NEED TO KNOW
Tom Blyth has been doing a lot of his own stuntwork while working on Billy the Kid
The actor has “loved” physically immersing himself in the role, and he tells PEOPLE that his horseback riding skills, in particular, are now “professional level” — or so he’s told
“A lot of the wranglers and the horse people on set have said I can come work for them if acting fails,” he quips
Tom Blyth has gotten pretty good at riding a horse after four years of playing an infamous outlaw.
The British actor scored his first major role as the titular character in MGM+’s Billy the Kid, which he’s been appearing in since 2022. With the character came a deep dive into stunt work.
“Something I’ve loved on that show is being able to do a lot of my own stunts — not all, but a good 90% of them,” Blyth tells PEOPLE in a recent interview. “They let me ride, they let me fall off horses, they let me wrangle cattle — crazy stuff — run on rooftops while shooting guns. It’s like old-school filmmaking.”
Horseback riding, in particular, has become a huge part of Blyth’s work over the show’s three seasons. In fact, he’s gotten to a place where the on-set wranglers tell him he’s at a “professional level.”
“I thought I was really good in season 1, and then I’ve had people tell me how much better I was in season 3, and tell me that I’m now professional level. And I was like, ‘Oh, I thought I was professional level in season 1,’ ” he admits.
David Brown/MGM+
Tom Blyth in Billy The Kid
“So I’m realizing I was naively self-assured in season 1, and I think I’ve now earned my stripes by season 3.”
In fact, he says that “a lot of the wranglers and the horse people on set have said I can come work for them if acting fails.”
When he first started cowboy camp before filming began on season 1, Blyth admits he was “maybe a bit naive.”
The realization struck when, on the set of the show’s third and final season, his stunt double told him, “You’re really good now. You were a little cocky in season 1, though. Now you’re actually good.”
“And I was like, ‘Well, sometimes you’re too in it to realize how you’re actually doing,’ ” he says. “I was delusional.”
David Brown/MGM+
Pepe Johnson as Tom O’Folliard, Tom Blyth as Billy The Kid, Brendan Fletcher as George Coe, Nuria Vega as Dulcinea Del Tobosco, Sean Depner as Henry Brown in ‘Billy the Kid’
The stuntwork Blyth has been able to do while making Billy the Kid has sparked a deeper love — one that he hopes to continue developing as his career unfolds. “I do think it’s something I want to keep doing,” he says of stunts.
“I feel really like I’m doing my job well when I get to feel like I physically pulled myself into it,” the People We Meet on Vacation star continues. “I want to keep doing things that require good action sequences, that I get to do and get to pull myself into, with a great stunt team around me. Because it takes a village, and you can’t do all that stuff if you don’t have amazing stunt coordinators and stunt performers around you and a stunt double to help guide you. And we have an amazing stunt team on Billy. So, yeah, I think more stunts for me, please, is the big takeaway.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
New episodes of Billy the Kid drop Sundays on MGM+.
Read the original article on People
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
