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'Falling Skies' reveal: Who is tougher Mason kid?

Now that "Falling Skies"fans have seen how easily Ben Mason took down his older brother, Hal, in the Season 2 premiere of the TNT hit, Connor Jessup can reveal how shooting that scene with Drew Roy really went down.

"I push him down, right? But I'm not doing anything! ... He was totally in control there," Jessup, who plays Ben, revealed.

In the scene from Sunday's premiere, which was seen by 4.5 million viewers, Ben uses his alien-provided super-strength to grab Hal's arms and force him to the ground. It's not a position Hal is used to being in with his little brother, and not one the 17-year-old Jessup expected to be in with 26-year-old Roy.

"In real life Drew is so ... much more muscular than I am and in a real fight he would destroy me—like without question he would obliterate me," Jessup said, laughing. "Most of that scene is just him acting it and me just kind of like putting my hands in the right place.

"It was definitely good for my ego, though."

Roy, who I interviewed separately before seeing the episode or before talking with Jessup, said it wasn't good for Hal's ego.

"Hal gets embarrassed in front of his girl," Roy said, speaking of Maggie (Sarah Carter), who shared some flirtatious moment with Hal in the premiere. "That sets the tone for Ben and Hal."

Roy added that Ben's journey is one of the most interesting of the season, and that Jessup "does an excellent job of it."

Jessup's character may be beating up Roy's, but Roy is solidly the winner in the actors' race to get the most Twitter followers.

"I have like 3,100 followers, which is OK, but he's killing me," Jessup said. "He has like 60,000. He's wiping me off the face of the earth in terms of Twitter because he has the unfair advantage of having 'Hannah Montana' and 'iCarly.' So he kind of had a head start on me, but hopefully, with this season I can catch up a little bit."

As of 2:45 p.m. Monday, @connorjessup has 3,828 followers while @drew_roy has 58,286. Jessup talks more about working with Roy below, and gives a tantalizing tease about what could happen later this season.

Read my previous Jessup interview here. I'll post my full interview with Roy later this week.




Were you surprised by things in this season’s scripts?

How has it been being the man of the house, so to speak, with Hal's brothers?
That's exactly what he had to do. That was one of the fun parts of playing this second season and being Hal. In the first season Hal was dwelling into himself. He was still very much a teenager, and he still had his dad there to hold him back if necessary or push him in the right direction.

Now that Tom has stepped onto some ship and never came back, I think at three months that hope that maybe we're going to find him is really turning into a small little flicker of an idea. We have to keep on pushing, because these aliens are pursuing us now. We had this huge battle that really depleted our numbers. You find Hal taking care of Matt and Ben. At the same time, we're having a little trouble with the relationship between Hal and Ben, because Ben is growing into himself and he's going through some tough times. A lot of people are very nervous about him being in camp, because of his being harnessed and what all does that mean. What will that amount to? Whose side is he on? At the same time, that's my brother. Hal's going to look after him.

Ben sort of has this rebellious streak in him as well that Hal has. There's some tension between the two guys because they're both trying to be the man of the house. We're going to find that Ben now has an incredible amount of strength along with some other interesting little things that this skitter blood has given him. That's the first time that Ben has been able to put Hal in his place the way that Hal has always put Ben in his place as they were growing up.

Is this just a result of harnessing everything, or is this a regular kid rebellious streak thing but it just so happens that he could kick your butt?
It's sort of a culmination of the two, yes. Because of being harnessed in the same way in the first season there were several members of the sect in Massachusetts that were a bit skeptical of these kids who have been harnessed and were now back at camp. Are they sleeper cells for the aliens, or are they still the kid that they used to be, but they just have the spots on their backs? All of that has progressed. The harness is gone, but the effects are still there. People are still very curious as to what's going on with them. He's finding himself in a position of being an outcast. That's why I just made him feel a bit awkward. He has this completely hate for skitters in the second season. In the opening sequence he's shooting every skitter he can see and even putting people in danger to make sure that a skitter is completely dead, as opposed to wounded and we're just going to leave him. So yeah, we find Ben in a situation where it feels like he's on the outside, and Hal's trying to take care of him. At the same time he's finding a little resistance there from Ben.

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