SPOILERS AHEAD: Do not read if you have yet to watch Paradise's season two episode, "A Holy Charge."
"People survive better when we trust each other."
That's the theme Paradise writer Stephen Markley says he zeroed-in on for his season two episode, "A Holy Charge." The fourth episode of Paradise's second season, directed by Ken Olin, is a riveting, ugly cry-inducing hour that adds a new complication to the Hulu drama created by showrunner Dan Fogelman. "Holy Charge" finds the highly-skilled Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) struggling to help his weary-of-humans caretaker (and Graceland's last remaining tour guide) Annie (Shailene Woodley) deliver her baby inside an abandoned diner.
This place is not ideal for a newborn, but it is the best locale given the extinction-level event that turned the United States into a Mad Max-adjacent wasteland and sent America's political ruling class into a special town-sized bunker.
But, unfortunately, no amount of trust can save Annie, as a tragic case of pre-eclampsia leaves her dying in a helpless Xavier's arms.
Paradise usually finds the proactive Xavier finding an actionable solve to a variety of intense scenarios. But "Holy Charge" denies Xavier and the audience that chance, which makes Annie's final scene all the more impactful. There, Xavier cradles Annie while she faces away from him. She spends her last breaths asking Xavier to ensure that her daughter will not share the same fear of trusting people that her mom did. As Brown and Woodley told the Television Academy via Zoom, the shooting of this complicated sequence required less takes than one might expect.
For the scene where Annie gives birth, Woodley had a tube of blood running down her thigh during filming
"We probably just did one or two setups," Brown explains. "Our director — shout out to Ken Olin — he would let it just run from beginning to end. Ken, who directed tons of This Is Us [episodes], he was like: 'Okay, I want you to take your time. I want you to actually go through what you need to do. I'm not going to try to interrupt it too much.' And he didn't."
"Our director gave us such a gift," Woodley adds. "The gift of time, and the gift of space."
Woodley also gave the scene what it needed to land as intended, which the actor says required her to mine some emotional depths that she hasn't explored before in a role.
"I just remember thinking to myself, 'If I don't actually seem like I am giving birth — if I don't seem like I am really dying — then this is going to [play[ awful. It will be really embarrassing on the other side of it.' And at this point, Sterling and I had gotten to know each other and we had many conversations that were deep, fulfilling and whole. One of the highlights of my career is that particular scene, and I think we both just really showed up."
The actors also didn't get a chance to really delve into the scene until the day they shot it. That's because Paradise doesn't do table reads.
"Dan doesn't do read throughs," Brown explains. "We did five [read-throughs] on This Is Us, the first five episodes. And Dan was like, 'We don't have time to do this all the time. It's fine — let's just go shoot this."
While Brown and Woodley were given the "Holy Charge" script not long before filming the episode began, they were both aware of Annie's fate early on.
"As executive producer and star [of the show], I am obviously privy to major character and story arcs," Brown says. "I think I was given most, if not all, of the season's scripts in advance. I knew what was coming, I just didn't know how exactly it would play out."
For Woodley, her first meeting with Fogelman made it clear what the show's endgame was for Annie, especially since the showrunner came to the writer's room with a very specific vision for Annie and her role at Graceland. "He gave me the general arc, and he told me what was going to happen to her. But, at the time, I think I had only read the first two or three episodes. I hadn't read the fourth one yet, but I knew what was coming."
Even though Brown is unable to look into his costar's eyes for most of the scene (Xavier mostly stares at either the back or top of Annie's head), he was able to feel how genuine and real Woodley's performance was.
"I remember Shailene being what I called 'locked in.' She's always locked in, but I could tell the way that she was approaching that scene that day — she was doing it with a higher level of concentration. When she was going through it, I was like, 'Oh, man, we're about to drop a baby.' Like, it feels like a real baby is coming, you know what I'm saying? What I remember specifically performing the scene was — my job is to make [Annie] as comfortable as possible. That's the one thing I know from real life. I was like, 'If I can make her comfortable, then I'm doing my job right.'"
"What I remember specifically performing the scene was — my job is to make [Annie] as comfortable as possible," Brown says.
Blocking the delicate scene, according to Woodley, proved to be "almost like a dance, in terms of finding a balance between the technicality of the scene and the rawness of the moment." While Olin came to set with some ideas on how to stage the scene, the final choreography as left to the actors.
"We blocked it together," Brown says of his and Woodley's collaboration. "[Olin] gave us a few different ideas because there were certain things that he wanted to try to capture. But we mostly blocked it. It took a couple of hours to block it and then we just were able to let it play."
Another emotional moment in the episode occurs when, using crayon and one of the diner's paper placemats, Annie writes a farewell note to her daughter. By the end of the episode, audiences learn the contents of that note — but that almost didn't happen.
"Originally, we had planned for that letter to come into play later [in the season]," Markley recalls. "But we knew the episode needed something to cap it. So, after I wrote the episode, Dan came back to me and he was like: "We need one more thing. We need one more speech. What's in that letter? Let's put it in."
Also added to the episode is something that Paradise has hinted at all season long: A potential future timeline that Xavier occupies. It is a future that appears to be tied to some quantum-based mystery tech known as "Alex." With Paradise's story unfolding across the past, present and not-too-distant future, how does Brown keep track of where and when Xavier is mentally and emotionally?
"Facial hair and haircuts," Brown says with a laugh. "I am pretty good at following the whole story. I have the whole thing in my head, to a certain extent, because I get the whole season pitched out to me. I have most of the scripts available to me, too, but the biggest tracker for me is facial hair and what hair style [Xavier] has. This is something hair and makeup knows about me: I don't like a lot of prosthetics — if I can avoid them. I tried to grow my hair, or grow my facial hair, on my own because what happens with the prosthetic beard is — you have to talk [a certain way] so that the thing doesn't pop off of your face. And I'm trying to always just have full access to all of my expressions, et cetera. If I ever get something where they're like, 'We need you to be clean shaven in this flashback, and then the next day you have to grow something back out,' then I'm like, 'So, I'm going to have to put on the prosthetics?' And Zoe Hay, who's our head of makeup, she's like, 'I know you don't like it, but it's going to be okay. I'm going to make it look great and everything.' And it does, everything's fine."
As for whether or not the future has room for more appearances of Annie, neither Woodley nor Brown would say. But, as fans of Paradise know, deceased characters have a way of returning on this show.
However, should "Holy Charge" be the last we see of Annie, Woodley is more than fine with that.
"Dan and his writers really did the work for us, as far as putting us in the headspace of what it all means for these two characters. What it would look like to pass something forward, even if we're not moving forward together. There's this alchemy that happens between some actors where there's natural chemistry — and then there's forced chemistry. And I think we're very lucky to have a natural chemistry in the way that we relate to life and the world around us. And that really informed a lot of Xavier and Annie, and why her last scenes have the impact that they do."
New episodes of Paradise stream Mondays on Hulu.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
