Louis and Lestat Are Screen-Burning Gay Vampires, But Here’s Who Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid Actually Come Home To

When ‘Interview with the Vampire‘ premiered on AMC, it did something the 1994 film never quite dared to do. Creator Rolin Jones took a radical approach to the source material, reimagining protagonist Louis de Pointe du Lac as a Black gay man in 1910s New Orleans, transforming the story into a tale of a man othered not only by his immortal bloodlust but also by his race and sexuality. Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid stepped into those roles and promptly lit the television landscape on fire.

The fandom quickly coined the pairing “LouStat,” and the devotion has only intensified with each season. The chemistry between Reid and Anderson remains one of the show’s greatest strengths, and the series is at its most electrifying when it allows that dynamic to take center stage. But once the cameras stop rolling and the fangs come off, both actors return to lives that are, by design, refreshingly private.

Jacob Anderson’s Real Life Is Nothing Like Louis de Pointe du Lac

The man behind the tortured, brooding Louis is, by most accounts, one of the more grounded figures in the business. Jacob Anderson was born on June 18, 1990, in Bristol, England, and has been active as both an actor and musician since 2007. Long before he was seducing vampires on cable television, he was building a parallel creative life under a stage name.

Anderson uses the stage name Raleigh Ritchie for his music, a name he picked from his favorite characters in the film ‘The Royal Tenenbaums,’ blending soul and trip-hop styles. His music often explores themes of identity, anxiety, love, and personal growth, mirroring the emotional intensity seen in his acting roles. The fact that he carries that kind of artistic depth into two separate careers makes his casting as Louis feel less like luck and more like inevitability.

On the personal front, Anderson is firmly off the market and has been for a long time. He began dating actress Aisling Loftus in 2011, and after years of a romantic relationship, the couple married in December 2018 in a private wedding ceremony surrounded by close family and friends.

Aisling Loftus, born September 1, 1990, in Nottingham, is a British actress who began her career as a child and has remained active ever since. The couple has two daughters, with Anderson sharing the first picture of his child in mid-2020 and welcoming a second daughter in 2025.

Sam Reid’s Girlfriend and the Quiet Life Behind Lestat’s Chaos

If Louis is a study in simmering restraint, Lestat is his opposite, all baroque excess and emotional detonation. Sam Reid plays him with terrifying precision, which makes the contrast with his actual off-screen personality all the more striking.

Reid was born on February 19, 1987, in New South Wales, Australia, and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He has been building a serious body of work across film and television for nearly two decades.

Sam Reid is currently dating fellow Australian actress Philippa Northeast, and the two have been together for years, keeping their romance remarkably low-key.

The duo hit their first red carpet together in December 2019 after co-starring in the romantic comedy ‘Standing Up for Sunny,’ and they went on to appear alongside each other in the Australian drama ‘The Newsreader’ for two seasons. Reid is notoriously private and does not maintain a social media presence, which in this era practically qualifies as an act of radical self-preservation.

While Philippa and Sam keep their relationship very much under wraps, she provided a glimpse into their domestic life during a 2025 interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, revealing that the couple divides their time between Sydney and a rural property to the city’s southwest, beloved by their blue heeler, Rani.

Philippa explained their philosophy simply: “We keep the personal details of our life pretty quiet, because it’s just for us.” There is something almost poetic about the man who plays the most theatrical creature in vampire fiction preferring a farmhouse and a dog over any version of the spotlight.

The Real Chemistry Between Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid

Whatever the two men bring to Louis and Lestat did not happen by accident. Long before they donned tailored capes and bared their fangs on set, the duo had already forged a close bond behind the scenes, with Reid divulging that his anticipation of working with Anderson led him to break his own personal rules and engage in some rather unexpected digital activity before they had even met face-to-face.

That early groundwork paid off in ways the audience can feel in every scene they share.

The two co-stars started their own on-set book club, working through Anne Rice’s twelve-volume ‘Vampire Chronicles’ together as they prepared for each season, with their reverence for the source material palpable in every public conversation they have.

Anderson came to the project with a solid grasp of the characters from the first few books, while Reid arrived as a longtime fan of Rice and the vampire genre, one he said he almost had to push aside in order to approach the role effectively.

What Season 3 Means for LouStat and the Actors Behind Them

The third season of ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ now retitled ‘The Vampire Lestat,’ is pushing the central relationship into volatile new territory. At San Diego Comic-Con, Reid described the current state of Louis and Lestat’s dynamic bluntly: “We are in our divorce era,” referencing a teaser that shows the former couple in what appears to be a contentious mediation session, each accompanied by lawyers and quickly devolving into shouting.

TV Insider caught up with Anderson and Reid at the AMC Upfront, where Anderson teased that Louis is “not hugely pleased” with the existence of a particular book, while showrunner Rolin Jones reassured fans: “No one should worry at all. There’s way more Louis in our show than there is in the book.”

For his part, Reid approached the musical dimension of Lestat’s rock-star arc by learning the music before even reading the scripts, working the songs into his understanding of where the character was heading emotionally.

Reid recalled the terror he felt before the show’s first Comic-Con debut: “I remember just being backstage before we went on to that panel and just feeling like the world was ending. It was so nerve-wracking because obviously people love the film, they love the book.” That anxiety, it seems, has long since dissolved into something closer to earned confidence, and the audience has rewarded it.

Off screen, Jacob Anderson is a married father of two building music between filming seasons, and Sam Reid is tending to a cattle property in rural New South Wales with his longtime partner and their dog. The gap between the drama of LouStat and the steadiness of the people performing it could not be wider, which might be exactly why the performances hit so hard.

If you have been watching ‘The Vampire Lestat’ and quietly wondering whether Anderson and Reid might be falling for each other the way Louis and Lestat keep falling for each other, this is probably the right moment to share that thought in the comments.