Yahoo Lifestyle Sterling K. Brown Unpacks All of ‘Paradise’s Insane Plot Twists… So Far! (Exclusive)
SPOILER ALERT! This article contains spoilers for episodes 1-6 of Hulu’s Paradise. Please don't read ahead if you prefer not to know what happens.
The President’s been shot. His security detail arrives to find him dead on the floor. A quiet yet frantic investigation begins.
This is where we’re dropped into Hulu’s latest thriller series Paradise, led by Emmy Award winner Sterling K. Brown. He plays Xavier Collins, a stoic security guard dedicated to keeping the President of the United States safe. Created by This Is Us writer and creator Dan Fogelman, the two reunited for a riveting new series about the assassination of the biggest political figure in the world.
But just when we thought we knew what Paradise was going to be, the twist at the end of the very first episode threw everything out the window. Viewers weren’t the only ones shocked. Brown exclusively tells Parade that he thought he knew what to expect but during his first script read-through, he was just as bewildered as us.
“I was like, ‘You did it again. You flipping Fogelman, you son of a gun.’ He did it again. I wasn't thinking that was going to be a twist. We’re telling a little political thriller, we go figure out who killed the president. That's enough, right? And then I was like, ‘We in a big old motherf--king cave, bruh? Are you serious?’”
As viewers, we just assumed this assassination took place in our world. But the final moments of Episode 1 zoom out to show that everything — from the ducks to the water to the sky — is fake. Collins is living in a man-made world à la Jim Carrey’s 1998 film The Truman Show, leaving viewers around the world slack-jawed.
Brown gleefully tells Parade that there was even more to the scene that was cut from the script.
Related: 'Paradise': Every Game-Changing Twist in the New Sterling K. Brown Drama
“We had this moment that we didn't wind up doing in the show, but reading it was such a trip because people were watering their lawns, the grass is doing its thing, and then at the end of the show, you see the ducks are not real ducks, right? There's somebody going in and hooking them up,” he reveals. “So with the grass that was being watered, it was a situation where the sprinkler was actually food coloring. It had green water coming out so that it was actually coloring the grass.”
The detail was cut for a fair reason, says Brown. “Ultimately our experts decided that spray paint is not the best thing inside of the cave for people to be inhaling fumes. But on the page reading it, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he did it again.’ He has a wonderful gift for giving a human story that is very much based in character, but having an engine that gives a nudge and has people leaning forward like, ‘How is this sh-- going to play itself out?’”
The reality for Brown’s character becomes more and more bleak as it’s laid out before us. Collins is one of humanity’s last 25,000 survivors living in an underground bunker, and the death of President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) is their city’s first murder in their three years of existence. The show goes on to reveal that a natural disaster triggered a nuclear war over the world’s leftover resources, and the U.S. government prepped the bunker for a select few. Collins’ wife was left behind on the surely doomed surface, so he and his two kids were forced to grieve the loss of the world and their loved one simultaneously.
This future certainly feels within the realm of possibility, all things considered. New fear unlocked. Brown says it was exhausting to play a character so traumatized by this world, and whose job it is to stay on edge and keep guard of the president.
Xavier “is not a man who has a lot of lines. He doesn't speak a lot,” says Brown. “You know, Cal Bradford talks, Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) talks, Dr. Torabi (Sarah Shahi), she talks a lot, right? They take things in. He's a listener, but he's also a watcher. The nature of his profession necessitates that he is constantly on guard, surveying the world for the next possible threat. And living in that state of awareness is very, very tiring. I can only imagine what it's like for the people who are actually on security details. To be constantly on guard takes a level of energy that is exhausting. That was my experience, and it was nice to go home at the end of the night and just cuddle with my children.”
Still, Collins failed, and the president is dead — and it only gets darker from there. An expedition to look for survivors was shot down by Sinatra, the town’s builder and trusted official. We first see the moment in Episode 3, but we learn in Episode 4 that Sinatra ordered the surface exploration team to be executed after they found survivors. Operating from a place of fear bundled with the trauma of losing her own child, Sinatra believes the 25,000 can only stay safe in the bunker and kills the outsiders to keep the peace.
Though Brown can empathize with Sinatra’s decision, he finds it tough to forgive her — even if she’s fictional. She’s “holding on to what she has to rather than what is good for everybody else, all the 25,000 people down here. We need the right to make our own choices,” says Brown.
“It's hard for me to separate Xavier's feelings on Sinatra from how the audience at large might experience it. But still, she took life. She took life. As far as I'm concerned, she's not good. And she needs to be dealt with, right? It's complicated. She's a fully full human being who loves her family dearly, who has gone through grief herself, but where grief has led her right now and the decisions that she's made, nah. I'm not a fan. I don't like it.”
To cover the tracks of her morally grey executions, she commits another. Following Episode 4’s emotional journey through the life of Collins’ confidant Agent Billy (Jon Beavers), he’s murdered by his own girlfriend, a crony of Sinatra’s.
“I love it,” Brown says of the episode. “I want to shout-out my man Jon Beavers, who plays Billy. He's an excellent actor that I think people are going to be discovering through this show. I think he destroys it absolutely, in the best way possible, this character. And I think his passing will destroy our audience.”
Once Collins begins putting all the pieces together and learns that there are still survivors on the surface, it’s time to stage a coup.
In Episode 6, Collins leads the charge to overthrow Sinatra’s tyrannical government control, exposing her conspiracy to the town with literal writings on the wall.
Episode 7 of Paradise premieres next Tuesday on Hulu.
