2 l April
24 - 30, 2022
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
BY JAY BOBBIN
EPIX dives deep into the legend
of ‘Billy the Kid’
Tom Blyth has the title
role in “Billy the Kid,”
premiering Sunday
on EPIX.
Your
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Stories of Billy the Kid are bountiful,
but a new series is aiming to be the
definitive one on screen.
The legendary outlaw born Henry
McCarty – but also known by the
pseudonym William H. Bonney – first
ran into trouble as an orphaned teen, and
he wouldn’t live many years beyond that,
killed at age 21 by lawman Pat Garrett
while a fugitive charged with committing
several killings in the Lincoln County
War. The saga is recounted in the eight-
episode EPIX series “Billy the Kid,”
premiering Sunday, April 24, and casting
Tom Blyth of HBO’s recent “The Gilded
Age” in the title role. Daniel Webber also
stars as Jesse Evans, whose lethal gang was
enlisted to oppose Billy in that war, with
Eileen O’Higgins as Billy’s mother.
The drama’s writer, Michael Hirst
(“The Tudors,” “Vikings”), says he’s
been “fascinated by Billy ever since I
was a kid, actually. He’s like a rock star
of the West. I thought I knew things
about him, but when I started doing
the research, I realized that I knew
very, very little indeed. I had cliched
ideas about him that he was probably
psychopathic, that he was a born killer,
that he was a roughneck. What I didn’t
know about was his background, born
of Irish immigrants ... very devoted to
his Catholic mother, who taught him to
respect women, to read, and to empathize
with the underdog.
“He had a beautiful singing voice,”
adds Hirst, also an executive producer
of the series, as are Justin Falvey and
Darryl Frank of Steven Spielberg’s
Amblin Television. “He played musical
instruments. He was incredibly sensitive.
As he said himself, he was more sinned-
against than sinning. He’s a wonderfully
attractive character.”
Blyth believes much of Billy the Kid’s
relatability lies in the outlaw’s effort to
make a life for himself, even a largely
illegal one. “I think we’ve created such a
brutally honest show,” the actor reflects.
“You can see the kind of blood, sweat,
and tears and mud that went into
creating a life here, all these different
societies all trying to build their own life
in this kind of messy landscape.”
Still, Hirst keeps a spotlight on the
lawlessness that marked Billy’s iconic yet
relatively brief existence.
“He was absolutely fearless,” the writer-
producer maintains. “He would work out
ways of escaping, which is a great joy of
writing about him because we put him
in this situation where it seems totally
unlikely that he can escape it, and he
always finds a way to do it. It’s part of his
charisma. Pat Garrett even talks about
that, with deep respect for the Billy it
took him a long time to catch.”
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