By Helena Andrews-Dyer, The Washington Post
“Sterling is a clear leader. He has the loudest voice and loudest laugh. It creates a joy on set when your number one has that kind of energy,” said Fogelman, who was initially hesitant to ask Brown to read the script he had been working on. “It’s self-protection,” he continued. “Sometimes you don’t want to go to college with someone you went to high school with. I see what’s to come for Sterling. The world is his oyster.” So Fogelman wasn’t sure the Oscar nominee would want to circle back to the small screen.
But Brown was hooked after reading the pilot. “[Fogelman] knew that if I was going to go do something else on TV, I wouldn’t want it to be re-creating the reel,” the actor said. “I would like to be doing something different.” Brown said yes to the project the same day he read the script.
In “Paradise,” Brown takes on the end of the world as Agent Xavier Collins, a man he described as a foil for his beloved “This Is Us” character, Randall Pearson. Where Randall would probably hug it out, Xavier would head to the weapons cache. For the last six episodes, fans have watched as Xavier comes to the realization that the world of “Paradise” – an underground bunker protecting 25,000 Americans from the nuclear winter brought on by an extinction-level climate catastrophe – is anything but.
First, the president, whom Xavier is sworn to protect – and secretly sort of hates – shows up dead. Then so does the agent’s best buddy. Then the billionaire who funded the whole bunker project turns out to be more Bond villain than benefactor. And this new world comes crumbling down just as Xavier, a father of two, is getting over the death of his wife, who, as it turns out, is not dead. Maybe? Probably. In true Fogelman form, the twists they are a-twisting.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Brown talked about the penultimate episode of the show’s first season, “The Day,” which takes viewers back in time to ground zero of the climate crisis that destroyed the world. Or not. It is a time-bomb episode that takes place at the White House as President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) makes one impossible decision after another while Xavier tries to keep his family intact. Brown said the show has made him think differently about the people who do the deciding. He also offered a few tidbits (but no spoilers) about what’s to come in the season finale and beyond.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It discusses episodes one through seven of “Paradise.”
Q: First of all, congratulations are in order. “Paradise” has been renewed for a second season. Where were you when you got the news?
A: I’m currently in Australia shooting “Voltron,” which is really, really cool. It was 11:30 a.m. Pacific time, which is 5:30 a.m. the next day in Australia. I woke up in the morning and there were all those folks on the line along with our producers. I’m on the Gold Coast right now, and the ocean is right there outside the window. So I’m surrounded by beauty and I got some beautiful news.
Q: Fans are so invested, I feel like there was no other choice but to give you all another season.
A: And you know what’s really cool about it? The audience is e’rybody. When your people get hype off the show, you’re like, “Cool.” When everybody else gets hype off the show, you’re like, “Oh, s—!”
Q: What’s been the best reaction so far?
A: So I went to Stanford University for undergrad, and we have this thread. It’s called “Chocolate Cardinal 98.” All the Black folks who graduated in ’98 are on this text thread together. When they start talking about “Paradise,” they like to mess with me. They’re like, “Bro, how are your waves so on point? Is there a barber down in Paradise? How do Presley’s braids stay as pristine as they are?” And I say, “All good questions. But number two, if Presley’s braids were not on point, you Negroes would be coming after me.”
Q: “Paradise” creator Dan Fogelman said he gave you the pilot script and you got back to him hours later with a yes. Why was the thumbs-up so immediate?
A: I’ve read 106 of the dude’s scripts before and all of them slapped, so I was like, “Let me go ahead and see what kind of magic this dude’s is cooking up.” I’m reading the thing and I’m like, “Oh, who killed the president?,” completely forgetting that my dude has a penchant for flipping things. Then you get to the end of the script and it’s like, “We ain’t really in the world? We in a mountain! Are we all cool to be here?” Honestly, I was like, I have to figure out how this story ends, so I guess I have to be a part of it.
Q: You’ve said that if you returned to TV, you wanted to get away from the character of Randall. But to me, Xavier seems very Randall-coded. There’s a thread of protectiveness and perfectionism that felt very Randall-like. Or maybe that’s just Sterling.
A: The OCD part of that, I would give it to you. But they are different in that, emotionally, Xavier’s not trying to show everybody everything that he feels. Randall is a bit more on the surface with everything. But then there’s the importance of fatherhood, and I do think that’s just core to Sterling. If a character loves his children, I can see myself in that easily.
Q: Children raise the stakes on the show. The human obsession with our own destruction seems tied to that. Why is the postapocalyptic genre so popular?
A: Coming from somebody who did a lot of Bible reading as a kid – about Noah and the ark and how the world ended and restarted – we know it can’t last forever. I think that’s it. On an individual level, we all have to transition to the life after next. But what does that look like on the macro level when civilization ends? The imagination can’t help but wonder. We know it’s going to happen. We just don’t know when and we don’t know how. The how is fascinating.
Q: And stressful! This episode, which takes viewers back to Day One of the disaster, made me come up with an escape plan of my own. How have you handled being a show so tied to the climate crisis? Obviously, this is a fictional story, but the stakes are real.
