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| Wyle as Mason, courtesy TNT |
BY AARON SAGERS
Noah Wyle has built a career portraying thinkers. Whether it was as Dr. John Carter in
E.R., Flynn Carsen in the
Librarian series, Steve Jobs in
Pirates of the Silicon Valley and, most recently, as a father and college history professor-turned-human resistance fighter Tom Mason in TNT’s alien apocalypse series
Falling Skies, Wyle has mastered the performance of intellectuals who think before acting.
It is appropriate, then, that Wyle the actor comes across in much the same way. A soft-spoken man with more than two decades of work on his resume, he isn’t the bad ass action hero type who attempts to imbue his characters – or his interviews about those characters – with vein-bulging machismo. Instead, the 41-year-old is thoughtful about his fictional role as a leader of human survivors on
Falling Skies, which debuts its second season on June 17 at 9 p.m., and as his role of leading actor and a producer on the ensemble show.
Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, the first season of
Falling Skies premiered June 2011 as a family-friendlier cousin to
The Walking Dead, except with highly-advanced, insectoid aliens. These “skitters” appear in ships above major Earth cities, and make quick work of upending civilizations. And the humans they don’t kill, typically kids, are fitted with a parasitic harness and become mindless slaves. Wyle’s Tom Mason comes into the picture as a widower with three sons (Drew Roy, Connor Jessup and Maxim Knight) who joins the 2nd Massachusetts resistance force. Applying his knowledge as a military historian, he quickly established himself as a capable second-in-command under Will Patton’s Captain Weaver. Also along for the alien fight was doctor/love interest Anne (Moon Bloodgood), roguish anti-hero Pope (Colin Cunningham), strong silent type Dai (Peter Shinkoda) amongst others.
At the end of the first season, Wyle’s 2nd Mass dealt a symbolic blow to the aliens by destroying part of their massive ship over Boston, and by deflecting an attack at their home base. But it also had Tom Mason departing with the spindly, grey aliens who command the skitters to learn more about their mission.
Wyle joined Paranormal Pop Culture to discuss responsibilities as series lead on
Falling Skies, the series evolution between seasons into a darker show - and avoiding problems from the first season - and the toll a show of this magnitude takes on him (after the jump)...
