“They say people don’t change, but hopefully we can learn. Hopefully we can open our hearts for a second to consider something else.”
Photo: Ser Baffo/Disney
Spoilers ahead for all of season two of Paradise, including season finale “Exodus.”
Julianne Nicholson isn’t the most powerful person in the world, but she convincingly plays one on TV. In the Dan Fogelman–created Paradise, Nicholson plays Samantha Redmond, who has picked up the nickname Sinatra because of the chairman-of-the-board-like authority she exudes, a mix of steeliness and charisma that’s allowed her to create and populate an underground city for chosen survivors of a global cataclysm that, for a while at least, turned the Earth’s surface into a wasteland. The Sinatra moniker suits the character, Nicholson says, when asked what name she prefers. “I call her Sinatra,” she tells Vulture. “That name’s pretty undeniable. It’s hard to think of her as Samantha. Samantha just feels kind of regular.”
Nicholson has worked steadily in theater, television, and film since the 1990s, including high-profile stints on hit shows like Ally McBeal and Law & Order: Criminal Intent and supporting roles in films like August: Osage County and I, Tonya. But if it feels like Nicholson’s been on a roll in the 2020s, there’s good reason. Her credits this decade include a complex and crucial supporting part in Mare of Easttown, an Emmy-winning guest appearance on Hacks, a turn opposite Nicolas Cage in Dream Scenario, and a starring role in Annie Baker’s extraordinary indie film Janet Planet. And, of course, there’s Paradise, which recently ended a second season that revealed Nicholson’s character’s hidden depths and even more hidden schemes with a string of wild twists and a cliffhanger that leaves Sinatra’s fate uncertain. And if Nicholson knows what comes next for Sinatra in the series’ already confirmed third season, she’s not telling.
We’re here to talk about the finale, but let’s start a little further back. Sinatra only has one scene in the first episode, but it’s a memorable one. What information were you given about this character before you joined it?
Dan sent me the first four episodes, which are so strong. And I loved the first episode just as a reader. It was the energy of it, the pace, the sort of detail and character development that was already there that I was excited by. And then the second episode was called “Sinatra” and went into her backstory. I just thought it was a beautiful piece of writing and Sinatra was a real, flesh-and-blood, flawed person. That felt really exciting to me. And to get to explore her in so many different times of her life just felt like such a gift — for me as the actor and also, I think, for the audience. They get to know her early on to have some sense of understanding or maybe empathy or maybe just confusion around why she makes the decisions she makes.
That episode requires you to play extremes right away. We see Sinatra at her most vulnerable but also at her most unyielding. How do you keep track of who she is and keep the character consistent?
A lot of that is in the writing, but normally the characters I get to play, I feel like I have an understanding of who they are. And she was one of those people. I mean, I didn’t know how I was going to necessarily do it, but I felt like I had an innate sense of who she would be in my hands. Having done it for so long now, I don’t know how each scene will go. But I feel like I knew the person who was in those scenes. And then you see what happens.
It must be challenging because, just by the nature of the show, you get so many pieces from here and there across the timeline, and that’s information about the character you don’t necessarily know about when filming an episode.
Yeah, that could be confusing, especially in the second season because we’re still going back in time but I didn’t know those things when we were filming the scenes in season one. So there’s definitely also a certain level of trust in the writers and the directors and the editors to help. Especially on this show, the editors have helped me so much to create who this character is. And Sid Khosla, our music supervisor. I have felt so supported by them and so improved by them.
In what way?
Well, I love the music in our show, and I think it’s used to such great effect to build tension, to punctuate something. And when you’re playing someone who is sort of quietly bad, or scary, those little things go a long way toward helping to make that. I really felt that when I watched season one in particular. And editing too, because sometimes you don’t know what the best way — I mean, there is no “best,” but you don’t know how a scene is supposed to be. So I like to do a few different versions of the scene and then trust editors, who are incredible and they sort of create the character from there. I give them a few things to play with and then they stitch it all together.
You like the name Sinatra. Does your character?
Yeah, I think she does. Maybe it was annoying in the beginning, but I think she’s come around. President Bradford tells her in the “Sinatra” episode that it was his dad that came up with the nickname. And that explanation of it and where it came from, I felt like was a good … I liked it.
Bradford quotes his father saying your character “has the stuff that makes you people sit up straight when you walk in a room.” Is there a secret to playing that?
Oh, God. Yes, fake it til you make it. I mean, that was the scariest part for me, was just trying to just own that power when walking in the room, especially earlier on. That got easier as the filming went on because I got the hang of it, I got more comfortable. But definitely, and that first scene that you mentioned in episode one, where I have to walk into the big mansion where Cal’s been murdered, I definitely felt like I was having a little bit of impostor syndrome. The slo-mo helps!
