Thomas Doherty traces his acting career to watching Titanic when he was 11 years old.
“I thought, ‘I want to do that,’” he says. “When that feeling arose, it was pre-ego. It was before even understanding what this industry entailed, what fame was, anything like that.” Now, the native of Edinburgh, Scotland, is himself on top of the world. After breaking through in the second and third Descendants movies for Disney+, he found notable roles in series like the 2021 Gossip Girl reboot (HBO Max), Girls5eva (Peacock) and Tell Me Lies (Hulu) before snagging the pivotal role of mysterious survivor Link in season two of Hulu’s Paradise. He’ll be back for the third and final season, set to air in 2027.
He gets the performance gene from his dad. “I always say that if he’d been born under different circumstances, he would have pursued acting or creativity in some regard,” says Doherty, who is still very close with his parents. “It makes me kind of sad, honestly, because he’s such a storyteller, and he loves music and loves to dance.”
As a teen, he hid his love of acting from friends and classmates. “In Scotland, I was the soccer boy, and at the bottom of my kit bag was dance stuff, tap shoes, tights, the whole thing,” he recalls. “I remember, one day I thought I’d lost my bag and started crying, because I thought, ‘This is it. I’m done. They’re going to find out.’ It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized, ‘If someone doesn’t value me for loving it, that’s okay, because I love this.'"
Doherty will return as Link in Paradise's third and final season.
It's easier for him to act without his own accent. “I love the American accent,” he says, “because, as an actor, you have a feeling and a thought, and then it comes out. Whereas with Scottish, there’s another nanosecond where you have to then articulate it in your mouth. For me, it breaks up the momentum of thought. Acting in a Scottish accent, I hate it.”
He loves how hard it is to define Link, his character on Paradise. “For me, Link is completely justified in what he’s doing,” he says with a laugh. “Whenever an actor is playing a character, be it a priest or a Nazi officer, your character believes they’re good people. To me, it’s incredibly admirable what Link is doing, sacrificing so much for the betterment of everyone else.”
Paradise is now streaming on Hulu.
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #7, 2026, under the title "Bio Pick."
