Tom Payne came flying out of the gate from post-strike life with a horror movie, a multi-part western epic, a growing family, and the very real sense that Hollywood time doesn’t wait for anyone—especially actors who blink.
“I feel very fortunate,” Payne said, taking stock of a year where everything landed at once. “I managed to get these projects done just before the strike. If you didn’t, you probably don’t have anything coming out until next year.” He then added the part that reframes everything. “And yeah, we’ve got family. We’ve got another baby on the way.”
That tension—career momentum colliding with real life—is baked into his latest work. First up is Imaginary, a Blumhouse horror entry built around a deceptively simple hook: a childhood imaginary friend that turns out to be very real, very angry, and shaped like a teddy bear. “When you read the script, you immediately see the marketing,” Payne said. “You’re like, ‘Oh yeah—this is the poster. Teddy bear. Title across the top.’”
It’s funny until it isn’t. In Imaginary, Payne plays a father who moves his family into his wife’s childhood home, where his youngest daughter discovers the bear. The rest, as he put it, “happens right after that.” Talking around plot specifics is part of the job, but Payne didn’t dodge the emotional angle—especially now that he’s a parent. “My son is two,” he said. “You read to them at night, they fall asleep in your arms, and then there are moments where you look at them and think, ‘If you turned your head right now and didn’t say anything, it would be really creepy.’”
Kids, he noted, live in worlds adults can’t access. “There’s a lot going on in their heads that they can’t explain to you,” he said. “Little girls especially—they’ll just look at you like they’re judging you. It’s terrifying.” He laughed, but not dismissively. “That imagination is exactly what makes something like this movie work.”
The Blumhouse approach sealed the deal. “I was really excited to work with them,” Payne said. “I admire the simplicity of the stories they tell.” Imaginary also marked a milestone. “This is actually my first wide-release American studio movie,” he said. “I’ve worked with Universal in Europe, but not like this.” The fun, he added, extends beyond the screen. “This is a movie where the marketing can be playful. The bear can show up at NFL games. It’s great for TikTok. You can do PSAs. It’s a fun ride.”
That sense of fun carries into the filmmaking itself. “Most of it is practical effects,” Payne said. “They built the teddy bear. It does things.” For an actor, that matters. “It’s so much better than staring at a green screen pretending to be scared of something they’ll add later. You can actually react. That’s the scary thing right in front of you.”
Genre work has become a throughline for Payne, stretching back through The Walking Dead and Prodigal Son. Horror, he said, changes depending on the flavor. “Walking Dead was visceral and bloody. Prodigal Son had jump scares, dark humor, emotional stuff.” That tonal flexibility was part of what made Prodigal Son special—and part of what made it hard to sustain. “Sometimes people didn’t quite know what they were watching,” he admitted. “But the cast was so capable. Everyone was playing at such a high level.”
There was no shortage of story left when Prodigal Son ended. “There was so much story there,” Payne said. The problem was structural. “It’s like Prison Break—what do you do once they break out?” He laughed. “We broke Michael out a couple of times. Then what is the show?”
Still, he believes the chemistry could’ve carried it further. “Everyone was incredibly well cast,” he said. “We were able to play with genre a lot.” The emotional core never wavered. “Michael and I’s relationship was so grounded and real.” Watching Michael Sheen work was its own education. “I’d find myself just looking at him going, ‘Wow. That was great.’”
Payne understands why it ended. “It was very expensive to shoot during COVID,” he said. “At the end of the day, the numbers didn’t work out.” He didn’t sound bitter—just tired. “It was exhausting to shoot. You’re in every day. You’re kind of the captain of the ship. Making sure everyone’s okay. Leading by example.” He paused. “Very rewarding. But exhausting.”
Pressure returns in a different form with Horizon: An American Saga, the long-gestating western epic from Kevin Costner. Payne described the experience with something close to awe. “We shot in Utah. Wagons, horses, middle of nowhere. It felt like being on a set in the 1950s.” The scale hit him unexpectedly. “I cried on set,” he admitted. “Not exaggerating. It reminded me why I wanted to do this in the first place.”
Costner, who’s been shaping Horizon for decades, had to gently ground him. “He came over and was like, ‘Okay, you’re a real person. You have a real relationship in this scene,’” Payne laughed. “I was just too excited.” Even the casting process felt surreal. “I hadn’t auditioned. Suddenly I’m on Zoom with Kevin Costner, and halfway through I realized—he was convincing me.”
That sense of momentum—one door closing, another swinging open—has become familiar. Shows end. Projects vanish. New ones appear. Parenthood complicates everything. “The hardest thing is having kids and thinking, ‘I really need to work now,’” Payne said. Then he recalled advice from Walking Dead co-star Michael Cudlitz. “He said, ‘Kids bring prosperity. Don’t worry.’” Payne smiled. “I think that’s true. They bring light. And people are attracted to that.”
It’s a good year to believe him.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailers below.
