Paxton Interview Excerpt 3: THE COLONY star talks the ending of BIG LOVE!

In the third part of the our interview with Bill Paxton - click for part one and part two - from the set of The Colony, he touches upon the five years he spent living as an Henrickson on HBO's Big Love.

Can you talk of the difference between doing TV and film?

I came up in film, and when I came to do Big Love ... the thing is, I was always used to the director being the final arbiter. In the TV word, it's the creators, so the directors come in and they turn in their cut and then they just recut it and stuff. It's a hard thing to get used to, the writers being control. They were great guys, but it was just a different hierarchy, and I had a hard time getting used to that.

[asks himself the question] Would I do another series? NO. I find the work to be exhausting, and I just don't have the stamina I had.

At this time in my life I really want to have a go at directing.

Were you happy how BIG LOVE ended?

[pause] No. I was not. I could not reconcile the fact that after all this guy's been through with his family that they killed him off. And they thought, "oh, you've been playing the character too long", and I was just, like, aw man, you know?

I think it was kind of a backlash effect because Sopranos went out with ambiguity, I think it'd have been nice to think the Henricksons are still out there, but I'm not trying to stir any pot there.

It was a great show, it was a landmark show, and it ran its course. Five years was a great run, and it had to end somehow, and it ended with a bang, instead of a whimper.


The full Paxton interview from the set of The Colony will be published on Friday. Come back tomorrow for Paxton's tale of helping to convince Cameron to do Avatar.