can be in the same frame as her.”
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Could this person be doing a bit? Possibly. But that didn’t stop Interview fans from running with Lestat and Swift’s newfound beef. In a great coincidence (or was it?), one of Swift’s latest Eras Tour surprise songs was her 2016 track “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.” A bit on-the-nose for alleged vampire beef, no?
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For all the online chaos, I’d argue that these two actually have more in common than fans might think — after all, they’re both singular blonde musicians who have never gotten over anything ever. I think that Lestat would quite enjoy Reputation, and the two of them would probably face a lot of the same Ticketmaster and private jet fuel-based controversies. They’re not so different at the end of the day!
Still, igniting a stan war with one of the world’s most passionate fan bases and facing cancellation attempts all within a few days of your debut single dropping? If that doesn’t sound like the most in-character Lestat move ever, then I don’t know what does.
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