The eight-episode Epix series premieres April 24.
Get ready for a whole new look at one of the most notorious Wild West outlaws.
Billy the Kid, the new Epix series featuring British actor Tom Blyth in the title role, has been described by writer-producer Michael Hirst as a “pre-Western that starts just before the West we’ve seen before.” The premiere episode airing April 24 goes all the way back to Billy’s formative years as the child of struggling Irish immigrants before subsequent episodes follow him through his early days as a cowboy and gunslinger.
“People think they know something about Billy,” Blyth says, “but they don’t know he was a sensitive guy and someone who took his moral compass from his mum. So the drama is about immigration, Americans kicking out Mexicans from their land and all sorts of things. But above all it’s a human story and Billy is at the core of it.”
Billy the Kid marks a career breakthrough for Blyth, a native of Nottingham, England heretofore best known for his performances as real-life British stage director Glen Byam Shaw in Benediction — a 2021 drama directed by acclaimed filmmaker Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives) — and, more recently, the unlucky-in-love Archie Baldwin in the HBO series The Gilded Age. He moved from the UK to New York in 2016 to attend The Juilliard School — the prestigious performing arts conservatory that two of his favorite actors, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, attended — and The Big Apple has remained his home base ever since.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Blyth recently about his exceptional performance in Billy the Kid — and how he managed to look at ease in the saddle when hard riding was calling for.