Hey, it's Les from The TV Dudes! As part of our coverage of ATX Television Fest Season 13, I was lucky enough to sit down with the incredibly talented Tom Blyth and legendary producer Donald De Line to dive deep into the hit MGM+ show, "Billy The Kid." Tom gives us the inside scoop on his portrayal of the iconic outlaw, while Donald talks about producing for the streaming network and getting this western just right. Don't miss this exclusive interview that unpacks the action, drama, and historical intrigue of "Billy The Kid." It's a great chat, and I hope you enjoy.
Intro Music This is Les from the TV Dudes. Could I have y'all both introduce yourselves?
Hi, Les. I'm Tom Blythe, and I play Billy in Billy the Kid.
I'm Donald De Line, Executive Producer of Billy The Kid.
Thank you both so much for making time today. The show is great. One of the things that I've got to talk to you about is that accent. It's so good.
Oh, wow. Okay, good.
I mean, we all get to see it a lot where like somebody steps up like, "What? They're Australian? Oh my God, they're British??" But it's not just that you came to the show and did a Southern accent or, or Georgia'd it up for us, or whatever. It's a particular Irish American Western accent. Can you both talk a little bit about the prep that went into the history of the show, and what were your concerns as a producer about making sure that it looked and felt right?
Speaking to the kind of the, the, the dialect accent thing specifically. I think in season one we, um, we were very cognizant of not making it like knee-slapping, you know, Texas drawl, kind of like caricature. At first, when I was working with the dialect coach at the beginning, I kind of went that way and then I pulled it back. Because what I realized was that we have kind of some artistic license here. Billy grew up in the Irish slums of New York, probably speaking in an Irish accent, probably speaking some Gaelic. His parents were both born and bred Irishmen, Irish women. And then he moved from there to Coffeeville, Kansas, spent some time in Texas, spent some time in Arizona, everywhere in between. And so we kind of realized we could create our own sound that was more specific. And so that's kind of what I've leaned into is like letting a little bit of like Irish meet Southwest, um, and just try to keep it as nuanced as possible, basically.
It really works.
Thank you.
In terms of producing... Billy the Kid is a character that I *think* I know. But I don't. I mean, I know Emilio Estevez. I don't history of this man. How fun was it doing a historical show, but also, like you said, having some license to play?
It was, it was fascinating actually. And Michael Hurst, who created the show who's, um, in England today where he lives and writes every single episode, he is fascinated and always has been since he was a child with Billy the Kid. And he is a guy who does not write characters that are not complicated, unpredictable characters. You never quite know what you're gonna get out of a character in a scene, which we love. And it's fascinating and it keeps it really interesting. So he always had this very nuanced, very interesting vision of Billy that he was not just this vicious killer outlaw, but he was a human being who was forged by a lot of rough things growing up and actually had a great heart and was a very sensitive human being and really struggled, uh, with which side he was gonna fall on. And was really kind of first drawn into it by lack of choice as a young man with, you know, his father was dead, his mother was ill, he needed to help put food on the table for the family and, you know, got pulled into a certain kind of life.
Donald, you've seen the industry grow and change over the years. You've, you've been involved with major motion pictures, with television. From an audience standpoint, the recent years of streaming have blended it all together. We've all had discussions of "What is television now? What's a movie?" Does it feel different in the last few years from y'all's side of the table?
Hmm. I mean, you are probably better equipped to speak about this than I am.
Well, you know... I really enjoy it because whether the form is better told as a series, you know, with 24 episodes or whether it's better as a two hour movie. We just all love making stories come to life or we wouldn't be doing this. That's what, you know, gets us up in the morning. And believe me, there's plenty of reasons not to do it . So I think it's exciting and that it just gives you a lot of choices. We just don't want the theatrical business to die. We want to keep movies in theaters.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, I will say it's like, um, as someone who's been working as an actor since I was like 14, 15 on and off, Billy was kinda my first foray into doing a lead role in a big production. I can't tell you how cool it was to like, arrive in Calgary two years ago and see a welcome packet that said MGM with a lion on the front. And I was like, oh my God, this is like, even though it's television, even though it's streaming, we're doing an eight episode quality show that feels cinematic. This feels like part of like the MGM legend, you know, like being part of like one of the greatest studios in Hollywood history. We were talking about this yesterday at dinner. MGM plus feels like something that is really growing and feels like we're at the beginning of like a really cool streaming platform. And the show is growing with it. And season on season, I think the quality's getting better. The storytelling is getting more rich and the the audience is growing pretty fast. And that's exciting. It's like exciting to be part of that.
