NEW YORK – British actor Tom Payne was just about to quit acting when the zombie apocalypse saved him.
“I had two months’ rent in my bank account, my work visa was about to run out, and I had a tax bill for $30,000 that I couldn’t pay,” he says.
“When that was all coming to a head, ‘The Walking Dead’ came along," he says. "I always tell people that you have to take these risks in this industry, and I think what sets people apart who get success, is that they are willing to put everything on the line. And the rewards are there – but it’s definitely hard to get there.”
Getting there wasn’t easy.
He was cast as the morally centered Jesus in “The Walking Dead,” who met his end in Season 9.
"The day that I got ‘The Walking Dead,’ that weekend I was meant to dress up in a costume as a cartoon character and give out leaflets. I had to replace myself for that job actually. I’d been a regular on a TV show for a couple of years and after that job, I didn’t make enough money to survive, so I took jobs here and there. People think that once you’ve been on a television show you're rich, and your whole life has changed but definitely – NOT.”
Even though the role revived his career, it wasn’t at all what Payne had planned.
“When I was 32 and had done a movie called ‘The Physician,’ which put me with Ben Kingsley and Stellan Skarsgard, and it was my first huge lead. And I expected it to do great things for my career, and I was very proud of the movie. But it did nothing for me in America – which is where I was living and where I wanted to spend my career,” he recalls.
“You spend a lot of time as an actor unemployed and hoping this is going to be the one, this is going to be the one. And that happened a few times over my career, but that was going to be THE one. And it wasn’t... And I definitely got very despondent.”
So Payne took a trip to Sweden to visit fellow actor Skarsgard.
“He gave me a really nice pep talk and reminded me why I was doing it,” says Payne, “and to be myself and not try to be what they wanted me to be, not to change myself and just to trust that it would come. And the next six months after that was when I booked ‘The Walking Dead,’ and that was the job that changed my career.”
The 38-year-old, who also costarred in shows like “Luck,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Waterloo Road,” doesn’t have to be killed off in series television anymore. In fact, he’s very much alive as the gifted criminal psychologist in Fox’s popular “Prodigal Son,” which is into its second season.
He plays the son of a serial killer, played by Michael Sheen.
“I'm so happy to be working with Michael Sheen – everyone in the cast – but when I got the job, I was very aware of Michael’s work and think he’s a great actor, and I knew I would get better on this job,” he says.
If Payne’s career didn’t go as planned, neither did his personal life.
He and singer Jennifer Akerman have been together for seven years, and their wedding was supposed to have taken place last April.
“That didn’t happen obviously because of the pandemic, and that was going to be a big change,” he says. According to news reports, he and Akerman tied the knot in a quarantine wedding late last month.
It was an earlier, ill-fated romance that led to Payne’s devoted union with Akerman.
“I’d been in a relationship for most of my 20s, and that broke up at the end of my 20s,” he says.
“It was really necessary for me to progress as a person, and I’d spent a lot of my life concentrated on my career and not really concentrated on my private life and then when ‘The Physician’ happened, I was doing this film, and I reassessed my whole life and realized that this relationship wasn’t good for me. And it wasn’t sustainable. And that was hard because I had to collapse a certain part of my life which I hadn’t really looked at before,” he muses.
It’s easy to focus on your work at the expense of your personal life, he says.
“At that moment, when I was 29, I looked at my life and made the decision that this was not good for me and I needed to move on from it. And that was a really hard time, but it definitely then shapes you as an adult really. But I just know at that time I felt really uncomfortable in my skin and I knew that. It’s weird, because I’ve said the same thing to [Akerman], in a different way," he says.
“To that person in my life I said, ‘I see my death in you,’ which is really awful, probably the worst thing I’ve ever said to anyone. But then I could say the same thing to [Akerman] now and mean it in a completely different way. It’s that feeling of something missing and something that you know isn’t going to get better. Whereas in my relationship now, I know that everything just gets better in time if you put the work in.”
SEDGWICK CAST AS MOTHER HEN
Kyra Sedgwick is back from “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “The Closer” with her very own sitcom, “Call Your Mother,” landing on ABC. She plays a mother hen type who’s so concerned about her adult children that she treks from Iowa to L.A. to check up on them.
Sedgwick, the mother of two grown kids, says she can relate.
“There are so many things about being a parent that really resonate with me,” she says.
“I honestly think if somebody told you you were actually going to have to be a mom for the rest of your life – not just the first 18 years of their life – but your WHOLE life, you’d be thinking about them and worrying about them and wondering how they’re doing and wanting to talk to them and wanting to hang out with them – your WHOLE life. I think you’d actually think twice about having children. And No. 2, is you have this child and if you do everything right, you get fired and they leave you!”
CRIME SHOW GOES DOWN UNDER
True-crime dramas are paying off in a big way for networks like ID, OWN, Crime & Investigation. Sundance Now is reaching way down under for its latest murder-most-foul docuseries, “The Night Caller.”
In the early ‘60s, a violent serial killer was prowling the ordinarily peaceful Perth. The police corralled two suspects who were convicted of the crimes and sent to the big house. But the killings continued. Even after the real killer was found and confessed, the two earlier suspects remained in jail.
Filmmaker Thomas Meadmore gained access to the killer’s wife, as well as the two suspects who were wrongly convicted of his crimes for this four-part series. The show premieres Tuesday on Sundance Now with each new episode streaming on subsequent Tuesdays.
HEIGL STARS AS BEST BUDDY
Katherine Heigl is playing best buds with Sarah Chalke in Netflix’s new bff series, “Firefly Lane,” premiering Feb. 3. The story is about an unlikely pair of pals who meet at 14 and suffer through life’s victories and tribulations until one event tests their friendship. The series is based on the New York Times bestseller by Kristin Hannah, who serves as co-executive producer.
Heigl, who’s starred in “27 Dresses,” “Knocked Up” and “Suits,” started as a kid in commercials.
But when she landed her first movie, she says, that was it.
“I was 11-12 years old and I got to play in a world where I didn’t just have to imagine everything, I had props, I had wardrobe, I had sets, I had other people who could play with me. and it was like there was something about it that just spoke to me.
"And as I got older, I think what I loved most about it is I really gravitate toward stories that on a human level are relatable, or touch on something, or help you feel not quite so alone, or something you're going through, or something you've experienced, or help other people realize we’re not islands. We are all connected in one way or another. And we need to show compassion and empathy. I gravitate toward more positive message stories. Now I sound like I should be on the Hallmark Channel, which I also love.”