A: It’s a shame that it has been politicized in any form or fashion. It should just be something that we’re all on the same page about. My wife is the one who is prone to stress. She went and bought a generator. She’s the person who carries most of that. Whereas I think Dan is probably the person that carries most of that in his family. Remember when Randall and Beth [on “This Is Us”] used to play worst-case scenario? I think that’s a game that Dan plays out. And I think to a certain extent, he just decided to say, let’s make a whole show out of the worst-case scenario. I don’t get stressed. In a very sober way, I try to control the stuff that I can and the things that I can’t, I give it up to God.
Q: There’s a moment in this episode where the tension of evacuating President Bradford from a White House filled with terrified staffers reaches a fever pitch and a young Secret Service agent is shot in the head in front of Xavier, who yells, “What the f—!” In that moment, Xavier was all of us watching on the edge of our seats. How was it filming that episode?
A: I can tell you how you come out of it – you go home, you see your two boys and you’re like, okay, now I’m a dad. But the more interesting part is how did you get into it? God, I remember that scene. We shot that a few times and you try to have the most authentic response in the moment. I’m happy they wound up using that word because it was real. Your boy can’t get on the plane, but he doesn’t have to die. And fricking Robinson [the special agent played by Krys Marshall, who pulled the trigger]. She is a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of individual.
Q: Robinson does not play.
A: God bless her. But I was like, “Robinson, you ain’t gotta kill this White boy like this, girl.” Xavier I liken to Jean-Luc Picard versus Captain Kirk. Jean-Luc is the diplomat, whereas Kirk was like pew-pew.
Q: This latest episode is all about choices. Will Xavier get on the plane with his kids or try to save his wife, who missed her ride? How does he make that call?
A: As far as we’re concerned, death is staying and life is going. It’s that binary. At the end of the day, these two people need me. And while I’m in the midst of grief and not being able to understand what life looks like without my wife, Teri, life without these kids? I can’t risk that. It’s the worst-case scenario. And then to be on the plane talking to her in Atlanta as you’re seeing the nukes go to Atlanta? Child, please. Lord have mercy.
Q: That’s when the show really went for the emotional jugular, a la “This Is Us.”
A: I think what Dan does well is he understands the stakes of people and relationships. While we’re telling it in a propulsive environment, you have to leave space for the real loss that’s transpiring in the midst of all of this. It allows people to stay on board in a way that I think is even more interesting than if it’s just, shoot ’em up, bang, bang.
Q: Okay, so this is why we lost Uncle Billy, which I am sure fans (raises hand) are still upset about.
A: Shout-out to Jon Beavers. I know we’re talking about Episode 107, but Beavers, who plays Billy, is my dude, and he destroyed his episode. So damn good. Even when I read it, I was like, “Dan, can we bring Billy back?” And he’s like, “Man, it’s the story.”
Q: “Paradise” – and specifically this recent episode – seems like a parable about not only the choices we make, but how we define what makes a hero and what makes a villain. How do you think the show is tackling that question? Have you worked it out for yourself?
A: It’s saying something very interesting about when you are the decision-maker versus when you are someone who is watching the decision-making. Things seem much more cut and dry. Xavier is like, you made a promise to put my wife on the plane, you’re supposed to put her on the plane. It’s not easy. And it sort of allows me to have a greater degree of empathy for the decision-makers. Because somebody winds up losing regardless of what the decision is. But somebody has to make the decision. So I don’t vilify. It has made me a more thoughtful person when it comes to decision-makers. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still have very specific thoughts about some decisions that are being made that I think are mistakes or are nefarious. But when they are gray, it’s made me question what kind of decision I would make and why.
Q: The show was specifically conceived as a Black agent protecting a White president, but race, though mentioned in the first episodes, isn’t a major topic of discussion in the series. How do you see race playing out in your performance and the storyline?
A: The greatest tension that exists in Paradise – and in other countries – is more class than it is race. You’re witnessing the people that have making all of the decisions for everyone that does not, there’s a more unifying, clear line of saying like, yeah, we cannot let them dictate what life will be for the rest of us. I think there’s like 800 billionaires in the United States of America that control an overwhelming amount of the wealth. The game has been played in such a masterful way to keep people on the bottom of the pyramid jockeying for power against each other while people at the top look down below and chuckle. But it takes an outsider’s perspective to galvanize the people at the bottom of the pyramid. To say, “Yo, somebody’s got to do something to make this stop. Or else they’ll just keep doing it to us over and over again.” That’s my own little take in terms of how I approached it, and why it’s important that I am outside – in order to be able to bring people together in a different kind of way.
Q: What can you say about the Season 1 finale coming up next week? We know Xavier’s wife, Teri, is alive on the outside and that his kids are being used as a bargaining chip on the inside by the mountain’s resident Bond villain, Sinatra (played by Julianne Nicholson). This is a story about choices. What’s he going to do?
A: I’ll give you something. We will find out in Episode 8 who killed the president. But you don’t want to know now. Imma let you watch. We know from these tapes from Sinatra that there is proof of life on the outside, but then there’s also the source that the proof is coming from. Xavier still very much wants to shoot her. But his wife is everything. He’s going to have to find out, so there will be a definite exploration of what life is like as we search. The question that probably drives Season 2 is: Is Dr. Teri Collins alive?