Sarah Carter says farewell to ‘Falling Skies’

‘FALLING SKIES’

10 p.m. Sunday, June 28, TNT

By Rick Bentley

The Fresno Bee

Sarah Carter has been sworn to secrecy.

She’s hiding the details about the fifth _ and final _ season of the TNT sci-fi drama “Falling Skies.” The last batch of new episodes begin rolling out Sunday, June 28.

All of the final episodes have been filmed, and Carter is careful not to share any details about how the series will end. After a little prodding, she finally says there will be some surprises and that “it ends in an extremely hopeful place.” She gets a little cryptic when she adds that the last episodes will be “appropriate” and what fans are “not expecting.”

For five seasons fans have followed the story of the last survivors of an alien invasion of Earth. Rag-tag groups of rebels have come together to fight back. It’s been a story of average people doing extraordinary things in the name of freedom. It’s a sci-fi action series, but it never shies away from serious topics.

Carter plays freedom fighter Maggie. The cast also includes Noah Wyle, Connor Jessup, Moon Bloodgood, Maxim Knight and Colin Cunningham.

Saying farewell to the show has been a lot tougher that Carter had expected.

“It was really sad. I didn’t know I would feel as much as I did making the last episodes,” Carter says. “We were reading the scripts for one of the last shows and I got so emotional I had to get up from the table.”

This is coming from an actress who has been working steadily since 2000. She got her start with a string of series-regular roles on “Undeclared,” “Wolf Lake” and “Boston Legal.” She’s had work from being a member of the cast of “Shark” to a series of guest starring roles on “Smallville” that continues to give her a huge fan base.

In high school, the Canadian actress was a member of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and one of the top three public speakers in the world. Asked about those early accomplishments, Carter laughs, saying, “I was much smarter in high school.”

She’s smart enough to land jobs that have been both entertaining and challenging. The difference between her work on “Falling Skies” and other film and TV projects is how much she’s been able to do with the role. Instead of one or, at best, a few episodes, Carter has had multiple seasons to develop the character.

“She’s become a part of me,” Carter says. “She has such a wonderful heart that has shown what it is to be brave and to love. I am proud of Maggie.

“What I appreciate the most about the show is that Maggie has been so complex and really developed. I loved the constant resistance — and capacity for love — Maggie has. But, she’s always ready to fight the good fight.”

Carter will miss more than just her character. She’ll miss working with Drew Roy, who plays Hal Mason, because their characters spent a lot of time together. Carter calls it rare to get to connect with a cast and characters so deeply. And, while there was the serious business of making a television show, at the heart of the story was a ramped-up version of “Capture the Flag.” That made for some fun moments on the set.

Before you start getting misty eyed for Carter, she’s already has another television job. She plays a DEA agent on the DirecTV series “Rogue.” The third season of the series, which also stars Thandie Newton and Cole Hauser, began Wednesday, June 24.

The new series helps, but it is still tough on Carter to see “Falling Skies” end.

“It has been so well written. I will miss the huge sets,” Carter says. “But, it’s also time for it to end. Plus, actors start craving different stories and become anxious to try something new.”

Eric Dane plays skipper on new TNT series

TNT/MCT
Eric Dane stars as the ship’s captain on “The Last Ship” on TNT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Luaine Lee

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

PASADENA, Calif. — He’s battled some turbulent seas, but actor Eric Dane is at last in command. Professionally and personally he’s overcome the odds, which he demonstrates as the captain of the lone Naval destroyer adrift in a world stricken by a deadly virus in TNT’s new series “The Last Ship,” premiering June 22.

Dane confesses he harbors a “love-hate” relationship with acting. “When I love it, I love it more than anything,” he says. “And when I’m not feeling it, I have a deep disdain for it. I don’t know if I can articulate exactly why, but I think with anything there’s a balance, and you can’t have an intense amount of love for something if you don’t have the polar opposite of that for it.”

Dane struggled for several years doing roles in “Gideon’s Crossing,” “Charmed” and “X-Men: the Last Stand,” until he suddenly caused cardiac arrest as Dr. Mark Sloan in “Grey’s Anatomy.” He was signed for one episode, which turned into 140.

But Dane suffered a rough start. He lost his dad at 7. “He was a Navy man and ended up becoming an architect and interior designer. He was a troubled soul,” he says, seated in an alcove of a hotel hallway here.

“He died of a gunshot wound. My grandmother thinks it was an accident. Everybody’s got a different opinion on it. My mother raised two kids.” When asked what his mother did for a living, he shrugs, “My grandparents were OK (financially).”