I think when I was a kid, if, if something needed to be longer than one movie, the only option was a sequel. If it moved to television that was gonna drastically change the format, the storytelling... How it was told. What it was gonna be. And now I don't necessarily feel that as much.
Exactly. The quality is very different. It is different now. Yeah.
How was it for you as an actor to get to stay in a character? That can't happen that often in movies.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you always hope that you get to, especially if there's a character you love, that you get to come back and do it again. But, um, I will say there's something really nice about like every year or every two years, coming back to Billy and putting on the hat and putting on the boots and it just, and the voice comes back in. The physicality comes back in immediately. I'm like, oh, this is an old friend that I get to revisit. I'm doing a year of filmmaking this year, like lots of films and, and as much as I love it, I love working on films...
You got 'Plainclothes' coming up.
Right. I just finished 'Plainclothes' and now I'm doing a film called 'Wasteland'. Yeah. I'm busy, but it never gets old doing Billy. And I feel very lucky to get to keep coming back to it.
You brought up old friends... Of course, where we last left off we just had the reintroduction of Pat, which is a great reveal in the last moment of part 1.
Nice segue.
Thank you. And also just such a great moment, uh, in an earlier episode where you're reading the letter from him where he's like, watch out. I might be a cop next time you see me. Ha ha ha... I think that might be the scene where you're like, why don't we just kill our boss? And the friend is like, because we won't get paid. Billy. I thought that was just such a great Billy the Kid moment, the complexity of it. You're a good guy. You'll also offer up a crazy plan, in terms of trying to walk that character up to the legend. The Billy the Kid that's more of a legend. What has it been like as an actor to try to modulate that? Do you feel like you have to bring an angrier Billy sometimes? Or a different Billy into some episodes?
No, I mean, it's, it's always there in the script. Like when the scripts are good, which they are with Michael, so much of it's just there on the page and then you just kind of have to do your best to be a conduit for that. I would also say Michael is really collaborative and since episode one of season one has always been inviting of thoughts and notes. Like, season one, there was a prison breakout and I thought there was an opportunity to do something a bit different and we collaborated on it for like a couple of days and came up with a really cool, like, uh, kind of left field thing. And we've done quite a few of those where we get to collaborate on those moments. It's really exciting to take what's already great on the page and then go, oh, you know, when we all put our heads together, we can come up with something really original that hasn't been done before on TV. But in terms of Billy himself, I feel like a lot of it we've been talking about since season one. Like, where is he now compared to then? What is the story we're trying to tell? And the story we're trying to tell is like, season one, he was a boy who is kind of on the trail trying to work out how to get by and protect his family. Season two, he's got a lot less to lose and he is a lot more capable. But he's also got something to fight for now. He's got a mission in life. And so we get to watch him become a man, which is really cool. He's more confident in himself. He's more, He's less wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, more kind of grounded. People look to him to lead them. It's fun to play that.
I know from at home, uh, the different streaming networks seem to have tones. Different character. Apple TV shows are gonna look different than Paramount+ shows. Having made several shows with MGM+, uh, is there, is there something that you particularly were, uh, excited by or glad to see from a, from a supportive standpoint from the network?
I think, you know, Michael Wright, who runs MGM+ is a huge, I mean, he loves Billy the Kid. It's a very personal thing for him. He loves it. So we've had incredible support from him and everyone else. They're just, they're like a fantastic group of people there. And we've really kind of grown up with the network in a way. Even, you know, two and a half years ago when we started this, there were fewer shows on the streamer and we've watched it kind of really explode. When I first started at it, it was Epix. That's when we did season one. Their demographic I think is a little more male than female, and they like genre as well. So it's been really fun for us to kind of lean into those aspects.
Thank you both so much for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you. Outro Music