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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Paradise Season 1 Episodes 1-3.]
In Paradise, nothing is how it appears, a fact that becomes increasingly obvious as the first episode plays out on Hulu. If you have yet to tune into the series from creator Dan Fogelman (This Is Us), now would be the time to stop reading as we dive into major spoilers.
For those who did tune in, they would have learned that Paradise is seemingly perfect on the surface, but the reality of this utopia-like city is that it’s an underground getaway for a select handful of the world’s population. Created as a way to preserve life in the case of a catastrophic event, Paradise is home to President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) and his cohorts, including secret service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown), and Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), a.k.a. Sinatra.
When Cal is found dead in his home by Xavier, Samantha begins making moves to control the situation, attempting to maintain the society they’ve created underground by implementing the illusion of normalcy. As one of the primary billionaire funders of the project that built this underground haven, Samantha is extremely invested in keeping things as calm and cool as possible.
Disney / Brian Roedel
In the show’s second episode, “Sinatra,” we see Samantha’s life prior to the underground city as she meets her husband (played by Tuc Watkins) and settles into a domestic life with her family, which includes a son and daughter. When Samantha’s son falls ill, she struggles to cope with the reality that he’ll die.
When she attends a summit and hears about the dangers of an oncoming catastrophic event, Samantha decides to invest in the planet’s future by creating this underground city that her son will never live to see. But she manages to bring his presence into the space, placing mechanical horses around the city, an ode to one of their cherished memories.
Below, Nicholson opens up about the show’s major twist reveal about the underground city, Samantha’s role in the fallout post-Cal, and what viewers can anticipate next as the series continues on Hulu.
How was the show pitched to you? Did you know about the twist of Paradise being set in an underground city?
Julianne Nicholson: I was sent four episodes and I knew it was Dan [Fogelman], so I was excited to read it, and I think I had the same experience reading it that the audience seems to be having watching it. I was sucked into the characters — James and Sterling in particular in that pilot episode — their characters are so compelling on the page. And so I’m in for this sort of political thriller intrigue, and then it all just gets turned upside down at that last scene and it’s like, “Whoa. Okay, so what else is going on here?”
Disney / Brian Roedel
Dan Fogelman is a master of TV twists. How does it feel to be a part of one?
I think it’s so fun. Upon second viewing actually, you can see all the clues that have been sort of scattered around the whole of the series that you wouldn’t necessarily pick up upon first viewing because why would you? But I think it was fun for Dan to come up with those and then for production design and for people to sort of place them around. It’s really fun.
How important is it that we learn about Samantha’s backstory so early on in the series?
It’s huge. It’s everything. It’s such a gift from Dan actually to me as the actor, to have that understanding of the person and where her thought process [and] those decisions she makes are coming from. It also does me such a favor to give the audience context and backstory and maybe even a little bit of understanding of where she’s coming from and why and how she’s just operating from a place of grief, that she’s never been able to [move on from her son’s loss]. I mean, I don’t think you ever recover from something like that, but it’s got her all wrong on the inside.
Are her actions driven by grief or the power that she has as a billionaire underground?
I think they probably hold hands, those two parts of her, but I do think she thinks she’s protecting her family and the community at large.
Then is she a two-sided person?
I don’t think she’s a two-sided person. I think it’s just two things that coexist within her at this point.
Disney / Brian Roedel
We learn that Samantha got her nickname Sinatra from Cal’s dad and fellow billionaire Kane Bradford (Gerald McRaney). Do they have a connection we’ll see onscreen?
Well, first of all, the great Gerald McRaney — I was a huge fan of his from watching TV when I was growing up, so it was such a thrill to work with him. I love their relationship. We don’t dive into it in the show, but I think it’s really interesting. I think that it happened organically decades ago in business, and then they just had an affinity for each other, trust, respect, and ultimately, dare I say, even love. He saw something in her that he did not see in his own son. I think she still values him and the relationship, but honestly, I think she’s an island at this point.
We see some contention between Samantha and Cal in flashbacks prior to his death. What was it like exploring their relationship? And what is it that motivates her to team up and create this underground city?
I loved working with James Marsden again. We worked on Ally McBeal together a long time ago. It was so great to be reunited, and I feel like that gave us an inbuilt history, which our characters have. They were acquaintances, not friends. But even having a history with James grounded that in my mind and when I was in scenes with him, it gave us a history. I do feel like her intentions are good, and she’s trying to use her money and power [to save the world], but it becomes much more complicated than that, and she doesn’t think that the president has what’s needed to see it through at the end of the day.
We’re also introduced to Samantha’s connection with Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi). Do they view their relationship in the same way? It seems like Gabriel doesn’t fully trust Samantha.
Early on, they’re coming from a similar place or have a similar understanding of what the relationship is and the give and take within that relationship, and I think they’re out on equal footing. Once the president is killed, basically, all bets are off. For Samantha, or Sinatra, it becomes every person for themselves, and she’s the most powerful, has the most money, so she’s number one. And I think it changes. I think it starts off on a level playing field and then goes horribly.
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Samantha’s son loved mechanical horses and we see that Samantha has added this item in various areas around the underground city. Is her motivation to protect this society also a way of preserving that connection with her son?
I think it starts off as a connection to her son. I think another thing is trying to make the place specific, trying to pull things from her own life and from other people’s lives that are grounded in experience and reality and memory and a place of time remembered, when things were happier and simpler. I do think she wants those there for the community, for their experience, for their enjoyment, for their cortisol levels. But I think it is also keeping the peace. I don’t think she’s ever got just one idea. I think there are many things happening behind every decision, and I’d like to think that a lot of them have a good-intentioned reason there as well.
Have you noticed how eerily timely Paradise feels at this particular moment?
It does feel timely, but I think when I heard Dan talking about it, he had the kernel of the idea before This Is Us. So it’s been around for a while, and we stopped filming last July. We didn’t know what was coming. We didn’t know what was going to be happening in November, and certainly not with the wildfires. We didn’t talk about any of that while we were making [the show], we really just dove into these characters that Dan wrote. It’s so gratifying to be a part of something that people are excited to watch. We really wanted to make a show that people were excited about that was going to be entertaining.
Paradise, New Episodes, Tuesdays, Hulu
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