"Everyone's Favorite New Patriarch"

Noah Wyle is best known for his role as Dr. John Carter in the long-running NBC TV drama ER. He’s also been a fixture on the cable channel TNT for movies like Pirates Of Silicon Valley and The Librarian series. Now the 41 year-old’s latest project for the channel, the science fiction drama Falling Skies returns for a second season.

In the series, which tells the story of a group of survivors banding together to fight back against alien invaders on Earth, Wyle plays Tom Mason, who becomes the second-in-command of a citizen militia made up of the last survivors. He talks about some of what is to be expected for the second season.

“Pope was a significant character in season one,” Noah says, “He’s ever-present in season two, but Ben gets a lot of screen time, too, but you got bring Drew [Roy] and you got to bring Moon [Bloodgood] up and you got to bring [the character up] Weaver and the fact he’s on the far end there is egregious. He’s the sexiest one in the whole cast.”

Noah talks about how his thirteen years of experience on ER prepared him for this series.

“Personally, very little, other than I got to see how Anthony Edwards did it,” Wyle says, “And I hope I’ve employed the same grace and charm and professionalism that he did in heading our ensemble.”

“I inherited that show over the years as other people left, but I never really felt like my show,” he adds, “It was always of communal effort. This was different, to sort of start at the top of the call sheet, and it presented an interesting challenge.”

We asked Wyle what made him want to do Falling Skies.

“It was the character really,” Noah says, “It was the arc in front of the character and it was sort of analogous to what I thought about the character of John Carter when I first read the ER pilot script. That was

"Everyone's Favorite New Patriarch"

his first day on the job. He didn’t know anything about medicine really. Everybody on that show had to start off on a very high level of proficiency and competence and I thought, this guy has the farthest road to travel. He’s got to either burn out or get good, and that’s got to afford me as an actor all sorts of wonderful opportunities and things to play.”

“And in the same vein, Tom Mason coming from an academic background,” he adds, “And while historical reference is an important part of his character and informs his decision-making process, it’s pretty esoteric knowledge in his world to be an academic and there’s a bit of a learning curve towards using a gun and making theoretical knowledge practical and being a leader and a teacher and all those other things. And it was another box that I hadn’t checked yet. It was a first time I had ever worked in this genre, certainly a very physical, very demanding role, which I hadn’t really done either. So this is a long way of saying I wanted to look heroic to my nine year old son and the choice was really predicated on that.”

We also asked Noah what he’d bring to the table if a real apocalypse actually happened.

“I don’t know, whatever the version of the USO tour would be,” Wyle says, “’Hey, troops, we’re going to put on a little show for ya. Lighten the mood with a little song and dance.’ It’s funny, and this is not to speak disparagingly about Americans because we’re a capable bunch, but we shoot the show in Canada and Canadian men are really like impressive, they are.”

“They hunt and they fish and they cook,” he continues, “And they fix cars and they build boats and they are really dynamic talented with real practical knowledge of how to build stuff and make stuff. I found myself feeling incredibly inadequate in their company and

"Everyone's Favorite New Patriarch"

that was just the Teamsters.”

Wyle talks about how the father-son relationship his character has in Falling Skies impacted the relationship with his own children.

“It’s a little bit of flashing forward,” he says, “At first it was incredibly intimidating to have to play his father. I showed up on set and my first question was that, ‘Does anybody think that this is ridiculous? Why does nobody think that this is ridiculous? Am I the only one that thinks, I guess I can be his father.’”

“Paternal dynamics are paternal dynamics,” Noah adds, “And at a certain point, everybody has to figure out when to back off and when you want to insert themselves as parents, when you want to let your kids make the mistakes they inevitably have to make in order to be the people that they are destined to be and when you want to step in and help guide that process and I don’t think that ever goes away. My mother still grapples with that issue in my life and it’s just playing it out per episode, per scene, per circumstance.”

Noah talks about a very pivotal scene in the series that involves Tom debating whether or not to negotiate a truce with the alien invaders.

“It turns out to be a horrible idea that I get on that ship,” Wyle says, “But it affords the audience the really interesting viewpoint of what their technology looks like on the inside, what the hierarchy of their system really, and it spells any misgivings that Tom has that there’s a negotiation to be had.”

“It’s very clear that they are not interested in brokering any kind of peace,” he continues, “So he comes back, I think, a lot of more resolute to joining the fight and tamping down some of his more humanistic aspects and embracing a few of Weaver’s more militaristic ones.”

While the creators of the series have the story completely mapped out to the very ending, there

"Everyone's Favorite New Patriarch"

is very little the cast is privy to about the plot of each episode until right before its shooting. Wyle says that he himself does not mind revealing the story.

“I find that almost the opposite is true that I don’t mind talking about it,” he says, “I haven’t signed something that said I wouldn’t say anything, but most people I know go, ‘Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! I don’t want to know.’”

“And I’m like, ‘Don’t you want to know?’” Wyle continues, “And they’re like ‘Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! I don’t want to know if you get off the ship. I don’t want to know anything. I want to tune in.’ So it really hasn’t been that big of an issue. I find that interviews are the hardest, trying to answer a question, saying what you can say, what you can’t say.”

Wyle was asked if the rebels fighting for freedom is any bit an allegory in the ongoing debate for health care reform in the U.S.

“I didn’t draw too many parallels between what happened in D.C. and the character, but I guess there is one to draw,” Noah says, “Unfortunately, I think we do. That’s a tough question to answer because I think there’s been huge advancements made in health care in the last hundred years and there’s been a lot more protections put in place to form at least some semblance of a social safety net for people who can’t quite help themselves.”

“It’s still draconian by a lot of countries’ standards and it’s inexplicable why it’s taken so long to effect the kind of change that seems so easy to effect,” he continues, “But it felt like a really good thing for me to do. And it seemed like a particular cause that was not a cause celebre. There was not a lot of attention going to be put on this issue otherwise and I had a friend who asked and I wanted to honor the promise that

"Everyone's Favorite New Patriarch"

I made to him a year ago that I’d be there, so I went.”

Noah talks about how being a father and being older in general has impacted his career.

“40 didn’t really scare me,” Wyle says, “For some reason, oddly enough, 38 threw me off. When I realized that it had been 19 years since I was 19, for some reason that stuck in my head as being significant, but 40 felt like it caught up to my maturity a little bit.”

“I think I’ve always felt a little bit of an old soul and a little bit out of step with my contemporaries,” he adds, “And for some reason, at forty, father of two, newly divorced, a veteran of a couple of TV shows, 22 years of experience, that all seemed to like go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds right, that feels like about where I’m at.”

Wyle was asked whether he indeed achieve success in Falling Skies impressing his son.

“Knock on wood, so far, I got a lot of street cred with a third grade class,” he says, “He’s a pretty sophisticated man. He’s only seen a couple of the episodes because all this other stuff, there’s a comic book, there’s a web site, they’re talking about action figures. When we do junkets, we got these buttons and pins and he likes to trade those with his friends.”

“One day, I went to his baseball game and this kid on his team and he said, ‘Are you the guy on Falling Skies,” Noah adds, “And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he says, ‘Would you sign my mitt?’ and I looked at my son’s face and I was like, oh my God, he wants my dad to sign his mitt? That’s the coolest thing in the world.”