Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden‘s new show Paradise has been shrouded in secrecy thanks to a major plot twist from creator Dan Fogelman — but what does that reveal mean for the rest of the season?
Warning: Spoilers below for the series premiere of Paradise
During the series premiere, which was released on Hulu Sunday, January 26, the audience was introduced to Brown, who plays a Secret Service agent named Xavier who is assigned to protect former President Cal Bradford (Marsden). Xavier finds Cal dead minutes into the premiere, which launches concern throughout their serene town called Paradise. The twist? Paradise is an underground bunker built for survivors of an apocalyptic event that ended the rest of humanity.
Before the first episode dropped, Us Weekly spoke with stars Julianne Nicholson and Sarah Shahi about having to keep the twist a secret.
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“The biggest lengths [we’ve gone through] are happening now when we’re actually talking to people about it,” Nicholson, 53, who plays a top advisor to Marsden’s character, told Us about the struggle to keep the true Paradise story a surprise. “When we were on set, everybody knows what’s up, so we don’t have to be that secretive.”
She continued: “But now the trick is how do you grab people’s attention and assure them that this is something different without giving away any of the details? But we’re very excited for people to get on the ride with us.”
Shahi, 45, plays the town’s psychiatrist and told Us she was grateful that Fogelman kept them in the loop.
“Whenever the scripts would come out, they weren’t secretive. I’ve been on projects in which they would not release the script until you were ready to shoot those pages,” the actress said. “But then this one, they were not selfish with their scripts. The minute one was ready to come out, they would send it over to us.”
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This isn’t the first time Fogelman, 48, has kept Us on the edge of our seats. He previously teamed up with Brown, 48, on NBC’s This Is Us, which continually surprised viewers with big reveals throughout multiple decades of one family’s journey.
“A big part of our goal was ‘How can we make a really complicated mystery?’ There’s two mysteries here,” the showrunner told Us and other reporters during a press conference earlier this month. “And how can we start parsing out that information so by the end of this first season, you have a satisfying meal? You keep getting answers and asking more questions until the end of the season where you kind of have it all.”
As the season continues, viewers learn more about what caused the world’s most prominent individuals to prepare for the end of the world. Nicholson and Shahi play some of those survivors, but that doesn’t mean they both feel equipped to survive life in an underground bunker.
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“I can’t make a fire. I can’t. I can’t kill anything to make food,” Shahi joked to Us before Nicholson reminded her, “But no one’s killing anything in Paradise. We don’t have any animals to kill.”
Shahi stood by her answer, adding, “I would like to do what I do when I’m not working, which is just literally be at home and hang out with my kids and make dinner and do the dishes and laundry. I’d just be good for entertainment. Just put me with the kids and somebody else can make the rules. I’m kind of happy to follow them.”
New episodes of Paradise will be released on Hulu every Tuesday.
With reporting by Johnni Macke
