With the season 2 premiere of TNT's Steven Spielberg-produced hit Falling Skies airing in just a few hours, I knew I had to catch up with Ology's old friend Connor Jessup to get the details on the upcoming season. We talked with Connor last year just as the show was blowing up, but it's safe to say everything's changed now. With his character, Ben, free of his harness and the Skitters, and his father Tom joining the aliens to save his son, we're about to see a whole new side to Ben Mason.

... And that may be an understatement.

Check out my interview with Connor below!

Ology: The second season is tonight! Exciting!

Connor Jessup: I’m excited because it feels like it’s been trying to air for such a long time since there’s a gap between when we shoot the episodes and when they air. It really just feels like a long time coming. We filmed the second season from October to March. So the episode airing next week, we will have shot in October.

So what’s going on with your character, Ben? What can you tell us?

Ben is very confused. Last season, Ben was kind of... he was bookish, he was a homebody, he wasn’t along the front line of the action. This season, there’s a 3-month time gap between the first season and the second season. And in between that time, a lot of unfortunate events have happened. Our dad has disappeared, and presumed dead. Rick and Ashley started getting into a lot of battles; we’ve lost a lot of people. So things are tough. It’s kind of a darker situation than when we left the first season. And Ben has become a fighter,  he’s one of the best fighters because he’s using his abilities – his strengths and endurance, aim – the abilities you were introduced to last season are now in full bloom. He’s very angry and he’s kind of become cold and distant, but he’s also tied more to the central story and the central mysteries. He’s almost actually the hub between the aliens and all the mysteries that unfold around him. Last season, like I said, he was at home. All of my scenes were dialogue between me and my dad or me and my brothers. This season, there’s a lot of physical stuff. There’s a lot of running around, firing guns, dropping out of buildings, and I’m not a very physical person at all. In fact, I’m rather graceless. I’m actually probably one of the least graceful people on the cast, and they’ve given me kind of the most active part. It’s ironic.

Yeah, I watched the first 3 minutes teaser, and you can immediately see he's completely different than last year.

Yes. He’s kind of gone through a transformation. I like to call it "puberty on steroids."

That’s a perfect way to describe it [laughs].

Because he’s confused, he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, to his body, so it’s more than enough parallels there.

Was that fun for you to take him in a different direction?

Yeah, last year was fun, but last year, the character had a lot more similarities to me. I’m not violent or aggressive or physical, so I can play that easier. But this season, the character is very different than me, so it’s more challenging, and more fun. I got to do all the stuff I thought I’d never be able to do before. Also, he’s really angsty this season, and angst is fun to play. I’m a big comic book and anime fan, and to be a fan of those things, you kind of have to be a fan of angst. So it’s a lot of fun to play this sort of dark, brooding character.

Some fans want to know if Ben’s been harboring some sympathy for the aliens (which definitely doesn’t seem true in those first 3 minutes). What are your thoughts about that?

Yeah, you know, I think Ben is... the way he feels toward the aliens is complicated because I know in the first 3 minutes, he’s already violent and outwardly aggressive towards them, but a lot of it comes from his own confusion and fear about what’s happening to him, and he’s kind of expressing that. But I think he also is – even though it’s fright, he’s also probably the most open towards accepting any good quality that they have. He’s looking for redemption, he’s looking for something that can tell him that what’s happened to him isn’t all bad. That there’s some redeemable quality. So if there’s any silver lining of the aliens, any mystery that we haven’t been confronted with, I think he’d be willing to jump on board. Despite that first episode, he has more of an open mind than most people on the show – at least with the aliens.

How much are we going to learn about Tom’s time on the ship and how is his relationship with Ben going to evolve over the season?

I can’t tell you much about what happens to Tom on the ship or any stuff like that, but like I said, there’s a time gap. He’s gone for 3 months and then he comes back at some point, and there’s a lot of mystery surrounding it.  But I can talk a little bit about how the entire dynamic of the family has shifted. Last season, Tom and Ben were close, and Tom now has some conflict. This season, there’s a lot more tension between me and Hal. There’s a lot of butting heads when the season first starts. Tom, when he comes back, obviously my changes have progressed a lot and he’d been in the situation that I was in once. So there’s some tension and there’s some mutual understanding.  My scenes with Noah that I had this season were kind of where we looked into our mutual fears and hatreds – those are some of my favorite [scenes] between me and Noah.

On a show like this, it seems like filming would always be so intense. Do you guys ever get to have fun on set?

