Note: The following story contains spoilers from “Paradise” Episode 1.
After “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman wrapped up the NBC drama in 2022 after six seasons, he didn’t have an exact science for developing his next project, though he “definitely didn’t toy with another family drama.”
“I’ve never been one to really have that much strategy behind what I was going to write next,” Fogelman told TheWrap, adding that his well of family drama fodder was “probably a little dry” after seven years of episodes. “It wasn’t a concerted effort to go away from something and go towards something else. I think I just naturally did.”
The “kernel of an idea” for his new Hulu series “Paradise” was one that Fogelman sat with for a while, boosted by his desire to explore a relationship between “somebody with great power and a person whose profession it was to take care of and/or protect them,” eventually landing on the interplay between a Secret Service agent and a president, which eventually morphed into Sterling K. Brown’s Agent Xavier Collins and James Marsden’s President Cal Bradford.
“Paradise,” which premiered its first three episodes this week, follows Xavier as he finds Cal dead during a routine morning check, and the subsequent murder investigation that follows. Just like how “This Is Us” didn’t weave together its main characters as family until the end of the pilot episode, “Paradise” revealed that the president’s murder takes place just years after a mass extinction event, with “Paradise” being an underground bunker that houses a utopian community of 25,000 residents.
“I started thinking about, what if that relationship was framed by world events that are explored at the end of the pilot,” Fogelman said of his writing process, explaining he, writers John Hoberg and Scott Weinger and his producing partner Jess Rosenthal “met with architects and sociologists and watched horrifying TED Talks that scared the crap out of us.”
They ended up finding inspiration from Stephen Markley’s novel “The Deluge,” which Fogelman calls a “masterpiece of American fiction,” and hired Markley as a writer for the Hulu series.
“There’s a long history of projects that tread in government conspiracies and apocalyptic language, but all the research shows this is our most present … catastrophe waiting to happen, however it might happen,” Fogelman said, adding that there was no “agenda” or intent to “educate” audiences with the twist. “The situation we present here, ultimately, is not probably on the forefront of what could befall the world. But hopefully, it just keeps in the ether something that needs to be out in front.”
When it came to casting, Fogelman admitted he always had Brown, who played Randall Pearson in “This Is Us,” in mind for Xavier, despite the “Paradise” character being the “complete opposite” of Randall. “[Randall] is “constantly like an open wound, speaking his inner monologue out loud,” Fogelman explained, while Xavier is “very internal, very muscular, a little bit old school” and a “pretty quiet character.”
“He holds the screen like an old school movie star,” Fogelman said, noting that all the things that made Brown so successful as Randall are robbed through Xavier’s quietness in “Paradise,” yet “now he’s killing it in a completely different way.” “He reminds me of some of those old films that I grew up with … the young Kevin Costners, Andy Garcia and ‘The Untouchables,’ Denzel [Washington] and ‘Crimson Tide’ … It’s kind of a throwback performance for him.”
Likewise, Fogelman also had Marsden in mind for the role of Cal. He recalled awkwardly approaching him at the Emmys about the show, which he said Marsden appreciated despite Fogelman telling his wife “I acted like an idiot in front of James Marsden.” Once Marsden officially came on board for the pilot on the first day of shooting, Fogelman knew “we got our guy. We have a show because this guy can counter Sterling in a really interesting way.”
“He’s obviously the world’s handsomest, most charming funny guy, and he does all that in the show, but there’s a weight and a gravitas to him,” Fogelman said. “There’s a maturity that he’s aged into, where it’s heavy and it’s weighty, and he’s doing a charm offensive, especially in that pilot, and it’s a very, very hard thing to pull off.”
“Paradise” also creeps a little close to comfort through Julianne Nicholson’s character, a tech billionaire who becomes closely intertwined with the U.S. government. While Fogelman noted he developed some of the character long before the government’s current relationship with some notable tech figures — “not that billionaires haven’t always had influence on our government” — Fogelman noted, the character’s creation was “before it was this in our face.”
“I loved the idea of taking one of those people who’s at the seat of power and money and resource … and letting them be heavy in the show, but also humanizing them with somebody who’s got softness and grace and is a mother and with an actor who is unexpected in in the role,” Fogelman said. “The nightmare would have been this turned into a kind of mustache-twirling [villian] — You wanted it to be delicious and fun, and you wanted her to command the room in all the best ways that a bad guy can. But if it became too arched, I worried that it would kind of fall on its face.”
“Paradise” Episodes 1-3 are now streaming on Hulu, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday.
