Paging Dr. Carter. Paging Dr. John Carter. Please come to the ER where you will be…battling aliens!
Dr. John Carter, brandishing a rifle and leading a militia against marauding extraterrestrials? What in the world is going on?
Hell, what has Noah Wyle’s career come to?
At first glance, you’d surmise that the man who played the sharp, young emergency room physician on the highly rated doc show ER is making a break for it, a change of pace from the parts you normally see him in. Or is he?
In Falling Skies, the new hour-long show on TNT, Wyle plays Tom Mason, a Boston history professor whose wife was killed six months prior by invading space aliens. In addition, one of his three sons has been abducted by the scaly, multi-tentacled monstrosities, which forces him to use his military knowledge and join forces with his neighbors in defending their families and finding the loved ones who have been abducted.
Wyle, 40, gets quite a workout as Mason, a much more physical part than we’ve come to expect from the actor.
“I probably should have hit the gym more than I did,” admits a bearded Wyle during a stop in Philadelphia. “I don’t think I really appreciated how physically demanding this role was going to be. I was rationalizing my lethargy by saying, ‘He’s not a military guy.’ He’s an academic, so I am supposed to look a little slower and a little less proficient with my firearm.
“I got an on-set workout, for sure. We got some time running around a soundstage to get familiar with the weaponry.”
Falling Skies, which premieres on June 19 on TNT, marks a return to the network for Wyle. The actor played “The Librarian,” a, well, librarian who serves as protector to much-desired artifacts, in three popular adventure sagas for the network. Falling Skies, he says, marks a welcome return to him to somewhat familiar turf.
“It matched up nicely with where I am right now,” Wyle, a father of two, explains. “There are three things about the character (in Falling Skies) that I was attracted to. One was fatherhood. One was leadership and the other was loss. And those are themes I am interested in exploring in my own life and using the work as a catharsis. It (the part) seemed like a good bet.”
Nine episodes are already in the can, including a two-part pilot. The show has some veterans in front of the cameras including character actor extraordinaire Will Patton (No Way Back) and Moon Bloodgood (Terminator: Salvation). Behind the scenes are such heavy hitters as producer/writers Graham Yost (Speed) and Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan), as well as a guy named Steven Spielberg who is executive producer.
One would assume this Spielberg character would have just thrown his name on this weekly cable series. Wyle assumed the same when he accepted the role, but discovered there was more to his attached name later on.
“He was one of the executive producers on ER and his involvement was more tangential then here,” recalls Wyle. “He watched the footage (of Falling Skies), the dailies and made editorial suggestions. This was the opposite, I think, to what he did on ER. We benefitted greatly from his presence.
“When we shot the pilot he was starting down the road of pre-production of four or five movies—he was going to do a movie on the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial, he was going to do a Lincoln piece, he was going to do a remake of Harvey, he was going to do things that never came to pass. So, I think he had this creative reservoir of energy that he had to dump some place and we were the only DreamWorks project shooting at the time.
“And he does like his aliens! So he was really involved. He helped shape the pilot script. He was there in the casting sessions, showed up on set when we filmed, watched all of the footage, felt that we missed the mark when we finished, and we went back with storyboards that he drew out and shot the panels for some reshoots that he thought would make it more effective. When we were in the post production with the digital effects company, he was right there with the design of the spaceships and aliens and weighing in on every cut of every episode. So his fingerprints are all over the show.”
Wyle’s relationship with his executive producer works fine for him.
“I like having a boss I am not friends with that I am aiming to please. That’s sort of a psychological dynamic I like. And he’s perfect like that for me.”
Wyle is a casual follower of science-fiction, but is particularly enthusiastic regarding one particular aspect of the genre.
