Tom Blyth returns as the iconic Wild West desperado for the second half of Season 2.
The stakes are raised and the mood is darker during the second half of Season 2 for Billy the Kid, the outstanding and enthralling TV Western that returns Sunday, June 2, on MGM+. Tom Blyth is back in the saddle as the titular outlaw, having elevated his profile during the mid-season hiatus by starring in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as a young younger version of Coriolanus Snow, the authoritarian overlord played in 2012’s The Hunger Game and three sequels by Honorary Oscar winner and Lawmen: Bass Reeves co-star Donald Sutherland. And in these new episodes, Billy isn’t aiming to please as he seeks revenge for the killing of a sympathetic mentor.
As MGM+ puts it: “Billy gets caught in the middle of the Lincoln County War, a murderous conflict driven by money, greed and corruption. After enjoying a monopoly, Murphy’s Store is no longer the only player in town when Englishman John Tunstall moves to Lincoln and sets off a commercial rivalry. Law and order is no match for cowboy gangs and a secret society. Wild chases and shootouts abound. There are innumerable ambushes and killings. No one is safe. After a pivotal assassination, things get very ugly, leaving Billy the Kid with an uncertain fate. Will he make it out of the Lincoln County War alive?”
Recently, I had the chance to speak with British-born, Julliard-trained actor Tom Blyth about what lies in store for viewers during the second half of Season 2 of Billy the Kid. Here are some highlights from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
Cowboys & Indians: You’ve certainly been on a roll lately, with the Hunger Games prequel and now the return of Billy the Kill. But do you ever feel like, OK, I’m having this run of good luck and career advancement. When does the trap door open?
Tom Blyth: Honestly, that's a good way of putting it. I feel like you always feel that way. Yeah, you do. You definitely always think, “When are they going to find out that I'm a fraud? When are they going to find out that there are better people than me to do this role?” Or whatever it is. But I think that is always the demon in your head, right? You can’t let it win. We all have that self-doubt within us, but I think it’s actors especially, and artists, I think, who perform live in any way — you have that thing at the back of your mind that tells you like, “Oh, you’re probably not meant to be here.” But then you have to just remind yourself of all the years it took to get there, and all the work that you put in, and go, “Hang on, I actually am. I worked hard to get here, and I think I know what I’m doing.” So yeah, I feel very honored to get to do what I love for a living, and hopefully it stays that way.
C&I: Of course, then you’ve got to forget about all that self-doubt when you get on your horse and you’re leading your men in the Lincoln County War, right?
Blyth: Yeah, but Billy would have that as well, right? And actually I think we captured that in the show quite a lot — the moments where he’s not sure if he’s making the right decision. He thinks he is, but time will tell, and the outcome of the battle will tell, and then things happen. He loses friends, he loses loved ones to these actions. And it is a very human thing to not know what the outcome will be of any given decision. And in his world, that’s life or death, and that’s what makes the show so gripping.
C&I: Did you ever wonder, either last season or particularly this season where things get really rough, could you have made it back then? I mean, when you audition for a role, you don’t have to worry about somebody up for the same role shooting you or something like that.
Blyth: [Laughs] Never say never, Joe. Actors can be crazy people. We can be very competitive, so you never know. But yeah, I mean, you can’t help but wonder when you’re on horseback and you’re doing a crazy scene, a crazy stunt scene, you can’t help thinking about how you would have managed back then. I mean, we were just using blanks, but you still feel the pressure of that. We did it under very safe circumstances with loads of checks and balances and a lot of safety mechanisms in place. But you still are aware that, “Wow, this would’ve been almost impossible to survive.” The things they were going through, and the things they were putting themselves through, and the things that life was throwing at them — like, to get out of that, you had to be extremely skilled and, honestly, just lucky. I think a lot of the guys who made it out in one piece were lucky. So, yeah, I don’t know. I think I would fare okay. But it’s also like the desert island metaphor, right? It’s like, “Do you think you could survive on a desert island on your own?” I think so. But also, who knows? I might go mad, I don’t know.
C&I: Don't want to simplify it too much, but do you think you could say Billy was somebody who spent a good portion of his life looking for a father figure?
Blyth: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. I don’t think that’s an oversimplification. I think that’s true. And it’s something that I’ve brought into my preparation for playing Billy a lot. I think in Season 1, when he meets Ash Upson, the journalist who’s a friend of his mother’s, I think that becomes a surrogate father relationship. And then obviously his stepfather, Antrim, becomes a surrogate father who ends up being a less than ideal father. But in Season 2, when for real we meet John Tunstall, who becomes a mentor, he’s definitely a surrogate father. So I think, yeah, he’s looking for that. But then ultimately, I think what we get to see in Season 2 — especially in Part 2, coming up — is that he realizes that actually there’s no one out there that can do that for him better than he can do it himself. He’s ready to step up and become the man, and become the leader of the Regulators. And he needs to stop looking for someone to do that for him, and just do it himself.
C&I: Finally, since this is Cowboys & Indians Magazine, we have to ask: How many times did you fall off your horse?
Blyth: [Laughs] One time. I didn’t fall off at all in Season 1. And then, while shooting Season 2 last summer, we were doing a sequence that wasn’t even one of the crazy things we do all the time. This one time, we were doing a pretty simple run through the woods, a little gallop, a little lope. And my horse, Steel, who’s great — it wasn't his fault. Every time, we’d gone left around this tree. Every time. And then on take four, for some reason, he startled, and he went right. And because I was so used to going left, I tried to force him left, and then I just forced myself into a tree. So he went right, and I just went straight into a tree and spun off it, hit the ground, and jumped up.
You know when you have an accident and adrenaline’s flowing. and you don't know if you're hurt? Well, when they yelled “Cut,” my worst fear was not that I was hurt, but that they would not let me do the stunts anymore. Because I love doing the stunts. And so before I even knew if I was hurt, I jumped up and I was like, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” And they’re like, “Oh, he’s fine. Okay, great.” And then I got on the horse and I was checking myself for wounds, making sure I was okay. Luckily, I was absolutely fine, just a little bit bruised. And it was a good learning moment for them moving forward. I was a little more careful after that, just because I’d learned what can happen if you're not focused.
C&I: Well, we’re glad to hear that. Because we want you in good shape for Season 3, don’t we?
Blyth: Yeah. Hopefully, if we get season three, I want to be in good shape so Billy can do even more crazy stunts.
