PHILADELPHIA — When Steven Spielberg’s aliens launch
their latest attack on Earth Sunday in TNT’s “Falling Skies,” Noah Wyle
will be there to meet them.
Not as John Carter, the fresh-faced young medical
student we first saw 17 years ago in “ER,” but as Tom Mason, a widowed
history professor who finds himself second in command of the 2nd
Massachusetts, fighting the invaders and struggling to recover his
captured middle son.
Time flies when you’re on TV, but for Wyle, two days
shy of his 40th birthday when he visited Philadelphia earlier this
month, it might feel like warp speed.
It wasn’t, he insisted, about turning 40 — “I’m
ready” — but about playing a guy whose oldest son (Drew Roy) is old
enough to be fighting beside his father.
“He’s playing 17, but he’s 24,” Wyle said of Roy.
“There are times when when I say, ‘Doesn’t anyone
think it’s ridiculous that I’m playing this kid’s father? How come
nobody’s saying it’s ridiculous that I’m playing this kid’s father? Am I
the only person that thinks it’s ridiculous that I’m playing this kid’s
father?'” joked Wyle, whose own son and daughter are 8 and 5.
When “ER” began, “I was the boychik,” just 22 and playing a character maybe a year or two older.
On “Falling Skies,” whose initially familiar
post-invasion scenario — think “The Walking Dead” sans zombies —
gradually deepens into something more intriguing over a 10-hour first
season, Wyle’s undeniably one of the cast’s grownups.
All joking aside, that was probably part of the
appeal to the actor, who, after 11 seasons as a regular on “ER,” didn’t
need the money and wasn’t necessarily looking for another series.
“Eighty hours a week on a soundstage isn’t the best
way to parent,” so after leaving the show, “I took a few years and did a
few small parts in movies and dedicated my energies to my little
theater company in Hollywood and was very much an active dad,” he said.
Starring in TNT’s “The Librarian” movie series, he
developed a relationship with the network, where programming exec
Michael Wright “would send me all the pilot scripts that they were
thinking about putting into production. And he’s got exceptional taste.
There were a few temptations over the years, but really, I read this
script and I had this real itch to get back to work. It was a good fit
(and a) chance to work with DreamWorks again.”
Mason, who draws on Revolutionary War history to plot
strategy in a conflict against a very different enemy, is “a very
dynamic character … a very physical character,” he said.
Filmed in Toronto, the show also uses only “practical locations,” not a studio.
“It’s a chance to front an ensemble as opposed to
inherit one, from the jump. It’s a chance to be part of an enormous
gamble TNT is making by stepping out of the traditional programming fare
into a new genre, trying to attract a new audience.”
For Wyle, artistic producer of Hollywood’s Blank
Theatre Company since the age of 20 — “I was in the inaugural production
for the company, which was ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago,’ when I was
19” — it’s also about having a little more control over his TV work.
“The older I get, the more interested I am in having a
stake of ownership in what I’m doing,” he said. “They were very
generous about giving me access and allowing me to feel very much like a
collaborator all through the process. I was there when we worked on the
script and I was there when we cast the other roles.”
He’s been in the editing room, but “my contributions,
I’ve got to say, are most valuable on the set. I’m a good
problem-solver. When something’s not working, and the scene’s not
working, the rhythm’s off or the blocking seems stilted, that’s where
suddenly all sorts of fires go off in my brain.”
He’s also given a little thought to Hollywood’s fascination with alien invasion.
“Whenever you introduce an exterior threat to the
planet, it’s really the only chance you have to unify all the humans on
the planet, let them transcend prejudices and petty differences.”
Plus, there’s “this idea of the reset button being
hit on civilization,” he said. “The Gospels, the Bill of Rights, the
Constitution — whatever the template for the new civilization’s going to
be, these guys are going to be the ones framing it,” he said. “So what
do you keep and what do you discard? What was good and what was bad? I
thought it was a really interesting theme.”
And though the enemy one character calls “cooties”
might look familiar, Wyle promises surprises. At one point, “we as
characters have to radically redefine our assumptions about what’s been
happening all along because we misread it completely. And it’s pretty
cool.”
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FALLING SKIES
9 p.m. EDT Sunday, TNT. Moves to 10 p.m. EDT June 26.
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(c) 2011, Philadelphia Daily News.
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