‘Paradise’ Has a Big Twist That Sets Up Dan Fogelman’s Three-Season Master Plan

‘Paradise’ Has a Big Twist That Sets Up Dan Fogelman’s Three-Season Master Plan

[This story contains major spoilers from the first three episodes of Paradise.]

It makes sense that Dan Fogelman and Sterling K. Brown would reunite with a White House drama. The This Is Us creator left Brown’s beloved Randall Pearson with hints of a presidential future when he stuck the landing with the series finale of their megahit NBC family drama in 2022.

But Fogelman’s new series, Paradise, isn’t one big This Is Us Easter egg. In fact, the writer, showrunner and Only Murders in the Building executive producer came up with the idea for the political thriller before he even launched This Is Us back in 2016.

“This was an idea I had that predated This Is Us, the kernel of what this show would become,” Fogelman tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was an idea that I really liked and wanted to attack at some point, and I ended up getting swallowed up by This Is Us and Only Murders for quite a while. Post-This Is Us, I started sitting down and thinking about what I was going to do next, and this idea kept poking to the forefront of my mind. So one day, I just sat down and wrote it. The White House connection with Sterling’s character in This Is Us and this one was kind of accidental.”

The idea that Fogelman wrote and eventually pitched to Brown — “If he says no, I think I’m gonna not do it,” he recalls thinking (Brown, by the way, was an immediate yes and is also an executive producer) — released the first three of eight episodes on Tuesday, following a surprise early drop of the premiere on Sunday. Intentionally, Fogelman didn’t wait long to reveal the show’s big twist.

The world of Paradise feels like Pleasantville, with Black Mirror vibes, when the series opens on Brown, a secret service agent and perhaps single father of two who enjoys a pre-dawn jog before checking in to protect a former president, played by James Marsden. But when Brown’s Agent Xavier Collins finds that president, Cal Bradford, shot dead in his bedroom, the unusual chain of events that follows tips the audience off that something about this upscale suburb isn’t quite right.

Then comes the big premiere twist: Paradise‘s idyllic community is a man-made underground city tucked away in the Colorado mountains, deep enough to protect the residents from the extinction-level event that ended the world above months earlier. The premiere ends with a Truman Show-style reveal of the Paradise bunker encompassing Collins and everyone he knows.

(Spoiler alert!) The subsequent two episodes go on to explain, via both flashbacks and in present-day, how a billionaire motivated by trauma of her own, played by Julianne Nicholson and nicknamed “Sinatra,” built their enclave to protect the president, making them all humanity’s last hope. The 25,000 survivors were hand-picked by the city’s therapist, played by Sarah Shahi, after Sinatra was warned about a tsunami that would end global civilization. Collins’ wife never made it on the plane to paradise city — something he blames the president for — and, though he’s very much still grieving, the third episode ends with a steamy shower between Collins and Gabriela (Shahi), who delivers a warning from the dead president not to trust his No. 2 in command, Agent Billy (Jon Beavers).

“In all of these thrillers where you have a hero in the middle of it, the big threat is always: who can I trust?” says Fogelman of where he intended to leave the audience after the first three episodes. His master plan will reveal itself as the season continues (dropping weekly Tuesdays on Hulu), ultimately setting up the three-season plan he’s already mapped out. (Paradise hasn’t yet been officially renewed.) “Each season of the show is a slightly different show, within the same show with the same characters,” he says.

Below, in a chat with THR, Fogelman talks about Paradise tapping into both existential and relevant fears and dropping so soon after President Trump’s reelection as he discusses more of his multi-season plan for the twisty end-of-the-world thriller that is sure to make you reach back out for thetissue box.

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At the end of This Is Us, you and Sterling K. Brown mused about a White House-Randall spinoff. Was that the seed for Paradise?

Totally not related to This Is Us. In fact, I honestly somehow never did that math, even though I should have — it was right in front of me — until one of my This Is Us writers texted me when the trailer came out and said, “Sterling was maybe going to be in the White House [as President] and now he’s a secret service agent.” I was like, “Oh yeah, I never thought of that.” It just didn’t occur to me.

Did you write the role for Sterling? How did you approach him on this show?

It’s a funny story. I loved that cast [of This Is Us] so much. It was such a unique experience that I bonded with them in a way that I haven’t necessarily with casts on other projects I’ve done. It was very long-running and we kind of went through the zeitgeist together, all of us in our late 30s and early 40s. So I love that cast and I’m always looking for ways to work with all of them.

On this one [Paradise], I had this idea predating This Is Us of a president and his secret service agent, what the big twist in the world was and what happened. One day I sat down to write it and after I wrote it, I vetted it with other writers and figured out what the world would be, and then I took it to the network and studio and got it set up as a TV series. The common refrain I kept hearing was, “Obviously, Sterling’s doing this, right?” And I was like, “No I haven’t sent this to Sterling. I haven’t talked to him about it.”

Part of me was insecure about even approaching Sterling with another TV show. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable; I didn’t want him to have to pass on something I was doing. I knew the world was his oyster as an actor. But I sent it to him then. And as people were saying that to me, I think I was picturing Sterling the whole time. Clearly as I was writing this, I was writing it picturing Sterling in the role. And now that I’m sending it to him and I’ve said it out loud, if he says no, which I was kind of expecting just out of timing or whatever he had going on, I was thinking,“If he says no, I think I’m gonna not do it.” That was where I was at. Then I sent it to Sterling and that night he called me and said he was in, and we just moved forward with it.