Well I think when you’re new to something, it just seems really serious and dark when you watch it, but when you’re doing it and the alien is actually a guy in blue tights wearing a costume, there’s a sense of play and a sense of kind of ridiculousness and absurdity. It’s never too serious on set. Obviously, there’s serious days and we shoot a lot of nights, so people are tired. There are long days and long nights, but there’s always levity on set. There are always people joking and laughing, especially in the scenes where you least expect it – maybe in the most violent or most aggressive scenes, that’s usually when people are the most light-hearted. So yeah, there’s always fun stuff happening, people cracking jokes, people are always playing board games. It’s a fun set. It’s definitely a set I like to go to.

This is your first major role and it’s a sci-fi role. How do you think you’d handle going into a comedic role or something along those lines in the future?

I don’t know, I think I might be bored [laughs]. This set has a kinetic energy and it has excitement, and there’s always something new and interesting happening on set every day. I don’t think you can say that about most sets. You can’t go to work every day and see buildings getting toppled and fire fights, and explosions. There’s just an energy. We shoot so much and there are 15-hour days. Another thing with this show is that everyone is from out of town. Everyone kind of bonds more so than usual, so I don’t know what it’d be like to work on another more "normal" show. I mean, I’d be willing to give it a chance if someone is willing to get me in.

You guys film in Vancouver right? I've never been.

Oh, really? Vancouver is very, very rainy, especially... we shot through fall and winter, and that’s the rainy season. So every day was rainy and overcast. It looks really great on camera, but it was just one long and rainy day. But it’s a beautiful city, though. There’s the mountains and the ocean. The city itself is spectacular, but it was rainy.

What do you do in the off months? Are you in school?

Yeah, I’m finishing up. We wrapped in March, and I have about 3 and a half months before I graduate because I’m in my last year of school. 

Do you go to an actual school or do you take online school? Or do you have a tutor?

I go to actual school. I have an actual high school that I go to, so I actually have to catch up on all the work I’ve missed. And I’m graduating within the next couple of weeks, so that’s really what I’ve been doing with pretty much all of my off time since we wrapped. It’s been kind of hectic for the last year.

Well, congrats! That’s awesome you're almost done.

I know, I’m looking forward to it! We were lucky enough to get another season, so it’ll been nice to not have to do school because when you’re shooting and you have a tutor on set, every time you’re not shooting a scene, you’re expected to go to the tutoring room and it’s always kind funny and demine. And on your weekends when you could be resting, you have to do school. So I actually have two full-time jobs.

How is it being on a TV show and attending school. Not many young actors do that, right?

Every kid who is under 18 has to do it unless they dropped out or they’re homeschooled. But it’s hard because the mindset that you are in – that you have to be in to do school – is very very different than the mindset when you’re shooting. When you’re shooting, time goes by really fast, you become kind of wrapped up in this kinetic energy, and school is the opposite. School – there’s no kinetic energy at school. Everyone who’s been to school knows. It’s like trying to mix oil and water. It’s really the worst combo, and I’m just glad that it’s over for me.

So what’s coming up? I know you’ve done producing and writing in the past. Are you going to do more of that in the future? More behind the scenes stuff?

I certainly hope so. It’s an amazing experience to be involved with behind the scenes, but right now I kind of have like a tunnel vision on school. But during the summer, I have a few short films that I’m working on, some features that I’m working on. I actually met a friend that’s trying to get involved. I guess the nice thing about being young is that there’s no pressure. You never know what’s going to happen, so I’m trying to fit in as much creative stuff as I can.

The season finale was huge and it did really well ratings-wise too. Were you surprised by the success of the show?

It’s strange. I really didn’t have any expectations and I don’t mean that in a low way, I had never thought about it before it aired. When they sent me the first numbers and I didn’t even know what it was, and they said "Here’s how many millions of people watched it" and I was just like "Is that good?" I didn’t really know what was good and what was bad. To me, when I think of a show, I think of the experience of making it. I’m not really exposed to any of that, so the numbers – it’s hard for me to quantify the numbers in any real way, or qualify the numbers, I guess. Like I said, I’m not really exposed to it, but I’m happy about it. Like you said, it was very successful. The finale – I get tweets and I see people posting videos on YouTube, and I see the fan response to it, and it’s rewarding and surprising. And I’d be happy if my friend liked it. 

Falling Skies airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET on TNT.

Are you excited for the new season? Let us know in the comments!

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Follow on Ology: Sharon Tharp |  TVOlogy

Follow on Twitter: @sharontharp  | @TVOlogy

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