Tom Blyth on Billy the Kid Season 2 and Talks Hunger Games & Hemingway

Billy the Kid is back, and this time his journey is depicted not within a two-hour movie, but rather on the small screen. The hit MGM+ series kicked off in 2022, and Part 1 of the second season concluded back in November. Now, Part 2 kicks off this weekend, with Billy finding himself caught up in the infamous Lincoln County War (for those who’ve been following along and/or know their history), all the while butting heads with ongoing rival Jesse Evans (the terrific Daniel Webber) and struggling to maintain his love affair with Dulcinea (Nuria Vega).

There are a lot of moving parts, and Billy didn’t exactly want to become a rebellious leader — but sometimes, we have to fill shoes we don’t exactly desire in order to do what’s right. And in this case, Billy is out for blood, seeking to avenge his fallen mentor, Tunstall (Linus Roache).

A number of acclaimed actors have played the iconic cowboy over the decades in Hollywood, and this time it’s Tom Blyth, who has starred a variety of acclaimed projects over the years. We can’t wait to see what’s to come with the remainder of Billy the Kid season two, and Blyth recently spoke to us to offer a glimpse. He also shared how he prepared for the meaty role, his excitement for his upcoming Ernest Hemingway project, and why Billy isn’t all that different from Blyth’s Hunger Games character, Coriolanus Snow. Read on, or watch our interview video above.

Past Portrayals of Billy the Kid: ‘I Didn’t Want to Copy’

Given that legendary performers like Kris Kristofferson, Paul Newman and Val Kilmer have portrayed Billy in past films, one has to wonder if any of them stood out to Blyth as he prepared for his series. “I actually, very purposefully, avoided any of the previous iterations of Billy, even though some of those guys are my heroes and all legends,” Blyth told MovieWeb. “I didn’t want to copy. You never want to copy someone else’s portrayal or something. And even if you don’t intend to, you might absorb, like, a mannerism that you admired when you watched it. It’s always a risk.”

Blyth continued:

“So I avoided them. And somehow, I’ve managed to not see them in my whole life. So I’ve just continued to not see them yet.
And then when eventually we wrap up Billy’s story, I’ll go back and watch them, and I’ll probably see stuff and go, ‘Oh, man, I wish I’d done that
.’ But you know, I haven’t seen any.”

Red Dead Redemption and the Inherent Fun of Westerns

Blyth did find inspiration for his performance through other means, however. “I watched Westerns growing up,” he said. “When I’m preparing for the show, I do watch a lot of Westerns just to get my mind in the world. I do play a lot of Red Dead Redemption to just be in that world as much as I can.”

Given that there hasn’t been a Red Dead Redemption film adaptation made yet, we were curious if Blyth would be interested in joining the hypothetical project. “I would. I just love Westerns. I would because I love them,” he said. “Someone brought this quote up earlier, I think it was John Ford or Francis Ford Coppola… someone said this: ‘If they knew how much fun it was to make Westerns, they’d stop letting us make them,’ which is, like, totally true.” It was supposedly Walter Hill (Extreme Prejudice, The Long Riders, Wild Bill) who said this, as recounted by John Landis. Blyth added:

And I’d forgotten that quote, but it’s just so true. It’s so much fun… Anytime you’ve got, like, two dozen horses and riders and gunshots going off, and wagons racing down the street, it’s daunting, but it’s like playing.

Ending Season 2 of Billy the Kid

Blyth also previewed what’s to come with the remaining four episodes of Billy the Kid season two. “Part two picks up where we left off, more or less,” explained Blyth. “There’s a little bit of a time jump, and not much enough for it to get cold and wintry, but it’s still following in the footsteps of what happened in part one. So Billy’s, you know, lost Dulcinea. She’s given up on him. She thinks he’s never gonna turn good. And he’s lost Tunstall, who’s his mentor and his father figure. And really, all he’s got left are the regulators and these guys who have chosen him as their leader.” Blyth continued:

“So he’s now in a position where it’s basically like,
he has to step up to the plate and become a leader because he’s got nothing else left
. And because he wants to fight for these people, because he believes in them. And he wants to avenge Tunstall’s death, so he’s kind of vengeful.
It’s like the most we’ve seen Billy on a path of revenge
, I think, which is exciting and dangerous at the same time, because he’s so capable when he wants to be.”

Comparing Billy the Kid to The Hunger Games’ Coriolanus Snow

Looking at Blyth’s other recent work, fans will, of course, remember him as Coriolanus Snow from the latest Hunger Games film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. After watching it and Billy the Kid, it’s tempting to draw certain parallels between the two monumental characters. “There’s a lot that overlaps with them. They’re both young, ambitious men who maybe have complex relationships to morality,” explained Blyth, who elaborated:

“However, there’s also a lot of difference, which is why I find them exciting to both play. Because Billy still believes in, like, good and bad.
He kind of believes in right and wrong, whereas Snow has a much more gray relationship to right and wrong
… He’s grown up in a world of propaganda, like, he’s been told his whole life that his people are correct and right. Even after he learns that’s not true, in his experience, he still chooses to go down that path.”

“But as Billy, I feel, even now, even though he’s full of vengeance and he wants to avenge Tunstall, and he’s willing to kill to do that, he still is doing it for the right reasons,” added Blyth. “Like, he still believes that that is the moral path. So that’s a huge difference between them.”

“And I think they are driven by slightly different desires, because
Coriolanus Snow wants to be a leader.
He wants to be president of Panem, and he will kind of stop at nothing to get there, especially once he gets his heart broken by who he thinks kind of betrayed him.
But Billy is like a reluctant leader
. He doesn’t want to be a leader. But everybody else wants him to be a leader. It’s kind of like the opposite experience.”

Tom Blyth Takes on Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms

Looking ahead, Blyth is gearing up to play the lead role in a highly anticipated film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s timeless novel, A Farewell to Arms. He’ll be taking on the role of Frederic Henry, who was previously portrayed by such legends as Gary Cooper and Rock Hudson in the 1932 and 1957 film adaptations of the book, respectively. “I’ve been such a fan of Hemingway for quite a few years,” he told us. “It’s one of my favorite books. And I was just like, ‘You kidding me?'”

I got to play Billy the Kid, and then, after dreaming and doing lessons, now I get to do a Hemingway adaptation. I feel very lucky.

“But it’s daunting, I guess. It’s not so daunting [as it could have been], because the material is so good, because you’ve got a great book and a great script that they’ve adapted, with Michael Winterbottom at the helm,” continued Blyth. “You’re in good hands, you know? It’s like, it would be daunting, the circumstances are daunting, but the material helps so much because this is just so good. I feel like if I trust my technique and my process, and I trust the people that I’m working with, I trust the material. It’s gonna be great.”

Considering the brilliance of Winterbottom, Hemingway’s seminal novel, and Blyth’s genuine skills, we feel the same way. The second part of Billy the Kid Season 2 premieres on MGM+ Sunday, June 2, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with new episodes each Sunday night until June 23. You can watch it through the link below:

Watch Billy the Kid