MGM+'s Billy the Kid Season 2 returns with Part Two on June 2. Tom Blyth plays the title role in the series.
In the series, Blyth gives a stellar performance. It is carried by his grit and is a must-watch for those who aren't on the Tom Blyth hype train.
But he's not the first to play Billy the Kid, and Blyth likely won't be the last. He is accustomed to playing roles others have portrayed. In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, he played Coriolanus Snow. Donald Sutherland previously portrayed the role in the main films.
ClutchPoints spoke to Tom Blyth before the premiere of Billy the Kid Season 2: Part Two. He discussed playing roles others have played before, learning how to ride a horse, and how immersive the Billy the Kid set is.
Tom Blyth Billy the Kid Season 2: Part Two interview
ClutchPoints: In your career, you've played a couple of characters that were previously played by other actors. Of course, Snow in the Hunger Games and Billy, the Kid's been played by countless actors. So which one was harder for you to prepare for and why?
Tom Blyth: That's a great question. I'd say Coriolanus Snow was probably harder to prepare for just because the films that were previously showing his story were more recent, so I felt that pressure a little more.
[With] Billy, I was able to somehow avoid all the other iterations throughout my life. And then once I got the role, I didn't seek them out. I tried to leave them [out of mind] and I still haven't watched them because I didn't want to copy [and] I didn't want to compare my performance or my choices to other actors who came before me.
Donald Sutherland's performance felt a little more recent in people's memory. So that was definitely present. But ultimately, it ended up being fine because it's such a different story at a different point in his life. And same with Billy, too. It's like, you know, both of those characters are very different versions of how we've seen them before, which really speaks to the writing that these writers have created fresh takes on these characters that we think we know.
CP: You said that you avoided other Billy the Kid iterations in your lifetime. So, what were the impacts of Westerns in your life growing up? Did you dress up like a cowboy and whatnot?
TB: I did, actually. [chuckles]
If I'm honest, my first exposure to cowboys was Woody from Toy Story — I had a toy Woody and I had a Woody costume as a kid. And I think that, as I got a little older, gave way to appreciating the Western genre and used to watch Westerns with my mom. I'd watched old Clint Eastwood and John Wayne movies and stuff, the old spaghetti Westerns, and yeah, I mean, that was a big part of my childhood in many ways in my imagination.
So, when I got this job, I was over the moon. I mean, I was like, I get to really honor that childhood dream and do cool stuff every day. I get to ride horses every day and spend six months out on the prairies being a cowboy. So it's a cool dream come true.
CP: I've never been horseback riding, but was that something hard to learn? It must have been hard because you're not just doing slow horseback riding all the time — sometimes you guys have guns in your hands. So how hard was that to adjust to?
TB: The learning curve at the beginning was steep, but it was quick. I remember it being quick because I think I just didn't have a choice. Like, I had a month to prepare before I went up to Calgary, so I took a few lessons with a friend and then I got up to Calgary and I was still not proficient.
But they put me through my paces for like two weeks every day on horseback, starting with walking and then kind of trolling and loping and then full gallop.
And then after two weeks, I felt pretty good. And then by Season 2 last year and this year, I now feel really comfortable in the saddle. I feel like I can do some pretty crazy stuff to the point where now I'm able to — thanks to their teaching me — jump up and mount and ride while the horse is already moving and dismount while the horse is like mid-[gallop] and just cool stuff that I never thought I'd get to do.
Riding and shooting at the same time or riding with a rifle — it's like action hero stuff. It's very fun. [smiles]
CP: How immersive is this project, Billy the Kid, comparative to other things you've done? You've done sci-fi and Robin Hood, so many different things, but you said that you were going off to shoot and it feels like you're a cowboy,
TB: I mean, this is pretty much as immersive as it gets, I think, because we're also living in Calgary while we're filming. They call it Cow-Town. It's a Western-like hub — they have like the biggest Western show in the world, the Calgary Stampede, there. So it's part of their culture.
So we're surrounded by real cowboys and cowgirls who ride every day and who wrangle cattle and horses every day. It's easy to feel kind of in it. And on top of that, we're getting up at 5 a.m. every morning, going to work, and the first thing we do most days is get on a horse.
We don't use green screens. We don't use studios. It's all out in the open air, big sky above you, mountains off to the East and it couldn't feel more real sometimes. Especially when we're shooting the big action sequences. I mean, it's so immersive.
CP: You're now two seasons in, so I'm sure that doing the Southern accent is probably second nature to you now. But do you remember the early moments of learning and developing that accent? Was there anything that you remember that stood out during that process?
TB: I think one thing I remember in the beginning was we played with a bunch of different sounds, me and the dialect coach. To begin with, we were going to go [with] to a specific state — we tried a bunch.
What we ended up finding was that because Billy the Kid grew up in the Irish slums of New York, he probably would have grown up with an Irish accent. But then he moved out West when he was really young.
He moved first to Kansas, to Coffeyville, and then he spent some time in Texas, and then down to Arizona and across to New Mexico, and then spent more time in Texas, so it's like, and he was in school in Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico. So it's like, who's to say what he would have sounded like by the time he reached his teenage years?
[This] actually gave us kind of license to come up with our own sound a little bit. So we started with a Southwest thing, but then occasionally I would let some British Isles or Irish vowels come in there just to like slip it in a little bit.
The idea is it just gives it this kind of nuance [since] we don't really know what anyone sounded like back then because we don't have recordings of people like Billy. So it's kind of hard to tell.
But what I really tried to do was give him a gravelliness cause these guys were out in the dust every day. They would have spoken with a lateral sound and their mouth more closed to stop the dust getting in. So anyway, it's all precise.
CP: My fiancée is a big Hunger Games fan. On my left, there's a framed script from the first film. As you said, you played Snow in his younger years, but do you know if you're ever going to come back to that series? And is there anything that you, Tom, would like to see your character do in a future project?
TB: I mean, I don't know if we're coming back for sure — there are whispers, but there's always whispers, so you don't know.
But I think there's a lot of eagerness. There's a lot of will to come back and do another one. And I know I personally would love to keep revisiting the character at least once or twice more. I think there's a lot more to tell — I think the character is fascinating and a great study of the strongman dictator and who they are before and [it's] more relevant than ever in today's world.
It would have to come from the creator, Suzanne Collins, writing another book, which, we don't know if she is or not. She might be.
I'd love to see him like go through the Capitol University and become a Gamemaker. Maybe even Head Gamemaker and become president. I'd love to see what happens and how that all pans out.
Tom Blyth returns in Billy the Kid Season 2: Part Two on June 2.
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