In Falling Skies, one of the most memorable characters is the renegade, John Pope as portrayed by Colin Cunningham. While this role is one of the biggest in Cunningham's career, he has had an extensive career in sci-fi and genre films and TV series, including "Flashpoint," "Stargate SG-1," "Eureka," "The 4400," "The Dead Zone," "Elektra," "Andromeda," "The Twilight Zone" and "Dark Angel."
We caught up with Cunningham to talk about his new iconic role as Pope, his insights into "Falling Skies" and some of his past roles.
Crave Online: Can you tell us how you got involved with "Falling Skies"?
Colin Cunningham: I wish I could say that it was some elaborate story but… I could probably think of one but it would be a lie. I auditioned for it man! The only thing that might be unique about it in terms of this being just my own personal story is that I never asked "What am I auditioning for?" If it was just some little dinky thing I don’t want to get lazy going in there, and if it’s something huge I don’t want to psyche myself out. So I never ask what it is. So I’m like, "What is it?" "Eh, it’s an alien thing." "All right great that’s all I need to know, it’s an alien thing, whatever that’s fine."
And then I started doing the work for the audition and trying to come up with something a little different for the part as I see it. And it wasn’t until later that my agent finally said "Collin you know what this is?" and I said "No, I don’t." And he’s like, "well it’s trademarks, it’s TNT. It’s a Spielberg trademark, yeah!" And it was only then that I was like, "Holy Crap!" So I’m glad I didn’t know, because it would have screwed me up!
Crave Online: Is it fair to say that this is one of your bigger roles on TV to date?
Colin Cunningham: Oh most certainly. Not a lot of people can say they’ve got Spielberg on their resume. Certainly. I mean I’ve done a lot, and everything’s always big at the time and you’re always grateful to be working, but of course this is definitely different. In a lifetime I don’t know how many people can say that they’ve worked with Steven Spielberg. Or even TNT. TNT is such a fantastic company and just a great team of people. So you know, I could sit back and say it’s no big deal but that would only make me look like an ass.
Crave Online: How would you define your character, John Pope?
Colin Cunningham: John Pope is an opportunist. It’s the end of the world, 98 percent of humanity is gone. So essentially what’s going to happen, at least what happened on the show, is that people start learning to fend for themselves again. And of course people being the lovely race that they are, there are some good people and there are some bad people. People start to be put together in groups, and John Pope happens to be not the most honest, not the kindest gentlest human being, and it's dog eat dog.
So he, I think reluctantly in a way, starts hanging out with some of the bad guys only because it’s survival. But you can always see that he’s a very intelligent guy. He’s an educated guy, a very very smart guy and he just happens to have surrounded himself with thugs and morons in order to survive. I don’t’ find it very intellectually stimulating for him, where as what’s interesting in terms of Tom Mason, Noah Wyle’s character, he does find something in common with Tom in terms of just their intellect and it’s sort of an odd pairing because you’ve got the renegade leather clad biker dude and you’ve got a former history professor.
And there’s a respect of some kind there. Originally I’m definitely on the other side, but throughout the show John Pope becomes someone that Tom can turn to because he does know where the weapons are. He absolutely knows how to kill aliens, and he’s a smart man.
Crave Online: I thought it was wild that Pope hunts aliens for fun.
Colin Cunningham: Yeah, I get a kick out of that. He’s the kind of guy that’s come close to death so many times that there’s no fear there. And he’s pessimistic, I mean he really doesn’t see the human race triumphing in this particular war. Ultimately everyone’s going to die. So therefore he’s got nothing to lose and gets kicks out of killing these things, which is an incredibly dangerous proposition.
