Noah Wyle Talks About The Challenges Of ‘Falling Skies’ Season 2

Noah Wyle recently spoke with press about the upcoming Season 2 premiere of Falling Skies and the challenges that the new season brought. Check out interview below…

Can you talk to us a bit about the amount of weapon training you received for the new season?

Noah Wyle: I wouldn’t say a lot, you know when we showed up and I went into office building with a stunt man and hit a punching bag for about an hour. And then we went to the sound stage and ran around shooting blanks at the walls for another couple of hours and then we were let loose.

Has the second season felt different for you from the first season?

Noah Wyle: No there were some significant differences, you know we moved the production from Toronto Canada to Vancouver, so we had all new crew for the most part, we only had two or three people on staff that were there in season one. We had almost a brand new writing staff certainly a new show runner, so it wasn’t like we were building on internal momentum, we sort of had to start and get to know each other all over again which gave it a different era, just sort of ambiently.

And then storytelling wise I thought we really stepped up the notch you know not having to dedicate so much of our screen time to exposition, establishing the world, establishing the characters. Allowed us a little bit more freedom to be creative in flushing out these character arcs and exploring the mythology of the aliens and why they’re here and who they are and how we’d radically misunderstood the situation in season one.

Do you have a favorite episode from the new season?

Noah Wyle: There’s some really good ones in there, I would say out of the 10 I am really proud of 8 1/2 of them.

Is it a challenge for your trying to act or interact with skitters or any other like computer generated elements in the show that aren’t there with you on the set.

Noah Wyle: I hadn’t done a lot of that kind of work up until this show but it’s sort of it’s a muscle that the more you exercise the better at it you get. And it’s kind of 50/50 between the screen and practical we do a lot of work hack into tennis balls on the end of sticks. But then we also have a really talented puppeteer and a really great skitter suit, for the close up personal interactions with the aliens.

I would say the most difficult part is when you’ve got four or five actors in the same frame all having to react to the same thing that’s not there, trying to find a line of continuity and performance can be tricky.

In the first couple of episodes of season two and we see that there seems to be there’s mentioned a lot of distrust with Tom’s mysterious return especially from Pope. Do you feel that your character distrusts himself more than the second mass might distrust him?

Noah Wyle: I think they’re really happy to see him, I think his kids are happy to have him back, I think Capitan Weaver is happy to have an ally again in a leadership position and then maybe blinding them a little bit to the practical concerns of where is this guy Bannen what have they done to him. And is he a homing pigeon leading the enemy right to them makes for some interesting storytelling in the first couple of shows. And I think he’s a smart enough character to realize that that’s a possibility that he doesn’t really know himself and until he can get his footing and establish himself back in the group and win their trust and vice versa, he should be watched.

Now that you’ve been playing this character for a year, are you still learning more about the character and finding different ways to play them?

Noah Wyle: Yes I sort of feel like I am just getting started you know they aren’t going start with this guy really will extent over three or four years in this slow deconstruction of his intellectual aspects. And his becoming a little bit harder and they’re way having a big of transference with the Weaver character who starts off very militaristic where Tom’s a bit more of a humanist. And then gradually Weaver becomes a lot more vulnerable and a lot more human and Tom gets a lot more practical and a lot harder edged. We sort of continue in that vein hopefully arriving at some sort of synthesis between the two of them as the most effective way of leading this group which isn’t not traditionally military dogmatic style and not exactly touchy feely human but something in between.

What about this role continues to challenge you? Were there any new challenges in Season 2

Noah Wyle: It’s kind of an aggregate thing it’s just a, it’s a tough show to do you know most of it, it takes place at night, so you go to work around 12 in the afternoon and you work till 5 in the morning. And because we wanted this year to be less focused on any single location have the group be a lot more mobile, it made for some long wet nights as were shooting in mostly practical locations and exteriors.

Another tidbit for Noah and Falling Skies fans… Noah along with the rest of the cast will be in San Diego this July for Comic Con! The show will have a panel at the convention, and we’re hearing rumors of a pretty awesome booth! We’ll be covering Falling Skies at Comic Con, so be sure to keep checking back for more Falling Skies goodness! Also don’t miss the Season 2 premiere on June 17th on TNT!

Interview By: Emma Loggins

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