While the genre show enjoys a glorious heyday, TNT's Falling Skies doesn't skimp on employing the basic rules of television in between portraying rogue survivors saving the world from aliens, and from each other. The most basic TV rule of all? Every show needs a bad boy, and Colin Cunningham is here to play your resident rebel By Terron R. Moore
OLOGY: Falling Skies really is one of the few shows on television that strive for the cinematic feel, on every level.
COLIN CUNNINGHAM: It’s actually kind of beyond belief. Forget working on a TV show; I’ve never, ever worked on a feature film that's anything remotely close to this. It definitely is a testament to TNT, who literally just let it all go on this thing; I mean they’ve really gotten behind it. The producers and the production designers… so many elements need to come together to produce anything of this magnitude, and to think that they actually pulled it off on a budget is beyond me sometimes. You show up to set and there’s three hundred extras; there’s cars flipped over and burning, and every day is a different day; every day is a new thing. We never shot in the studio; we never came back to the same place twice. It's definitely not your typical TV show that’s for sure.
Is that what attracted you to playing John Pope?
I wish I could say I chose the part, [but] I didn’t. A breakdown came through the normal channels for auditions and I thought, “Oh this is interesting.” I never ask what it is because if it’s something small, I don’t want to get lazy, and if it’s something gigantic, I don’t want to freak and psych myself out. So I just showed up and I did the readings that I got, and it wasn’t until I got the part that they told me what it was for. I was like, "You’re kidding, right? Spielberg and DreamWorks and TNT—you’re pulling my leg, right?" And he said, "No. That’s what this is all about." Holy-moly… boy, did I get lucky!
Do we finally nail down John Pope this season? He's still straddling the line between good guy and bad guy.
Hopefully he continues like that, because you never know entirely what he’s going to do. I do think that he is a survivalist, and if attaching himself to 2nd Mass is a way to stay alive, then that’s what he’s going to do. What's interesting about season 2 so far is that nobody seems to wonder or care where Tom Mason has he been or what has he’s done, and it’s only Pope that stands up and says, "Hey! Am I the only one seeing this? Enough with the balloons and chocolate cake, this is ridiculous!" The neat thing about Pope is that he speaks the truth, no matter if you like him or you don’t.
Is Pope gonna get to the bottom of this?
Well, John is kind of limited in what he can do, but we most certainly do through the other characters. They don’t want to see the truth, they’d really like to think that he’s fine and they’re okay, because that’s what human beings do. Whereas John Pope is not encumbered by all this emotion.
To talk about a show like Falling Skies, it fits in with a lot of other genre shows—Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, even Mad Men to an extent—they're very niche and very focused on a certain style of society. What do you think of the genre series comeback?
Well, I think anytime there’s a good show, it’s a good thing. Because there’s a lot of non-genre shows that suck and there’s a lot of genre shows that suck. So anytime you can do something good, it transcends the genre. I mean, look at what Battlestar Galactica did. All of a sudden, it’s not just "Beam me up, Scotty!" and we go on these adventures that can be very political and very intense. And you can have acting on a caliber to the best that’s ever been done, and it just happens to take place on a ship or a planet or whatever it is. I think it’s just really nice to see the genre shows step up and show that it’s not about the genre, it’s about the people, it’s about the performance, it’s about the script and the dialogue and these wonderful storylines. Look what Ridley Scott did with Alien, you know? It wasn’t a sci-fi movie. It was a thriller—one that would scare the living crap out of you. So long the focus goes towards just making it good, make it good as possibly as you can, then it doesn’t really matter if it’s a western or a sci-fi epic.
What would you say is your favorite television show right now?
Oooh. I would say, without a doubt, Southland. I think it’s one of the best primetime shows—one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
… Really?
The acting, and the script, and the performances just… I’ve seen a couple episodes of the thing, and they absolutely blow me away. I mean, look: of course Game of Thrones is amazing, and Boardwalk Empire. But right now, I swear to god, my favorite show is Southland. Maybe second to that would be HBO’s Angry Boys. Those are two shows that I’m watching.
Oh, Chris Lilley is brilliant. Angry Boys is great, and Summer Heights High might be my favorite comedic mini-series in all of television.
I just love it; I love him. His work is just so superb.
So what's to come for the rest of the season?
It’s just a bad-ass season. It’s not your kiddies' Falling Skies: it’s definitely darker and it’s definitely a parental guidance kind of thing if you've got little ones. I personally wouldn’t show my youngest niece... it would give her nightmares; it’s way too creepy! I think you’re going to see a more intense show and you’re going to see all the other characters really step up. I think last year, there was a danger of it becoming The Pope Show, whereas that’s no longer the case, if it ever was. Other characters are going to step up and really, truly shine like the wonderful ensemble it is.
Falling Skies is all new Sunday at 9pm on TNT.
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