[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Paradise” Season 1, Episode 7, “The Day.”]
When discussing Season 1, Episode 7 of “Paradise,” Sterling K. Brown can hardly contain his excitement. As executive producer and star of Dan Fogelman’s Hulu series, Brown is deeply invested in the material, but he’s also stunned as a viewer by what they’ve created.
“As somebody who’s a big fan of TV growing up, there’s episodes of TV that I remember, and I would say to myself, ‘God, if I could ever do something like that, then people will remember it,’” he told IndieWire the week before the episode released. “I think we did it, and that feels really cool.”
Brown’s big episode is called “The Day” because that’s how characters in the series refer to it — the day when “the world ended,” as Presley (Aliyah Mastin) says in Episode 2. It’s the day when Xavier (Brown) lost his wife, when nuclear warheads shot across the planet, and when 25,000 hand-picked individuals fled to a community intended to keep them safe. Written by John Hoberg and directed by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa, the episode unfolds two years in the past, with Xavier desperate to protect his family, bound to protect Cal (James Marsden), and each new piece of news sending waves of horror and doubt through every character.
“Morality seems much clearer when you are not a decision-maker,” Brown said, discussing the impossible choices that Cal and others have to make. “When you’re on the bottom, looking up, there’s right and wrong: ‘You’re just going to kill people, you’re just going to not give them an opportunity to fight for their lives?’ From Cal’s position, if life is to have any amount of chance, it can’t be everybody. It’s a weird place to sit in. I actually think it’s more difficult for him than it is for Xavier, and I have real empathy for somebody who has to make that kind of a decision.”
The episode is packed with powerful performances and charged scenes, of which Brown couldn’t pick a favorite. There’s the present-day bookends with Samantha (Julianne Nicholson), the “gut-wrenching” final conversation between Xavier and his wife, and the confrontation between Xavier and Cal on the tarmac, where they shout at each other as equals because the apocalypse doesn’t care about your security clearance.
“He’s devastatingly handsome, he’s incredibly talented and charming, he’s been famous for a really long time — so if he wanted to be an A-hole, he could be, and he could probably get away with it,” Brown said of his costar. “Off-camera, we’re having the best time. We’re singing songs, we’re cracking each other up — he’s the kind of person that was perfect for me to go into this show with: serious when you need to be serious, incredibly laidback when it’s time to be laidback. He’s a great dude, and if [his character] wasn’t dead, God I wish we could do it again.”
Structurally, the episode is a rollercoaster that only goes up, escalating tension throughout the flashback. There were firearms and plane sets and a helicopter (not to mention the murder committed just outside it, with blood spattering the camera), as well as background actors to fill up the tarmac and White House before spilling onto the lawn.
It reminded Brown of a show that might be as far as possible from “Paradise”: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” “The way Amy Sherman-Palladino likes to move the camera, it’s almost like a dance,” Brown said. “Cameramen are doing their crazy shit, moving all around. The actors gotta hit this at this moment, make sure the camera’s pointed that way — you can feel it. You feel everybody raise their level of attention that much higher, and it becomes sort of natural. It becomes a game that nobody wants to be the person to drop the ball.”
With all those moving parts (not to mention VFX added in post), the only time to rehearse was during camera setups. “Time is money and time is short, so you try to maximize the money that you get a chance to put on screen,” Brown said. “Every actor has this internal clock. I start rehearsing internally by myself, three days out, five days out, whatever it takes, so that when I get to that day, I’m not the person that’s slowing things up. I’m the person keeping things moving.”
The first round of “Paradise” interviews took place shortly after the Los Angeles wildfires, bringing more attention to the resonance of climate catastrophes and the “strange and unnecessary entanglement between capitalism and politics,” as Brown put it.
“We started off making a show that we thought was a work of fiction that would in no ways resemble the society in which we live,” he said. “While we’re not trying to make any direct comments on anything that’s happening immediately in our present. … While being entertained by the show, being enthralled by the experience, you should ask yourself: Are we doing enough as a society to make sure that we are leaving our planet in a place where the people who come after us are able to enjoy it as much as we are able to enjoy it right now?”
It’s a question pulsing at the heart of “Paradise” long before Episode 7 reveals its secrets, and one that Brown hopes will enrich the viewing experience.
“I think any good storytelling will possibly do a few different things simultaneously,” he said. “You will be entertained by it. You will be educated by it, and hopefully you will be inspired to go out into the world and hopefully make it a better place. I think we’re doing that in our own little way, with ‘Paradise.’”
“Paradise” Season 1 concludes on Monday, March 3. The series has been renewed for a second season.