The marketing presented Paradise as a White House thriller, though the title hints it may be something more. You reveal the big twist in episode one, and these three episodes that released together begin to peel back the world of Paradise. How big is this idea that you have; are you imagining this as another seven-season show?

The initial idea was basically what the pilot was. Then after I finished writing the pilot, I had given it to a couple close confidantes to read and people were really responding to the script and asking me what was going to happen, and I didn’t have that answer. So before I gave it to anybody officially, I sat down with two of the people who would become writers and producers on the show, John Hoberg and Scott Weinger, and my producing partner for three weeks talking to experts from all walks of life.

After those three weeks I said, “OK, I know what I want to do now. It’s going to be a three-season show, I know where it goes. I know what the shape of each season is. I’m going to go rewrite the pilot just to accommodate a little bit of that, and then I’m going to turn it into people who will hopefully want to make it.” So I didn’t have it all mapped out when I wrote it, but by the time people got the first script, I knew where it was going to go. Then, as always, you hire a brilliant writers room and they figure out the stuff that you haven’t figure out yet.

Here’s the logline I wrote now that we know what the show really is: “An extinction level event threatens to end the world; a billionaire builds an underground city for the president and 25,000 hand-picked, lucky survivors. The world ends and the show follows the Paradise survivors.” It’s an existential idea but rooted in real fears. Did you anticipate this would be releasing so soon after President Trump’s reelection and as the country digests what’s ahead?

(Laughs) No. We got stopped by the [2023] writers strike and a couple of other delays, so this was well over two years ago when we started [production]. It takes a year from start to finish to shoot a show. Then with the writers strike in between, it took a year-plus ahead of that to write all the episodes and get it up and running. It’s been years since we first started it. The timing all crescendoing now? I don’t even know what to do with it. But there was no agenda about anything, certainly not years ago. It just happens to be that there are a lot things in the ether right now that are in this show.

We asked TV creators last time how you all would tackle storytelling under President Trump. Paradise embraces doom but with your tissue-box optimism. Is this escapism TV? Since there is hope mixed in with the trauma and sadness, what are you hoping people will take away each week?

It’s a really good question. It’s something we spoke about a lot. I don’t mind making stuff that makes people feel things and I like when there’s enough stuff that makes you feel good, too. But the world we’re living in right now and the world of the show is also very challenging. So, that was the dance. Honestly with this one, there was no intent behind it. I was just trying to make a piece of entertainment that I thought could speak to something. This Is Us spoke its message out loud, in monologues and in conversations, whereas this one doesn’t. You’re watching something happen as opposed to talking about it happening a lot of the time, especially as you get deeper into the first season and get to the heavier, heavier stuff.

I was turned on by the idea of doing something that was a little plot-driven and edge-of-your-seat that hopefully keeps you guessing and interacting with a television show, hopefully with the person that you often watch TV with and/or speak about TV with. Our media has become so segregated. Every showrunner wants their show to cut through the zeitgeist in a certain way to get a bigger audience. I’m hard-pressed to find a married couple who doesn’t complain about the amount of time they spend lying in bed in the nights or mornings individually scrolling endlessly on their phones. Or saying, “I watched that show without my significant other. He watched the other one on his phone or in the other room.”

I was hoping to make a big piece of commercial entertainment that had a great story behind it, and some great actors, which they are, and to keep people guessing what’s going to happen next, without necessarily having to have a conversation about things. It’s in the DNA of the show but we’re not talking about it all the time, especially as you get deeper into it.

This show early on feels like The Truman Show meets The Leftovers as it explores survivors’ guilt. Is there hope for a world outside of Paradise? Will the show explore what was left behind?

I have a plan for three seasons of the show. Without giving away too much, each season of the show is a slightly different show, within the same show with the same characters. The pilot reveals something at the end, and then there’s twists and turns in the course of the season. Then the seventh episode is kind of a standout, standalone episode of the show. As we go into second season, we pivot a little bit, but in a way that I think is very follow-able. But yes, there’s big moves ahead.

The goal at the end of the first season… I get frustrated by television shows that titillate and keep you guessing and have twists and turns, but then don’t give you the answers at the end of your first break going off the air. I want to provide a complete meal by the end of the episode for the audience that’s invested. Any question that people have after the first couple of episodes should be answered at the end of the eighth episode. Then a new question and journey will start that takes us into the second season.

The big question after the end of episode three is, who is Xavier’s biggest threat? There’s a relationship that’s blossoming with Sarah Shahi’s character, but it came with an ominous warning about his pal Billy (Beavers).What should we believe?

In all of these thrillers where you have a hero in the middle of it, the big threat is always: who can I trust? I’m on an island, because even the relationships I think might be safe could be fraught. Can I trust this person who has come into my life now in episode three, who is seemingly an advocate and a help? Who is this Sinatra character and what does she have to do with what’s happened to the president? Can my team be trusted? My closest confidantes, can they be trusted? That’s where we end the episode.

In all the great conspiracy thrillers, that becomes the commonality between them — that your main character has to be very careful and is on his own, even if he’s pretending to have allies. Because he suddenly realizes everything around him could be lies and he could be being lied to by any single character in the show. I think that’s part of the fun for the audience. We got a lot of responses from the audience as we were doing early screenings of people saying, “I don’t now what I feel about this ending [with Xavier and Gabriela]. I know as a piece of entertainment I’m interested and leaning in, but I don’t know how I feel about them.” And I think that’s a really cool place to have the audience at this point in the series.

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Paradise is now streaming its first three episodes, with new new episodes dropping weekly Tuesdays on Hulu. The first episode will also air on ABC Wednesday at 10 p.m., followed by FX on Feb. 1 at 10 p.m.