"I live to act, but I look to do material that you can really have fun with," says Stephen Baldwin, who plays William Cody in The Young Riders. "You really have to believe what you're doing."

Baldwin first discovered acting in high school and, inspired by the success of older brother Alec, began planning his own acting career at the age of 16. He often draws parallels between his days growing up as the youngest of four acting brothers (William and Daniel are the other two) and his portrayal of the comical, carefree and self-confident Cody.

"The way Cody was written, I was very similar in my personal life to the character," says the actor. "A lot of outgoingness, the craziness, the cute and cunning con artist, is like when I was a kid. It's a tough character to play because he is this comic relief, but at the same time I don't want him to be a total goffball, because that's not who he was. But obviously when the script calls for it, and the goofiness has come out, I could carry it off. I think Cody would probably chuckle if he could watch me now."

Cody, of course, later became famous as the star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. "I'm glad I got to play him, because there is not a lot of docuemtnation of who he was at the time that I'm playing him." Baldwin says. "So it enables me to do whatever I want. I think that's when they found out my range, s far as playing a nutty character and making him believable. I believe, if you can justify what it is that you are saying, or what it is you're feeling, there's no stopping you from how far you could go."

Cody is Baldwin's first regular TV role. "I never wanted to do a series," he says. "A friend of mine was casting "The Young Riders" and my agent really wanted me to go in on it. I said no, because at that time I had a real attitude about myself, my career and my ability as an actor, and I didn't think television was something I wanted to be doing."

"So, I went it and deliberately tried to sabotage my audition by going over the top with the character," he continues. "Well, if these guys want a boy, well, boy, "i;m going to give them a cowboy that they've never seen before. I'm not going to play some network cowboy. So I was spitting and burping and doing all that good stuff. They went, 'Great. Exactly what we want.' I found out that was really the way they wanted us to be."

Baldwin likes filming the series in Arizona. "We're not in a studio in New York of Los Angeles; we're in Tucson," he says. "It's a very spiritual place. I've met other actors who said they would give one of their fingers to do our show. At the time I started to realize really ucky I was to be doing Young Riders. I think it would just drive me nuts if I was doing a show that shoots in a studio everyday."

There have been a few naysayers, of course. "We've had some critics call us 'hunks on horseback' and studs on stallions'," says Baldwin. "But this is a good show because it is not phony."

By Wendy Wallace (Colorado River TV Guide, May 1991)