Tom Blyth Talks Finding The Root Of Complicated Characters Like Billy The Kid and Coriolanus Snow
Tom Blyth is an actor to watch after delivering a star-making turn in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as a complex young Coriolanus Snow. Now Blyth returns to the small screen for Billy The Kid season 2. The show chronicles outlaw William H. Bonney, known as Billy The Kid, from his humble Irish roots to his early days as a cowboy on the American frontier, leading up to his pivotal role in the Lincoln County War. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with the rising star about his stunning ability to get the root of these complicated characters.
While Billy The Kid and Coriolanus Snow are very different young men, they are multilayered characters with a large range to explore. “I'm drawn to them because I think they are just the most interesting characters to play,” Blyth told me. “They are not just one thing.”
With the rise in superhero movies, there tends to be a classic trope of good versus evil… but sometimes the gray area can be more exciting to tackle. “Nowadays, with all the big superhero movies and everything, like they're all fun, but often it's good guys and bad guys. I'm less interested in that. I'm less interested in making blanket statements about a character. I'm more interested in lifting up the hood, like a mechanic, being like what is wrong with this guy? Like problem solving. What is right with him? ‘Cause no person is one thing, right?,” he shared. “Everyone is full of multitudes and complexities so it’s just more interesting.”
When diving deep into a character, Blyth looks at their purest need or desire. “With every character, whether they are a good guy, a bad guy, just a guy, not a guy, whoever they are, I am really looking at: what do they need?What is the thing that is driving them in life? What is their baby need? Like the thing that the child inside them desires, [or] needs to make them feel better? That's always fascinating too,” he explained. “It's a good place to start. It's a fascinating place to start because I think we all have that inside us.”
Blyth recalls Billy’s biggest desire is having a “father figure” in his life. “He loses his dad at the beginning of the show to pretty tragic circumstances and then he has a stepfather who doesn't live up to his potential, to put it politely. He’s abusive. Then he meets people along the way who teach him the way and promise him things and then like maybe they die or they get shot or they disappear. He's always seeking that father figure to fill that gap,” he shared. “Then eventually he becomes the father figure to himself because he realizes that no one person can fill that gap. He has to fill it himself, which I think is like a very human story. Anyone who has done even a minute of therapy realizes that's basically the backbone of becoming a fully fledged human being is working out that you have to fill it yourself.”
Meanwhile, Coriolanus Snow’s passion for security and control drives him forward. “For Coryo, for Snow, I think his need is different. It's more, like, control,” Blyth explained. “He literally says it at the end of the film to Viola Davis. Control is everything. He lost control when he was young in the war. His family had power and control and they lost it. That's his trauma and his desire is to regain control, even if that means causing pain.”
In addition to getting to the root of these characters, Blyth also enjoys getting into the action. This season of Billy The Kid features a house fire scene that he described as “exciting,” “terrifying,” and “exhilarating” to film. “We already have the McSween house built on set and then they built a second version of it. Like plank for plank. It looks the same, except the second one is made of metal and has gas tubes running through it so they can control the flames,” he said. “We'd be in that house for like four days in a row filming the sequence where the thing is burning. It's a controlled fire, but you can feel the flames all around you. If you reach out, you could touch them. Then they're like ‘Action!’ and the flames are roaring. We have to kick our way out of the house and come out shooting. It couldn't be more exciting. It's also like terrifying, but it's exhilarating. It's really, really cool.”
When it comes to the real life outlaw and gunfighter Billy The Kid, he’s had stories and songs written about him for generations. What is it about him that stands the test of time? “He is a legend in the sense that we know he lived and died and it happened, but he's also a myth. There's so much that we don't know about him,” said Blyth. “There's so much that he represents for different people. It's amazing the responses I get from people online and in like fan letters and stuff. Some people are adamant that he is a hero and misunderstood and then some people are like, ‘How can you vouch for him? I love watching it, but he's a terrible guy. He did all these terrible things.’ I'm like, ‘You try living in the 1880s in the Dust Bowl with a gun trapped on your hip that is your only form of defense.’ I don't think any of us can speak to how difficult it would have been, but I think that's why it's really complex. We don't really know how we would fair in that environment so it's fascinating to watch someone’s life unfold in that environment. We can't even really imagine.”
Explore this wild west adventure in part two of Billy The Kid season 2 returning to MGM+ on June 2.
