Noah Wyle is currently playing the role of Tom Mason on TNT’s “Falling Skies”. The series is wrapping up its second season this month, but don’t worry since it has been already renewed for a third season set for Summer 2013. Media Mikes had a chance to chat with Noah again to have his reflect on season two of the show.
Michael Smith: You now have a year under your belt with this character, are you still learning more about the character and finding different ways to perfect him?
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.
MS: Is it a challenge for your trying to act or interact with skitters or any other computer generated elements in the show that aren’t there with you on the set?
NW: I hadn’t done a lot of that kind of work up until this show but 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.
MS: What continues to be the most challenging aspect to you for the series for your character?
NW: It’s kind of an aggregate thing. It’s a tough show to do 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.
MS: How did the second season differ for you, compared to the first?
NW: 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.