Now the parent of daughters, 2 { and 4, he says he understands what effect his father’s death had on him. “I never realized how cognizant and aware I was at the time until I had my own kids and I see how cogent Billie is at the age of 4 and think, ‘My God, this must have been devastating at the age of 7.’ The awareness that I would’ve had at that age must’ve been devastating.”

At first Dane had no intention of acting. “I was a water polo player in high school and my season was short and I ended up getting roped into playing Joe Keller in ‘All My Sons.’ Dead serious. And I fell in love with it. I was, like, this is the greatest feeling ever!”

In fact, he dropped out of high school a month before graduation in San Mateo, Calif. to try his luck in L.A.

“I moved down here with 40 bucks in my pocket and took about three or four acting classes a week and tried to figure out what it was about this thing that I liked so much. I don’t know if it was a result of the studying — the studying I think made things a bit more complicated for me. I think, for me, if I can dummy things down it’s easier for me to wrap my head around it because I have a tendency to complicate things.”

Early on he did complicate things, he says. “I used to party a lot when I was a kid and cleaned up my act when I was 26 years old and I stayed a real good boy for a real long time,” he nods.

“I got into a lot of trouble. I don’t have a (criminal) mug shot but I used to play around with some pretty serious stuff. I’ve been in rehab a couple of times.”

Like his character on “The Last Ship,” who’s searching the globe for a vaccine, Dane was in hot pursuit of a cure for MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), when he was felled by the disease and hospitalized. Tethered to a Dilaudid drip, he became addicted to pain killers and found himself in rehab again.

“It was sort of a behavioral modification center, it wasn’t a stereotypical rehab,” he says. “It wasn’t a fancy rehab. It was rough. Friends put me there. It was a pretty interesting experience.”

Dane is married to actress Rebecca Gayheart. “The gutsiest thing I did was propose to my wife over dinner and jump in the car and fly to Vegas that night to get married,” he says.

“I didn’t want her to change her mind. Now that I’ve got her, ‘Let’s go.’ She said yes and she’s been saying yes for the last nine years. She said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Check.’ I love that woman.”

Having his daughters has altered his perspective, he says. “Being a father changed the way I look at everything; the way I look at my work. There’s a certain work ethic that comes along with being an actor, and there’s a discipline that comes along with being an actor. It’s not just sitting in front of a camera and saying lines. Every time I get maybe a little bogged down because of the process or the long hours, if I can’t do it for myself, I can fall back on, ‘I’m doing it for my kids,’ and that carries me through.”

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There’s no doubt that Tyra Banks can talk. Now she’ll be paid to do it. Disney-ABC has announced that Banks will orchestrate her own syndicated talk show coming next year. It’ll concentrate on lifestyle content like home, beauty, enterprise and, of course, celebrities. Meanwhile “America’s Next Top Model” returns for its 21st cycle to the CW on Aug. 22 … Kris Kristofferson has been cast as Andrew Jackson in the History Channel’s upcoming series “Texas Rising,” about the Texan revolution against Mexico. Also due next year … Angela Bassett will seize the megaphone to direct a bio-pic for Lifetime about Whitney Houston during her Bobby Brown days. The film will air sometime next year.

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It’s nothing new for Aussie Yvonne Strahovski to battle powerful forces as she did so handily on “Chuck.” But Strahovski has landed on Fox’s “24: Live Another Day” playing a CIA agent who dislikes authority as much as Jack Bauer. Strahovski reports she finds “24” especially challenging. “I think the style, the way that this show is filmed, the cameras are always moving,” she says.

“You can’t really lie in front of these cameras. They’re really with you in the moment and they linger and that’s what I like about this show; it’s that lingering on the activist as they think things through — which I love. I love that part of it. There’s also some scenes that I’ve had to do that I’ve never done before on anything, whether it’s television, film or theater. So that’s always really great when I read a script and I see a scene and I think, ‘Wow! That’s going to be challenging, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but here we go.’ We’ll see some of those things coming out as the episodes continue to air.”

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Supermodel Heidi Klum, one of the judges on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” says she knows what it’s like to be judged severely. “I try to be always open-minded and give everyone a fair chance,” she says. “People don’t always do that in the business. When I started and I would go to casting, I have memories of where people sometimes go through your book that you’ve been working on for a whole year — your picture book — and people just rush through it and sometimes they don’t even look up to you to see you, and they hand the book back to you and go, ‘OK. Next.’

And sometimes people don’t really give you a fair chance and you’re always disappointed and disappointed and disappointed when people, kind of treat you in a certain way. So I always try to remember that when people come on to the stage — to give everyone a fair shot. I know that these people are nervous. They’ve been waiting in line for hours. So I don’t take that lightly. I don’t just buzz in the first two seconds. I always want to see why are they here? They’ve been waiting for a long time. Let’s give them a fair shot.”