Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Paradise’ Star Sarah Shahi on Torabi and Xavier’s Future After Sinatra’s Bombshell Reveal
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from Episode 6 of Hulu’s “Paradise,” titled “You Asked for Miracles.”
Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi) is doing the best she can to keep Paradise from becoming hell on Earth on this week’s episode of Hulu’s “Paradise.” But in her unofficial job as mediator between rogue Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) and Paradise boss Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), she’s barely holding it together by the hour’s end.
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Following Xavier and Robinson’s (Krys Marshall) “Die Hard”-esque mission to procure Sinatra’s hidden stash of weapons and try to out Sinatra’s nefarious dealings and the lies she’s told to Paradise’s bunker residents, Sinatra turns off the artificial sky against all recommendations from Torabi in order to stop Xavier’s team, sending everyone into a panic. When the lights are finally rebooted, the town therapist convinces Xavier to at least hear Sinatra out. That conversation, which takes place without Torabi around to hear it, concludes with Sinatra telling Xavier his wife is actually still alive somewhere out beyond the bunker.
So what does that mean for Torabi — torn between loyalty to Sinatra and sympathy and romantic feelings toward Xavier — and the health of the quarantined town she’s so desperately trying to look out for as we head into the final two episodes of the first season of Dan Fogelman’s “Paradise”?
“At this point, her main focus is to try to keep Paradise up and running,” Shahi told Variety. “She is kind of the architect. She’s one of the builders of the city, and considering that is all that she believes is left of the world, her absolute priority is going to be trying to keep Paradise afloat. It’s an interesting thing, playing her, because whereas everyone is more or less connected to the murder of the president, as the therapist, she was kind of the town peacekeeper. She’s just trying to make sure everyone is, for lack of a better word, just getting along here.”
She continued: “It’s just about trying to get the two quote villains — although Xavier is not really a villain — trying to get Xavier and Sinatra to meet on common ground. They’re both family people. They both want their families to be safe. And in order for that to stay that way, Paradise needs to stay afloat.”
Despite that “very lovely shower together” Xavier and Torabi shared earlier in the season — during which she spilled the precious little info she had about President Cal Bradford’s (James Marsden) suspicions before he was murdered — Shahi says that bombshell reveal to Xavier from Sinatra will certainly change things for Torabi: “Her relationship with Xavier aside, whatever that’s meant to be, we find out at the end of Episode 6 that his wife is alive and that she is out there.”
But in universe, Torabi doesn’t know that yet — and she certainly doesn’t know Sinatra is not only aware people are alive outside the bunker, but has actively had those discovered killed in order to keep them from trying to enter Paradise. That’s going to affect how Torabi views her boss, as right now, she’s got more empathy for the tech mogul than anyone else.
“She just sees the humanity in Sinatra because they met at such a vulnerable time in her life,” Shahi explains, referring to Torabi’s initial job helping mega-rich tech mogul Sinatra cope with the death of her son years before bunker life. “I think she’s able to see a different side of Sinatra that most don’t get to see, so she’s human for Torabi.”
But come the finale in two weeks, when “Paradise” creator Fogelman has promised all will be revealed about Cal’s murder, that could change. “As we’ll see, especially in Episode 8, there are things that come to the surface that nobody can deny, even Sinatra,” Shahi said. “The cat’s out of the bag at that point.”
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