While the first season of Dan Fogelman’s “Paradise” told the story of a devastating climate crisis and nuclear warfare from the contained setting of the titular underground bunker where survivors resided, Season 2 deeply expanded its scope, kicking off with an epic survival tale set in Elvis’ Graceland of all places.
After showing “The Day” in the penultimate episode of the first season, Fogelman and EP John Hoberg knew they wanted the audience to experience the POV of an everyday person, given that they would be sending their hero, Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier, out into the surface as he looked for his wife, Teri. But, unlike the brutal warfare found in shows like “The Last of Us,” the team aimed to show the kinder side of humanity that would start to show after that initial fallout.
“We’ve seen the first two years in an apocalyptic show … we wanted to start the tone of the world is healing a little bit, and that we’re meeting people that we may judge one way, and then it turns out that they actually are kind of trying to help things,” Hoberg told TheWrap. “The best way to do that was to have a new character that we’re going to fall in love with and experience it with her.”
They found that character in Shailene Woodley’s Annie, whose tale of survival takes over the Season 2 premiere, with neither Brown nor any other characters from Season 1 getting much screen time in the spotlight installment. “Everyone was just as excited as we were to take a big swing and really just focus on an outside character for a whole episode, like you’re watching a small movie,” Hoberg said.
While Fogelman and the team had thrown around a number of names that could hold the strength and vulnerability needed for the role, Woodley was easily the “perfect combination.” “Dan reached out to her, and I remember we were all waiting because we knew he’d heard one way or another in the room, and he came in, he’s like, ‘Shailene wants to do it,’ and everyone’s like, ‘thank God, because we don’t know who else’ … It was … cemented in our heads at that point,” Hoberg said.
Episode 1 introduces Woodley as Annie, a former medical school student who parlayed her knowledge of Elvis to work as a Graceland tour guide by the time the crisis hits, prompting her to take cover from the crisis in the historic site alongside her colleague. The idea for the setting of Graceland came, of course, from Fogelman.
“We were kind of talking about … where might someone survive? We want something that you both have not seen before, but also speaks to Americana, because it’s what’s gone,” Hoberg said. “The world is kind of gone, but we have all of this stuff that mattered so much — those robes mattered so much, and they were behind bulletproof glass … And now you got someone in a place where what mattered doesn’t matter anymore.”
Before landing on Graceland, Fogelman had thrown around ideas for the episode to take place in a bank like Fort Knox, per Hoberg, but ultimately decided on Graceland to embrace both the Americana of it all, as well as a sense of humor, which Hoberg noted is always imbued in the show. “There’s something slightly humorous about someone living in Graceland,” he said, pointing out the beauty in Annie coming down with one of Elvis’ robes when Gail, her friend and survival buddy, is injured. “You just feel the humanity.”
There wasn’t too much of a conversation about shooting at the actual Graceland, with Hoberg noting “it was just going to be impossible to even go that far,” but production designer Kevin Bird led an effort to transform their Paramount sound stages into an exact replica, down to Elvis’ golden handgun. And with “The Day” directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa at the helm of the Season 2 premiere, they also felt sure they could stitch together the episode. “When they’re confident, they always deliver,” Hoberg said.
Like the rest of “Paradise,” the Episode 1 spotlight was filmed entirely in Los Angeles — a privilege that Hoberg attributes to Brown’s power within the industry and notes was especially needed in the backdrop of the wildfires that wrecked havoc over the city in January 2025. “It felt like our Los Angeles patriotic duty,” Hoberg said. “Yeah, sure, it would be easier to shoot some things outside of Los Angeles … [but] it’s worth it.”
Just as the details of replicating Graceland were planned down to the tee, as was the aftermath of the climate disaster, which saw pristine displays crashing down as Annie broke the glass case protecting the legendary gun. “What … was sacred wouldn’t be sacred anymore,” Hoberg explained, though noting that Annie would still have respect for the historical artifacts and wouldn’t muddy things up too much.
Beyond the evidence of destruction, the space was also curated with other artifacts from Annie’s survival, including a couple years worth of candle wax or the garden she built upon the first glimpse of sunlight.
“It was like we were making an independent movie about a woman surviving in Graceland, and she just was the perfect lead actor for that independent movie we were making,” Hoberg said, underscoring Woodley’s commitment to the project. “You would go over there, and you felt like you were in her house somehow, even though you were just on the set … it did feel a little like, ‘this is Shailene’s space’ … it’s hard to explain, but that just speaks to the power of how she can convey the reality of it.”
Annie’s seclusion comes to a halt when a group of men, led by Thomas Doherty’s Link, come to Graceland to search for resources, sending Annie into an aggressive panic. She finally softens her hard exterior, however, after some time and several conversations with Link, leading to a vulnerable moment of connection between the pair that Hoberg notes still makes him emotional to discuss, likening the importance of human connection within survival to food.
“That was beautifully played. Thomas and Shailene were just encouraged to … be in this moment and feel it, and don’t rush anything, and just go through the emotions,” Hoberg said. “That was everything I think we hoped it would be. It was connection, and it felt like real connection, and I think that’s why people find that so emotional … you can feel how you would feel having not had any kind of tenderness for three years.”
That space to do what felt right extended into the tender intimacy scene between the characters, which was filled with just as much laughter as moments of connection, making the story feel all the more human to Hoberg.
Their time together comes to an end, however, when Annie locks herself in the basement in an effort to avoid Link and his crew as they head out to the bunker in Colorado, despite her previous promise to come with him. Despite not going with him, Annie does get her moment to break free of the cycle when she hears an airplane crash and assumes it’s Link several months later, when she is quite pregnant, but it ends up being Xavier.
When to reveal the pregnancy as well as Xavier’s connection was a topic of debate for the team, though they landed on the order because, Hoberg notes, “you want to know how alone she’s feeling and scared she’s feeling that she’s going to be giving birth in this world.”
“It all came down to that, what do we want you to feel and how do we want you to feel? We want you to feel her anxiety and fear, and … how is she going to do this?” Hoberg said. “And then here’s the solution, but it’s not the solution she thought it
would be.”
The human connection within the first episode sets up for Xavier’s POV in Episode 2 as he sees the “worst case scenario” of danger and brutality after the disaster, which exists in parallel with the “power vacuum” of the bunker. “What I find kind of ironic is you find a lot of beauty and sort of grace and humanity in the broken, ugly part of the world up on top and in the beautiful, perfect, pristine part of the world is where a lot of the ugliness lives,” Hoberg said.
With another POV of “The Day” under the team’s belt, Hoberg confirmed this narrative is now baked into the DNA of “Paradise,” noting that the team loved experiencing “The Day” again and audiences have been fascinated by it.
“It’s the core trauma of the series, in a lot of ways — when you talk to people about a world event, everybody pretty much remembers where they were, and we tell our stories,” Hoberg, noting major world events are discussed as such within the writers’ room. “It’s the most human thing.”
“Paradise” Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Hulu.
