Season one was such a taut pressure cooker, contained inside the bunker. In season two, as Xavier ventures to the wasteland above, does it feel like a bit of a different show, with a different rhythm, scope and focus?
Very much so. That is an interesting echo — as Xavier is stepping into the unknown, so is the show. He’s representative of the audience in that way. I think we get a chance to get the best of both worlds, because by the time we get to episode three and refocus on what’s been happening in the bunker, it’s deeply satisfying to be like, “Alright, you’ve introduced me to these new people. That was cool. Now, tell me what’s going on with Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson). What’s going on with Dr. Torabi (Sarah Shahi)?”
Hopefully, the audience will feel they get the cake and eat it too. They’re getting something new, while still getting a chance to be connected to what they knew from before.
The situation we find on the surface, perilous as it may be, is not a Mad Max scenario. A lot of the show’s time up there is more about small, intimate character moments. What unique opportunities does a post-apocalypse offer for a character study?
I think it was always [creator Dan Fogelman’s] intention to show a world that was not just fallen into utter chaos, but more focused on the tendency of humanity to take vs. share, in dire moments. Like, “Am I the kind of person that’s going to take everything I need for me, myself and mine? Or am I the kind of person that is looking to form community, to be in relationship to people — recognizing that there is a greater outcome if we work in tandem rather than alone?”
You see Xavier, the first community that he finds is a community of children — and that they are ultimately survivors. Is their situation ideal? No, but they are better because they are looking out for each other and have somebody else to rely on other than themselves. The next thing he comes in contact with are men who are looking to take advantage of those children. They are people who are takers, inherently. So, you see Xavier being protective of these children and recognizing that if he does not act quickly and extremely, these children’s lives will be in danger. I think that’s a mini-encapsulation of what we find throughout his exploration above — the people who are there to share, the people who are there to take.
And in meeting Annie [Shailene Woodley], you see someone who is there for themself, but desperately wants to be in community . . . but is too afraid to take that step. She says, “Look, Xavier, you haven’t experienced this. For the past three years, things have been crazy. People have been doing gnarly s***.” And Xavier is trying to say to her, “Yes — and I think there are enough people who are still here that, when we need them, their innate desire is to help.”
It asks a really interesting question: “What is the nature of man?” And maybe it’s not universal. This is Brown speaking right now, not necessarily on behalf of the show — I think the show is very positive in terms of, ultimately, at its core, people want to be of service to other people. I would like to believe that. And if that’s not true, I’m proud to be part of a show that’s putting that message into the world — because it should be true.
When it came to Annie, this grizzled survivor, how important was it to cast not just a great actor, but someone with Shailene’s movie-star presence? Because early on, she needs to anchor her own storyline separate from the rest of the cast.
We needed a beast, bro. And we got a beast. Shai is outstanding. You see how she is as an actor — she’s that way as a person, too. She’s got two feet firmly planted on the ground. She’s strong. She’s powerful. The way she moves through the world is like, “Oh, this girl, she don’t take no mess.” She was perfect. The first episode, Annie is holding that s*** down. And it wouldn’t have worked with a lesser-calibre performer. We were blessed that she said yes.
Your previous show with Dan Fogelman, This Is Us, also employed a flashback structure, interweaving timelines. But does Paradise feel different, given that you’re working with such a focused, three-season plan with fewer episodes each year?
It is interesting. We did 18 [episodes per season] on This Is Us. And it still felt like it had a certain level of focus, because Dan had only intended six seasons from the beginning. We did six seasons, and people from the network and the studio were like, “You sure you don’t want to go longer?” No. He felt like he had told the story he wanted to tell. I appreciate his artistic integrity in that.
I feel like we have the same level of focus here; it may even be more so, just because it’s eight episodes, it’s three seasons — so the crucible has been shrunken. Each episode propels the story forward in an even more robust way than probably This Is Us did. The show has a musculature to it that wasn’t an inherent part of This Is Us, because it’s supposed to have you on the edge of your seat. This Is Us was not a thriller in the same sort of way that Paradise is.
As a producer, were there any pitfalls you were conscious to avoid in telling this kind of story?
Look, there are always going to be things that are evocative of post-apocalyptic [films and shows that already exist] — whether it’s The Road or The Last of Us. You want to make sure that you’re telling your version. Will there be overlap? Of course. Everybody’s dealing with the end of the world, so there are going to be similarities. There should also be key differences. You just want to make sure you’re not doing what somebody else has done . . . that you have your own, very strong stamp on how it gets done.
President Cal [James Marsden] is still around this season via the flashbacks. He’s the man Xavier blamed for his wife’s death, but near the end of season one, he learned that Cal actually set off an electromagnetic pulse, which allowed Teri and everyone else on the surface to have a fighting chance at survival. But we didn’t really get to see Xavier process how he feels about that, as he was immediately on a mission to find Teri. With that in mind, has Xavier inched any closer to forgiving Cal?
I think so. I would talk to friends of mine who watched season one and by the time they got to episode seven, they’re like, “Hey man, you gotta stop giving the president a hard time! He’s got difficult decisions.” And I think now that Xavier has even more insight, knows that the president used the EMP to save humanity, even though it meant that we in the bunker would be in the dark [unable to surveil the world above], there is a level of empathy for the rock and the hard place that he was placed in between, and having to make a decision.
This series has always been about power and power dynamics — between the billionaires and politicians who built the bunker and the average folks like Xavier who were allowed in, plus the folks left to rot above. How does the show’s outlook on power evolve this year?
Oooh, that’s a good one! One of the big things that season two introduces is [the mysterious entity called] “Alex.” Who/what is Alex? And the idea that, “It was never just about the bunker.”
Now the outside and the inside are coming into confrontation with one another. Who actually is in power? Who is more powerful in this particular dynamic? Power dynamics are constantly shifting . . . but at the end of the day, the question of “Who is Alex?” is going to override how we think about power. And remember I said that when you get to episode eight [the season finale], because you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Paradise, streaming on Disney+
MEMORABLE ROLES:
An actor of unique and profound power, Sterling K. Brown is a 12-time Emmy nominee, three-time winner who rose to acclaim in the mid-2010s with the dual, zeitgeist-grabbing successes of The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and This Is Us. He’s furthermore distinguished himself on the small screen via standout performances on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Washington Black, and with hit films like Black Panther, Waves, Frozen 2 and an Oscar-nominated turn in American Fiction. Currently unrolling weekly on Disney+, Paradise finds Brown pulling double duty as leading man and executive producer. It also marks a reunion with his This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman.
CURRENT GIG:
When the planet is felled by a simultaneous environmental/nuclear apocalypse, a cabal of billionaires and politicians scheme to craft a high-tech bunker city where a chosen few can weather the fallout. Season one of Paradise found Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) digging into the murder of the president (James Marsden), leading to the revelation that the surface was actually survivable . . . and propelling Xavier on a season-two mission into the wasteland above to find the wife (Enuka Okuma) he thought he’d lost.