Nicole Brydon Bloom admitted that playing Jane Driscoll in “Paradise” Season 2 has been more difficult now that people are clued in to how “diabolical” the secret service member really is.
The sixth episode of Season 2 – titled “Jane” – dove into the troubled and deadly character’s backstory which might recontextualize some things. Jane is responsible for a lot of bad things in the Paradise bunker (we will never forget you Billy), but this episode asks that classic nature vs. nurture question and it turns out, surprisingly, that Jane had a rough upbringing. Her mother was accosted by a crazy man warning her she had just given birth to a killer. From that moment on, Jane was treated differently by her mom, which clearly had an effect.
“I don’t think she was given a chance,” Bloom told TheWrap. “The question that I wondered was, was she born evil, and this guy is just confirming it and informing her mom, or was she sort of cursed in that moment that he has that freak out? And her mom isn’t the best of people, and so would she have raised someone with Jane’s sort of mental instability anyway? Maybe, but I think certainly from that moment on, leaving the hospital, she was not really given much of a fighting chance.”
Jane’s second season journey has been a chaotic affair. She shot Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) and then nursed her back to health and threatened her into being an ally, she murdered newly-minted President Baines – which was a boon for the bunker in all honesty – and now she’s heading outside Paradise to negotiate and threaten the enemies at the gate. Bloom admitted that playing the up-and-down character in Season 2 proved more of a challenge now that the audience knows Jane’s twist with the character’s fluctuating desires for Sinatra’s approval and compliance.
“I think inherently every human being has the desire to be wanted and needed, and I think her vulnerability lies in wanting Sinatra’s approval,” Bloom added. “Sort of throughout her life, she’s wanting any mother figure’s approval, but I think when she takes on these tasks that she’s given, she’s excited by it. She knows she’s really intelligent and capable.”
She added: “In the first season, it helped me that the audience didn’t know the twist, and so playing Jane just sort of straight as she was – like a little naive, a little goofy. She likes carnivals. She likes pretty dresses, that was easier to play. And then in the second season, now that everyone knows she’s so diabolical and evil, it was harder, you know, in a certain moment, like one of our directors was like, ‘Oh, can you just do this as sweet Jane?’”
Jane ends the episode primed in a position of power higher than she’s been before. Sinatra, rather reluctantly, has agreed that the two work better in partnership than in opposition. But despite making more moves that have shaken the bunker’s foundation to its core, Bloom does not think Jane has any interest in stepping into the limelight going into the season’s final episodes.
“My instinct is that she feels safer knowing what she’s capable of, but isn’t necessarily seeking public recognition for it,” Bloom finished. “I do think she really enjoys being higher up than Robinson this season. So having those little wins where she’s now Sinatra’s favorite instead of Gabriela – I think those little steps feel important to her.”
