Noah Wyle: Librarians are the new superheroes

SINGAPORE — As the world-saving superhero known as The Librarian, actor Noah Wyle graciously acknowledges that he is single-handedly responsible for making librarians hot again.

Having starred in three The Librarian telemovies and now, in the TV series, The Librarians (alongside Rebecca Romijn), in which he and a small band of chosen ones battles literary supervillains — all before the stamped due date, of course — he has endowed the profession with new glory.

“I get some really wonderful mail from librarian groups,” shared the actor, who is also known for his work in hospital drama ER and the alien-invasion sci-fi series Falling Skies.

“I don’t know about Singapore, but in the United States, the librarian union is a very powerful lobby. When they bind together and champion an author or cause, they’re a formidable bunch, so to be on their good side is a good thing,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve received oversized library cards; and a lot of testimonials about how school kids come in and are now very curious about the library and want to spend time there; and how people tend to look at (librarians) as if they’re endowed with some kind of special powers.”

Those looks are only going to get more awestruck as the second season commences. “Shakespeare’s Prospero comes to life and uses magic to raise a fictional army of all the worst villains in history of literature to battle the librarians,” Wyle divulged.

That means more action scenes for him — but these scenes are “relatively simple compared to how I’ve been spending the last couple of years of my life — battling aliens and shooting machine guns,” he quipped. “The Librarians is a lot more fun — it’s a lot sillier. The action sequences usually involve comic pratfalls and choking on food ...” I feel like I’m getting away with something, going to go to work and being silly.”

It’s not just the tongue-in-cheek tone of the show that Wyle enjoys. He also genuinely loves being around books (one of his favourite bibliophile pick-up lines, he said, is, “What are you reading?”). In fact, when he met his wife, one of the things that broke the ice between them was when he saw the books in her apartment. “I was so intrigued by some of the titles there. We had a lot of the same books, which I thought was interesting, but she also had a lot of books I knew nothing about, and I found that really sexy,” he said.

That said, Wyle admitted that he prefers bookstores to libraries. “I spend a lot of time in bookstores buying books that are way too expensive. It’s a bit of an addiction. I’m a little covetous. When I see a book that I really want, I have to have it.”

So, no Kindles for him, then? “No Kindles for me! My daughter, who just turned 10, asked me for a Kindle for her birthday, and I broke down and bought her one because I thought it would promote reading. But I’m such a tactile book person that it kind of pained me a little bit to buy it for her,” he sighed.

Hey, maybe in the third season, the Librarians can battle Amazon, or something.

Catch the second season of The Librarians starts Nov 2, at 9pm on Universal Channel (StarHub TV Ch 512).