
Welcome to Paradise
Hollywood stars James Marsden and Julianne Nicholson explain why viewers should expect the unexpected from Paradise, the new Disney+ series from This is Us creator Dan Fogelman that sets up a murder-mystery thriller in a world where nothing is what it seems.
In the pilot of long-running family drama This is Us, Dan Fogelman packed the ending with an emotional punch to reveal how two seemingly disparate storylines had more in common than it initially appeared.
Now with his latest series, Paradise, the writer may have switched genres, but he has retained his ability to keep audiences guessing, telling a story that continually upsets or subverts everything they thought they were watching.
The series, which debuted last week, with new episodes released weekly, is set in a seemingly serene community inhabited by some of the world’s most prominent individuals. But this tranquillity explodes when the US president is discovered dead and a high-stakes murder investigation is launched.
Central to the mystery is Sterling K Brown’s Agent Xavier Collins, who as head of security becomes the chief suspect in the murder of charismatic president Cal Bradford, played by James Marsden. Meanwhile, Julianne Nicholson plays Samantha ‘Sinatra’ Redmond, a tech billionaire who is closely involved with the government and President Bradford.
The cast also includes Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Aliyah Mastin and Percy Daggs IV. Produced by 20th Television for Disney+ and Hulu in the US, former This is US star Brown is also an executive producer alongside Fogelman, John Requa, Glenn Ficarra, John Hoberg, Jess Rosenthal and Steve Beers.
Here, Marsden (Westworld, Dead to Me) and Nicholson (Mare of Easttown, The Outsider) tell DQ about being swept up in Fogelman’s scripts, their experience filming the series and reuniting on screen more than 20 years after they first appeared together in US legal drama Ally McBeal.

When you get a script from Dan Fogelman, what are your thoughts reading it for the first time?
Marsden: It was a thrill. It was a thrill for me because I was familiar with his work. He’s just a gifted writer and he was always going to do something interesting and [have] characters with a really rich depth to them. And it’s also just like, what’s the world he’s stepping into after This Is Us? He caught me by surprise with this one, which is something that on the surface looks like an interesting crime thriller, but then evolves into something much more complex. So it was a joy. You always want to work with those kinds of writers, these kinds of people.
Nicholson: [He’s got] such a great track record and I’m already a fan so I’m like, ‘I’ll check that out.’ I also knew Sterling and James were attached and I thought, ‘Yeah.’ I feel like audiences are so sophisticated now, and it’s rare when you can pull the wool over our eyes, so that was exciting to me. And then it’s this flashy whodunit thriller, but he [Fogelman] does this deep dive into the characters and the people and why they are who they are. That pairing was exciting to me.
It initially appears to be a political thriller, but like This Is Us, it has the same emotional, character-led style. How would you describe what you’ve been a part of?
Nicholson: Well, the political thriller aspect is literally because it happens in our White House. So there’s the politics and the Secret Service and the president. And it is this whodunit – it’s pretty high stakes who killed the president. Then Dan is just incredible at very delicately, but wholly, filling these people, their backstory and their lives. We just know who they are in a way that hopefully makes people care about them more. It certainly made me feel that way towards them when I read it, and I feel like that when I watch it as well.

Reading the scripts, you must have had different reactions. Julianne, you have a quite a big backstory, but then James, you’re dead quite quickly. Do you read scripts as a fan or were you just thinking, ‘How am I going to play this?’ straight away?
Marsden: I always try to read it as a fan. It takes you on a journey when you read a script and you are invested in it and engaged and moved by it. And if you are, you want to be a part of the project more. Part of our jobs is to give the audience that same experience.
I was excited to play this role not really even because he was president; it was more about who this person was as a human being and his struggles with relationships and the regrets he might carry. He’s a very broken person who can also be very charming and very likeable and in a big, powerful position, but he doesn’t really want to be there. I thought all those things came together for the character and there was so much more dimension to that role than playing commander-in-chief. It wasn’t just him being presidential.
James, how did you feel about playing the president? Have you reached a certain point in your career where those are the kinds of roles opening up to you now?
Marsden: Yeah [laughing], I still somewhere inside of me am like, ‘This must be a mistake. It must be a mistake.’ Boy, that world must be in tatters!
Nicholson: It’s been so exciting to watch James’s career over the years. We worked together on Ally McBeal, and I fell in love with him then. He was already a star then, but all he has going for him and all that he can do now, I’m so excited to see him be able to play so many different characters. It’s true: the world needs more James Marsden, and I’m here to shout it out.
Marsden: It is funny, though, because I saw some photo of us online…
Nicholson: Oh my god, you look seven, by the way. I at least look in my 20s. You look like you’ve just come out of the sandbox to that photoshoot.
Marsden: It’s a photo of us doing Ally McBeal together and I did, I looked 12.
Nicholson: You looked so cute. We were grown-ups. I was already 30.
Marsden: I wasn’t acting like a grown-up.

As actors, what challenges did you face having to play in two different timelines?
Nicholson: That was definitely a challenge, negotiating the timelines. Luckily, we had a wonderful script supervisor. We had the directors, we had the writers on set all the time. We had a bible to inform us as to the world we were living in. And we had incredible hair and makeup – I had several different wigs, several different levels of how tightly they pulled my face back under the wig depending on what age I was playing. So we definitely had people helping us. And then it was just a matter of checking in every day like, ‘OK, where are we? What’s happened?’
Marsden: What do we know, when and why?
That must be the hardest part, knowing everything but having to play it as if you don’t.
Marsden: Exactly, and not giving things away. It was tricky jumping all over the place.

What was your experience like on set, playing in a fictional world that is facing extreme circumstances?
Nicholson: It was very cool, actually. The shoot was very joyful. Dan is such a decent, funny, excited guy, as is Sterling. They were so excited every day that it was impossible not to get on board with that. There were certain sets and exteriors that were really cool. There was this great big hangar which used to house multiple blimps, and to be inside a space that size that’s pretty much empty was very cool. And it was exciting to think about what they would be doing in post [production] to bring it to life – especially episode seven.
Marsden: Episode seven becomes a massive, big-budget Roland Emmerich [Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow] movie. But as extreme as the circumstances are, you still try to put yourself out there in that situation as much as you can. They’re all there trying to create some semblance of normalcy to their lives, but then when the shit gets real, it’s hard not to imagine what you would be doing in that situation. And wow, how far are we away from this actually occurring? There was an eerie feel on set. It was always very joyful and we were always cracking jokes and having a good time. But in episode seven, there was a heaviness to it for sure.
tagged in: Dan Fogelman, Disney, James Marsden, Julianne Nicholson, Paradise