Warning: SPOILERS for Paradise episode 5, “In the Palace of Crowned Kings.“Paradisewriter Stephen Markley breaks down Cal’s surprising humanity in episode 5 and his own approach to the Hulu thriller’s environmentalist themes. The author of novels likeThe Delugeand a writer of several episodes ofOnly Murders in the Building, Markley is one of the minds behind the Hulu thriller fromThis is Uscreator Dan Fogelman. The series touches on many of the same subjects asThe Deluge, which explored the ramifications of climate change on the world at large by makingParadise’s central cast of charactersthe only apparent survivors of a major global catastrophe.
That connection proved to be the perfect tool for Markley and the rest of the team as they designed thecataclysmic event that radically changed the world ofParadise. Beyond that ecological undercurrent is a story about humans at their best and worst while struggling to control a world that’s slipped through their fingers.
Paradise
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Paradise is a crime drama set in an affluent community where prominent residents' lives upend after a shocking murder.
During an interview withScreenRant, Stephen Markley discussed his script for “In the Palace of Crowned Kings,” the important aspect of the show’s presentation, and what could become a driving force for the show if it were to continue beyond the initial eight-episode run.
What Makes Paradise Different From The Deluge
“That’s the invigorating quality of binge TV…”
ScreenRant: Your involvement inParadisedoes seem to be building on your own ecological disaster novel,The Deluge. How did you join the writer’s room forParadise?
Stephen Markley: I knew Dan Fogelman. He helped me get ontoOnly Murders in the Building, which was my first ever TV job. He readThe Deluge, loved it, and got in touch with me. He was like, ‘Hey, I’m working on this thing. We don’t really know what it is yet, but if you want to come in, come in!’ I sort of had my corner of the writers' room where it was like, “Hey, what’s the world going to be like?” I tried to help design something withParadise.
It’s a bit different fromThe Deluge.The Delugeis very realistic. It’s very hyper-focused on our scientific, political and economic reality.Paradiseis a much more populist show. It’s about the twists. That’s the invigorating quality of binge TV, where you just want to click on the next episode. Trying to marry those two, but keeping it grounded in a serious view of this major issue in our real world was important.
The Surprises Behind Paradise’s Cal Bradford Never End
So much of your episode, “In the Palace of Crowned Kings,” is focused on Cal. What surprised you about diving more into this character and getting to go beyond the obvious fun of having the President run around in public in a bathrobe?
Stephen Markley: I watched it being filmed, and Marsden just killed it. He’s so funny, he’s so charming in that role. It was really wonderful to see it come to life. By the time Cal got handed off to me, the character already basically existed. I knew Dan wanted this father/son/ grandson dynamic. He wanted the three generations. So for me, it was just sort of finding where the heart of this spoiled rich boy is.
Where’s the heart in this daddy’s boy? Where does it exist? It is in his desire to do the right thing. I feel like [Cal] is somebody who, in his life, has already always been tugged and pulled apart by circumstance. Cal has actually had a very slim amount of agency over his entire life. Finding that bit of agency in the character in the episode was was kind of what I was driving at.
“These are people who have become accustomed to manipulating the world to their benefit.”
Image via Hulu
What’s the key to Redmond’s increasingly villainous side? How did you square away these quasi-James Bond villain moments with the very flawed but very human woman we know she is?
Stephen Markley: Villains always have at their core an insecurity. Well, not always, but they should. They always need an insecurity. They have something that they fear, and that fear or insecurity motivates them to do these horrible things, right?
In the case of Sinatra and Cal’s father, these are people who have become accustomed to manipulating the world to their benefit. When the prospect of losing that ability to manipulate the world to one’s benefit goes away, they’ll do anything to hold on to it — including increasingly violent and dire things.
“I think that this is what makes the show so interesting.”
“In the Palace of Crowned Kings” also reveals that people have also survived on the surface, despite what the people in the survivors have been led to believe. Was that always something that was being built, or was that a later discovery in the process?
Stephen Markley: I think we always understood that this wasn’t actually the end of the world, that there were people who had survived outside. I think exploring what that looks like [could] become a real driving force of the writers room. We were trying to create a set of circumstances that both pull people back to the outside, but also make them very much want to bar the doors. To hide themselves and bury themselves in this paradise, under the mountain, and not have to see, hear or speak of anything that might be going on outside of it.
I think that this is what makes the show so interesting. It’s operating on all of these different layers. It is a murder mystery, but it is also this high concept sci-fi thing. Beneath that sci-fi layer, we’re really connected to the really difficult task of averting the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change. This is a real thing that we’re all dealing with in this world. When you watch the show, it can be this big, spectacular piece of entertainment with wonderful characters and wonderful actors. It also allows the viewer to think about what’s actually happening in the world around us.
“I watched the Palisades fire from my balcony, and I was living through my own novel.”
ScreenRant: We’ve seen the acute effects of climate change for sure, with the number of fires and floods that have been hitting the United States.
Stephen Markley: If you ever want to pick up a copy ofThe Deluge, turn to a chapter called “El Demonio.” I wrote that whole thing before it happened, two years earlier. I watched the Palisades fire from my balcony, and I was living through my own novel. It was the most jarring thing I’ve ever seen… the book had just come out in Italy, so I was up early doing interviews with Italian journalists the whole time. They were all like, ‘how did you know this?’ I have this very bizarre experience of speaking to people in half-English about what was going on in LA around me.
Every act of creating fiction is sort of a thought experiment. It’s sort of a model of the world, right? Whether it’sParadiseorThe Deluge, it’s taking a scenario and playing it out. You’re putting the fireflies in the jar and shaking the jar to see what they’ll do. With the LA fires, it’s one of the more predictable things that could have happened. In the book, I wrote that the cause was two wet winters in a row, an overgrowth of foliage, and then suddenly a super dry year comes and it becomes pure kindling.
It turns the whole wild and urban interface of Los Angeles into a really dangerous fire zone. Then you get some Santa Ana winds and one spark, the whole city’s suddenly on fire. When we run these thought experiments as fiction writers, it’s not to predict the future so we can say, ‘I told you.’ It’s to gauge the human reaction to it. In any act of writing fiction, you’re always just thinking about, if you’re doing your job, how would human beings behave in this set of circumstances?
Paradise Episode 5 Officially Solves A Major Mystery About The End Of The World, But It Also Introduces A New Threat
Paradise’s fifth episode confirms an important theory about the apparent end of the world, but adds a new wrinkle that could reshape the show.
ScreenRant: If there’s one thing you wanted audiences to take away fromParadise, what would it be?
With any piece of entertainment, you just want to tell a good story. You want people to be gripped by it. You want them to connect to the characters. You want them to keep turning the page, or in this case pressing Play Next. I think whyParadiseis doing so well right now is because it wasn’t all dropped at once. It’s giving people that week to week feeling of like, ‘Oh, damn, I’m out of episodes, what comes next?!’ I miss that feeling so much. We haven’t had a show like that in a while where you’re able to just sit back and say, like, ‘oh! It’s Monday night, I can get back into.’
This is also my opinion, I’m not speaking for the show, but I don’t think Hollywood has been great at talking about the consequences of our ecological situation. I think in a big piece of awesome, well-acted entertainment, laying out the reality of what’s going on and being able to express that in a way that’s entertaining is important. It’s an important element of what’s missing in the climate movement itself, this ability to tell a story. We have to tell better stories. I just hope that I’ve been useful in this writer’s room and in this production in trying to get some of that across.
