Brian F. O'Byrne: Playing John Billington | Saints & Strangers

Household comprised of a woman, children in her care, and husband. Oh good, every man for himself! This sort of been saying all along. John Billington, he's one of the adventurers who come over here, and he comes with his wife and two boys. He became the first person to be put on trial and given the sentence of death, so he's the first person to be hung.

It's a number of years after our story. The Lord blesses us with supper for one of us at least. You want a hearty supper, you kill it yourself. When you're doing a historical piece, it's difficult to kind of marry the historical facts with what we create within our scenes here. We do know that he's only described... The only description I've seen and that we've seen is that he's described as a very profane man. So I don't know exactly what that means, but he does have this spirit of the adventurers and, I guess, what Americans would now consider a can-do spirit.

He sees himself completely as an individual and indexer for his family. He is not as much of a team member as other people, although of course they need each other to survive. But in this, he certainly has a streak of individualism about himself.

You take corn? Not good. We knew it to be wrong. I'd do it again, there for the taking. Billington rightly views from his point of view and deep suspicions of these people. I mean, obviously their notion of who the natives are before they come over is one deep mistrust.

Acceptance of who the natives are would be its non-existence. I mean, he's still, in our, in this fiction, he's still constantly referring to them as savages. So I think that's where he really thinks he's dealing with these savages. We still see that nowadays; people often reverse ethnicities in different parts of the world, has been savage and less than. Billington, this is completely appropriate of the time and indeed, you know, some could argue it exists in some way still.