[This story contains major spoilers from the fourth episode of season two of Paradise, “A Holy Charge.”]
The Paradise writers didn’t want to kill Shailene Woodley‘s character. But the death of Annie in episode four after she was introduced only one week earlier, in the first episode of season two’s three-part release, was something that had to happen in order to tell Xavier’s story.
“We didn’t set out saying, ‘Let’s go kill Annie.’ A lot of this comes from, ‘What does Xavier need to go through?’” executive producer/writer John Hoberg explains to The Hollywood Reporter about Annie’s fate and the impact her death will have on the hero of Dan Fogelman‘s series who is played by Sterling K. Brown. Not to mention that killing off Woodley after only a few episodes wasn’t an easy call. “It was hard to have Annie die,” he says, “and that’s why we had to do it — as terrible as that sounds.”
Hoberg says they needed an actress tough enough so viewers would believe she could survive these past post-apocalyptic years on her own at Graceland, but also someone who had a vulnerability, and who had the ability to play both of those things at the same time. “Shailene is a rare actor who can do that perfectly,” he says.
Annie dies in childbirth, and her last act is to charge Xavier with bringing her daughter to the Paradise bunker and reunite her with her father, Link (Thomas Doherty). Hoberg says Xavier and Annie had to bond deeply enough so that he would carry on that mission to take care of her child.
The fourth episode then ends with Xavier, carrying Annie’s newborn baby, arriving at the location where he believes his wife, Terri (Enuka Okuma), has been living in the post-apocalypse, despite previously thinking she had died. He comes across a man (Cameron Britton) who says Terri has been his closest friend these past few years, but was recently taken. So, how will Annie and her baby influence Xavier as he continues his search for Terri?
Hoberg says that when Xavier and Annie had previously passed a caravan of strangers, Xavier told Annie that people aren’t as bad as she thinks they are. “She’s like, ‘You don’t know what the world is like out here.’ And he says, ‘I do. You can reach out and connect with people.’ We needed to test Xavier on that,” says Hoberg, “because it’s one thing to say it and in another thing when it’s life and death. He was in the position where he had to go trust other people. And by doing that, in Annie’s last moment, he taught her that she can believe in people.”
After chatting with Hoberg, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to star and executive producer Brown directly about these first four episodes of Paradise and what we can expect from Xavier’s season two journey. In our chat below, Brown promises that viewers will get their answers in the end.
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From the start, Dan Fogelman has been clear about his three-season plan. At what point did the rest of you on the creative team get looped in on his season-two vision? [Note: Paradise hasn’t yet been officially renewed by Hulu for season three, but Fogelman pitched the series as a three-season show.]
When he pitched the show to me from the beginning, he said he had a pitch that’s three seasons, and he had a rough outline for what all three would be. At the beginning of each season, he gives me the whole season arc. So at the beginning of season two, I knew what season two would entail, how it would end and set us up into a third season — if we are indeed so lucky. So from the beginning of the season, I knew.
Did you visit the writers room for season two? I imagine there were wild webs on white boards plotting this all out.
I visited a couple of times throughout, but really at the beginning. We get all eight episode pretty much done before we go into production — definitely the first six or seven, and then there’s a little tinkering towards the end.
Each episode this season is devoted to a different character’s backstory, while still catching up with the story in present day. This season didn’t open with Xavier, instead we met Annie. What did you like about that premiere format, where we got Annie’s story before we find out what’s been going on with Xavier and how they will be connected?
I think Fogelman has earned enough trust with people who are familiar with him that he likes to introduce people with no context who are going to make us cry, that will somehow fold into the narrative we are familiar with. So if you’re familiar with his style, you’re waiting to see how this individual will connect with our larger narrative. So with the three [episodes at launch], you get the outside world, you get Xavier leaving the bunker, and you get what’s going on in the bunker. I think it was a great way to get you back fully ensconced into what we did last year.
What was it like working with Shailene Woodley for Xavier and Annie’s touching scenes together, and how did she do joining joining the show in season two?
My sister rocks. Shay is dope. She’s an open human being, and by open, I mean that she’s willing to share herself, willing and readily. I try to do the same thing with myself, and we found ourselves being kindred in that way. We got very close, very quickly. And it makes it easy when you have to do things that are deeply intimate on screen to actually have a foundation of trust and friendship that undergirds that. A lot of actors, I think, short shrift that getting to know your fellow actor is part of the job. But she doesn’t. She asks questions, and I ask questions. We both are like, “Oh, we’re just getting right to it, huh?” And it’s awesome and delightful. We’ve both made a friend for life.
This season also found a way to bring back Cal (James Marsden) and Billy (Jon Beavers). How important was it for you guys to bring those actors and those characters back, and will we see them in season three again if you are renewed?
They are foundational to the fabric of what we’ve built. Marsden and Beavers are my guys. The beautiful thing about a Fogelman show is you can die from the beginning and never leave the world. So yeah, if indeed there is a season three — which I’m not supposed to comment on — but if there is one, my sincere hope is that those gentlemen will be back.
It’s a hero’s journey that Xavier goes on this season. Now putting on your actor’s hat, what were you most excited to dig into when you got back to set for season two?
The idea of exploring the unknown. Everything that you encounter after the familiarity of this bubble for three years. I thought the world was destroyed. What does the world look like? What does humanity look like when they haven’t had the timing or the resources to plan for something? And the search for his wife is also three years of thinking that his best friend and partner in life was gone, so the idea of being able to find her is the only thing that probably would have gotten him to leave his kids behind. He gets to fight a little bit, he gets to make first contact. I think I think of it in Star Trek terms — Picard is the diplomat where Kirk is the warrior. I was like, “How much Kirk do we need? How much Picard do we need in this season?” He gets a chance to explore both sides of diplomacy and aggression.
Do you feel confident that this is a three-season show, or could there be more story to tell after three?
I think it’s three. And the only reason why I would give any remote level of hesitation otherwise is not artistic. It would be practical for my crew, and for wanting to see people be at work for as long a period of time as possible. Los Angeles is a very expensive city to live in and not have a job. And the ever-changing format of television, from network to streaming, means we do shorter seasons so we can get subscribers — and it’s not about the length of the season, it’s about new products to get new viewers. It does take a bit of a toll on crew, and on the stability of being able to live a life and support a family. So maybe we’ll figure out something in the future. Fogelman proposed maybe shooting two seasons at once so that people are at work for the same amount of time they are accustomed to have been in the past. But artistically, I think I will be satisfied at the end of season three.
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Paradise releases new episodes Mondays on Hulu and is now streaming the first four episodes of season two. Read THR’s premiere postmortem, Shailene Woodley interview — and follow along with our show coverage.
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