Moving on to this season, and this goes back to what we were talking before about filling in gaps in a character’s history, did it surprise you to learn that Sinatra was keeping secrets within secrets with Alex and the second bunker?
I had no idea about that last season. I love that she gets to continue deepening, that we find there are even more layers there.
It’s weird because she gets more devious in a way, but also, by the end of the season, more sympathetic than she’s ever been as well.
That was the plan. So I hope that … I mean, that makes me happy to hear that was how you saw it, because I agree. We wanted to soften her up a little bit. Because she’s so vulnerable when she comes out of the coma. She’s been shaken so deeply because she had always had this belief that If I have enough money, if I have enough power, then I can keep everybody safe. I can control how things go. And she finds out that’s not true. And so it was sort of trying to soften the edges this season a little bit, while she’s even more keen on being in control, being the one who’s steering the ship.
You’re softening the edges while also having her arrange for the assassination of the sitting president.
Yeah, it’s a yin-yang thing.
We see that, and we see that she’s arranged for the death of at least one scientist before moving to the bunker —
You don’t want to do a body count with her.
— but we also see her there for the first baby being born. It’s almost like she’s trying to balance the scales in a way.
I think that just feels like her plan is working. Paradise is working. It was what she had hoped for, and it’s happening. So of course that’s early on, and she has no idea what’s coming in the next few episodes for her. But in that moment, it feels like, I spent all this time, all this energy, all this money, I’ve made so many sacrifices, but it’s working. We might be okay.
In the finale, why do you think that Sinatra is not put off by Henry’s warnings about Alex? Because they seem pretty dire and, as smart as she is, they’re beyond what she understands.
I think she just has this unwavering belief in her plan and what she has set out to do, and any diversion from that and things go off the rails, as we see. She has to believe there’s no other choice.
She’s such a no-nonsense character, but she also seems pretty ready to believe that her son is somehow still alive because of some kind of anomaly. It feels like kind of a leap of faith, and it’s kind of unusual for her.
I think it is a leap of faith. That’s how I saw it as the actor also. And even talking to the writers about it, some of the ideas that come up in the end of the season, they’re not hard facts. They’re not things you can prove, but it’s more of … I think the idea of her connection with Link, I think it gives her peace, I think it gives her hope, and that makes it worth it to, as you say, suspend disbelief a little bit, or cynicism, and just feel like maybe it’s worth holding on to the maybe here because of what it means, because of what it could mean for her personally with Dylan.
It’s kind of hard to read her face when she’s told that Alex does not expect her to live for the rest of the day. How do you think that informs her actions for the rest of the episode?
I didn’t want to do much when I got that information because I feel like, What do you do? You need a minute, I think, to take in a message like that. And I think it completely informs the rest of her decisions. That day, though, her final decision, I don’t think that happens until she puts together that X is the one who is ultimately going to put in the code or whatever the thing is at the end where he’s going to save the day. So when she knows that somebody has to stay behind, no one else is going to do it. And so it’s her ultimate sacrifice to save her family and the people of Paradise, which I think those two things were her motivators from the beginning.
At the same time, she has this kind of strange faith that things might work out for her anyway. Not to get into spoilers for anything you might know about the next season, but it’s odd and in a way quite moving to see a character who’s been so pragmatic give herself over to these larger emotions.
I know. I felt that too. I think that was very intentional on Dan Fogelman’s part, and I loved that as an idea and as a choice for her. They say people don’t change, but hopefully we can learn. Hopefully we can open our hearts, put down our beliefs for a second to consider something else.
In the first season, you have a lot of scenes with Sterling K. Brown. What was it like to get back to that finally in this last episode?
I loved them being reunited. I love their relationship. First of all, I love Sterling, and I love acting with him. And I feel like there’s this really interesting dynamic [between our characters]. I think they have respect for each other, and I feel like Sinatra was genuinely relieved to see him when he comes back into the control room. She’s not seen him since, well, he almost shot her. But I think it was a great relief to her, and I think she cares about him. And with Sterling, it’s almost like we just click into this deeper place or something where I don’t have to work as hard with him. Something automatically frees up. I feel genuinely moved, just like that scene we have in the elevator together. That was heaven to do just because I already feel like something’s there happening, and he listens with his whole body. I was so happy that we could do those last scenes together.
You get the sense of this deeper connection because she’s willing to be vulnerable by admitting this crazy thing about her son that she believes has happened.
I feel like she trusts him and doesn’t feel judged by him, and also maybe she doesn’t feel that about many people. But she feels like maybe they’re equals. I think she’s an open nerve at this point at the end of the show. And he feels like a great place, a safe port in the harbor, if you will.
I guess you’re dead now, though. You’re done with this show. You won’t be back for the next season, right?
Well, I don’t know. You never know. You never know with Dan.
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