“I am a fan of science fiction but when it works best for me, it’s metaphorical storytelling like Gene Rodenberry used on Star Trek,” Wyle relates. “You were talking about race relations when you were talking about Klingons and Vulcans. And it’s an opportunity to look at something that’s very contemporary through a one step removed process and be objective about it without touching too many emotional buttons. Science fiction is good escapist entertainment, but I like it more when it’s a canvas in which a human story is being played out,”
Shot in Toronto over a period of five months, Falling Skies marks a big step for TNT, which has poured a lot of money into producing and promoting the show. Wyle believes the investment in a show he headlines is a “vote of confidence in me” and believes TNT is going about business the right way with their approach to Falling Skies.
“I learned quickly that this is an audience that pays very close attention to detail,” Wyle says. “And if your mythology is intact and you thought about it in advance, you kind of honor and respect that attention they are paying to you, you learn that they are the most loyal and dedicated audience you can possibly win over.”
Wyle sees Falling Skies as “a drama, a character drama, but it walks a fine line to appease the audience that watched the network before with shows like The Closer and other character-based dramas. At the same time, the show attracts people who don’t usually watch the (TNT) programming with an action oriented, science fiction show. I think it differentiates itself from a lot of other things.”
Wyle, born and raised smack dab in Hollywood, California, recalls getting interested in acting by watching double features when he was a kid at the now-shuttered Oriental Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. He started acting in plays in high school and attended the theater arts program at Northwestern University. His first acting role was a small part “as a Mexican kid yelling ‘Kill the gringo!’ in 1985’s Lust in the Dust, starring Divine and Tab Hunter. The film was produced by his stepfather, James C. Katz, who would later do preservation work on Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia and other classics, produced the film.
After parts in A Few Good Men and Swing Kids, Wyle was cast as compassionate third-year medical student John Truman Carter III in the pilot for the Michael Crichton-created doctor drama ER. The program became a critical and ratings hit, and five Emmy nominations and over a decade of work later, Wyle walked away from the show.
“I left ER after its 11th season,” says Wyle, who essayed the parts of Steve Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley and a teacher in the cult fave Donnie Darko. “I call it a divorce with visitation rights. I wanted to get my life back, but I still liked the character and the job.”
Wyle, who is now separated from makeup artist Tracy Warbin, signed on to do eight more episodes, which were carried out until the show’s 15th and final run.
“Looking back, it’s been a halcyon haze,” reflects Wyle, who remains active in a Los Angeles theater company and several charitable organizations. “I was 22 with a cat in an apartment, taking a train, and it dumped me off at 36, married, wife and two kids and a ranch. And, you know, I was like ‘Wow! How did I get here?’
“And it afforded me the rarest thing in an actor’s life, which is financial security and the ability to pick and choose jobs. This resonated on other levels for which I will always be thankful for.”
But even with its obvious benefits, working on a weekly show for all those years also had its share of annoyances.
“With ER, I sometimes felt like I was punching a clock 15 hours a day, 12 months a year for almost 15 years,” recalls Wyle. “(Upon completing ER), I wanted to go back to why I wanted to be an actor in the first place, which was to be kind of a hired gun. You blow into town, you play a part for a couple of weeks, and then you go and do something else. This one you grow a beard for, that one you shave your head for. Variety–that was the most attractive thing about an acting job for me.”
What made Wyle take the Falling Skies role after his long term ER experience?
“I read this script with its pedigree and my continuing association with TNT, but being a new genre for me was a scary prospect, really,” Wiley relates. “ER was sort of an inherited show. I started off as five or six on the call sheet and as everyone left, I kind of rose up to become the big head on the poster.
“But this is the first time I’ve stepped up to the plate and said I’ll lead the ensemble and carry the show, and that was a scary proposition at that particular moment. So, I thought you should probably do the thing that scares you most.”
One part of TNT’s extensive promotion of Falling Skies has been to produce a comic book and web comic series with Dark Horse Comics (300, Sin City). With that brings another reason Wyle is glad he took the part in Falling Skies.
“To be able to hand your 8-year-old son a comic book with you standing on the cover holding a machine gun and say, ‘Take that to your second grade class!’
“That’s pretty cool.”