Skies the limit

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This article was published 29/06/2015 (4073 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When somebody says the sky is falling, it’s usually an indication that bad things are about to happen.

For Sarah Sanguin Carter, however, five consecutive years of Falling Skies has actually been quite a lovely experience.

“It has been amazing,” the former Winnipegger says of portraying the conflicted, gun-toting warrior Maggie in the sci-fi series, which begins its fifth and final season Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Super Channel (the series also airs on a delayed basis on Space). “I feel like I’ve carried this (character’s) courageous heart in my body, and she has forever changed me. And I don’t know if that’s something that every actor experiences.

“That’s what it was for me; I’ve learned from Maggie. By playing her, I’ve learned that you can still love in spite of having a broken heart; even though it’s painful and terrifying, love is the important choice. It’s never predictable, and it’s never what you think it’ll be, but you have to take the risk.”

During the series’ five-season run, Maggie has evolved from an emotionally damaged and closed-off character to someone who’s able to find the good in others, despite her warlike demeanour.

In Falling Skies’ final season, her heart is divided between brothers Hal and Ben Mason (Drew Roy, Connor Jessup), and while she finds a perfect battlefield partner in the former, it’s the latter who provides her with the sense of security and shared understanding that she craves.

“This is a great season for Maggie,” explains Carter, 34. “Right off the top of the season, she appreciates that she has an important role with Ben; they’re a great team in the field, and the 2nd Mass (militia regiment) appreciates them… But that doesn’t change the fact that Maggie’s going through this internal struggle, almost being frustrated because she has this deep connection with Ben.

“She feels really safe with Ben, but Hal is someone whom it’s very clear she will always love very deeply and truly. So anytime she’s with the two of them, she feels a lot of confusion.”

Of course, Falling Skies is a lot more than — in fact, some might argue it’s anything but — a love story; it’s an action-packed sci-fi adventure in which a ragtag band of rebels is fighting to save the world from a particularly nasty brand of alien invaders.

Led by unlikely hero Tom Mason (Noah Wyle), a college professor turned militia commander, the 2nd Mass is about to make a final all-out charge aimed at ridding Earth forever of its unwelcome otherworldly guests.

“Tom comes back (from a supposed suicide mission to destroy the aliens’ power source), and we don’t know if we can trust him or not,” Carter explains. “But he doesn’t waste any time on our skepticism; he launches right into leading us, encouraging everyone to find their rage and end this war. He’s had enough, and he wants to take no prisoners. And he succeeds in motivating everyone to band together and finally take back the planet.

“I won’t tell you whether or not we succeed, but I will say that it was so much fun to be working together with everyone on the battlefield again. We are all longing for that, because in Season 4 we were divided and our relationships got kind of confused. We had to find our feet again and then wipe the slate clean for Season 5, and say that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done; if you’re a human being and you want to live a peaceful life on planet Earth, pick up your gun and let’s make it happen.”

While the final battle has yet to begin for Falling Skies’ fans, the war is very much over for Carter. Falling Skies has long since wrapped production, and Carter has made a quick leap into the cast of Rogue, a police drama produced for the U.S. satellite service DirecTV (the series airs in Western Canada on Movie Central).

Rogue’s third season is in production in Toronto; in it, Carter plays a federal agent whose dogged investigating exposes a vast conspiracy connecting Chicago’s corporate boardrooms and organized-crime backrooms.

“It’s smaller-scale show (than Falling Skies),” she says. “The writing is very edgy, and the actors are entirely responsible for carrying all the twists and turns of the story. On Falling Skies, so much of it had to do with the size of the show and the special effects… so there was less onus on the individual actors to drive each episode.

“So this is a nice shift for me. It’s a little more work, which is ironic because it’s a smaller show. But I’m enjoying doing my homework at night. On Falling Skies, you just had to make sure you were fresh, and sharp enough to operate your gun and fit enough to spend all day running outside in the cold… (Rogue) has forced me to do the real work of an actor, where you have to entirely develop a new character, come up with her history and study the circumstances she’s in so that you can really be alive in it. I was really craving that kind of challenge again.”

The quick jump from one TV series to another has left little time for Carter’s other career as a musician, but she says she’s determined that her on-hiatus band, SanguinDrake, will reassemble this fall after shooting on Rogue’s third season is completed.

“I’m always playing (music), but it takes so much energy to push the band forward, and I haven’t been able to do that. But that’s my No. 1 priority for the fall,” she says. “You’ll be seeing more SanguinDrake out there on social media, for sure. We shot a music video about a month ago, and we’re just waiting until we’re all together in one place to create a new batch of songs and get back out there.”

 

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @BradOswald