Upping the Tension with Eyewitness

Although he's the son of movie star Bill Paxton, James Paxton is no Hollywood brat.

Having grown up in the sleepy California desert town of Ojai, Paxton was insulated from Tinsel Town glitz by his parents. Nonetheless, he began an acting career early, starring in Spy Kids 3 before the age of 10 before moving on to a variety of film roles and a part on the miniseries Texas Rising (alongside his father).

Now James is center-stage on the new USA Network series Eyewitness, a crime drama that promises plenty of twists and turns over its 10-episode run.

He plays Lucas Waldenbeck, a small-town teenager with a secret life who ends up in over his head when he and his boyfriend (played by Tyler Young) witness a murder. Veteran TV actress Julianne Nichols plays the sheriff who needs to uncover the truth, which falls closer to home than she could ever guess.

We talked to James about his first starring series role, the challenges and rewards of entering the same profession as his father, and what to expect from Eyewitness – although we promise to keep you spoiler-free.

Let's talk about Eyewitness.

It's a totally psychological, character-driven suspenseful crime thriller. It has all kinds of twists and turns. At the crux of it, it's centered on a love story between two boys who meet up in this cabin in the woods and bear witness to a triple homicide and barely escape with their lives.

One of them, my character, forces the other to keep the relationship a secret and from there the show chronicles how it snowballs and leads to a chain of events that affects all the characters involved.

Tell me about your character. How is this different from other roles you've played?

My character is a deeply closeted motocross rider. He comes from a small town, works on a farm, he's very sheltered. His only way out of this small town is through his motocross – he goes to regional tournaments and stuff.

But I've never played anything so emotionally complex and layered, as well as getting to play this cool juxtaposition between the physicality of that sport and this popular, kind of macho kid, who underneath is wrestling with an extreme vulnerability that he's sensitive about.

I've always played punk-rock kind of kids, kind of aggressive, kind of edgy but with good hearts. Or bandits and stuff. I just played a young bank robber. This was cool, to get to play this real kid dealing with these real problems that are so prevalent today in our society, kids not walking in themselves, in their true nature.

You've been quoted as saying that you liked the way the show presented a gay relationship without cliches.

That's one of the things that Tyler [Young] and I loved the most when we read the script. It was handled just as a love story between two teenagers, regardless of sexual orientation. That fact that they weren't token characters, and they weren't handled with stereotypes of the LGBTQ community. It was handled very sensitively and realistically. It was quite liberating to able to play that.

Series TV at its best gives you a chance to develop a character so much more than you can in a stand-alone movie – you have so many hours with them over the season.

Absolutely! That's why I was so thrilled to be able to do something that shoots for four months. You get to really live in the mind and skin of a character and bring it to life and carry it through this arc. It brings a great freedom do that. I analyzed and did so much research.

It was crazy shooting it because we actually shot two episodes at a time, so we didn't get the scripts for the next two episodes until we were just about finished shooting the previous episodes. They always kept us guessing and living, literally, with the twists and turns and the decisions the characters made in real time. That was very challenging, but I think ultimately it made for better performances by Tyler and me.

It was the showrunner/creator's decision. I think he liked it because everything we show is very organic. I've never been able to do scenes I've been so happy with as an actor. I think he kept us in this organic place with a lot of spontaneity involved.

Where did you shoot?

We shot in rural Ontario, two hours north of Toronto. They call it “Cottage Country” – there's tons of lakes. We right in the center of the world's largest archipelago, which is a collection of islands. They call it the 30,000 Islands, and we were in little town called Perry Sound. It was just gorgeous. We swam in the lake all the time, we were in a hotel on the lake. We had the absolute time of our lives.

It seems that when you're in a more remote location like that, the cast and crew would get very close.

Absolutely! We knew everybody's name, first and last. The cast, crew, everybody. We even started to know the locals in the town who would come out and be extras. We were very tight-knit. It was really fun. We had some great camera operators!

Did you have to learn to ride motocross for this?

Yes. I love answering this question! I even got myself street-legal – I have an M1 license now. They found me a trainer where I went for a week and a half down near Temecula, California, and I'd wake up every morning and just go ride the trails with this trainer every day. And then when I went up on location, I trained with some motocross pros, national champions.

I did a lot of the riding in the first two episodes. They eventually got a little more hesitant to let me do stuff as the show went on, because one of our picture coordinators broke his collarbone on the bike I was riding. But in the first two episodes I rode a lot, even in the wide shots.

The funny thing is, I had some light bruising but I basically came out of the shoot unscathed. But then I was just shooting a guest star appearance for another project, and on my third day of shooting there was an accident and my nose got split open, and I had to go to the ER and get stitches!

What was it like growing up with a well-established actor as your father? Did it open opportunities, or make it hard to differentiate yourself?

I'll say upfront, I'm very very close with my dad. It's definitely complex, though.

I grew up in a little town north of L.A. called Ojai, and I think my parents did that by design so my sister and I could grow up away from this business. He's never discouraged me, but he used to be cautionary and warn me how hard this life is, no matter what.

I always loved acting. I went to study journalism on the East Coast, but I realized I was going to find my way into this no matter what.

Of course he supported me, and told me “I can give you advice, but that's it. I can't really get you into any doors. You've got to throw yourself 110% into this." It was a really proud moment when I booked this show, because I'd never seen him this happy. I got a little emotional and told him, “Don't worry about me. Now you see I can do this on my own.”

My biggest goal is to be the lead in a film he directs. He's a great director, and that's his passion. I would love to work with him, I don't shy away from it because we're related.