Paradise’s James Marsden Takes Us Inside Cal’s Most POTUS Moment So Far: ‘If I Were President, This Is How I Would Want to Speak’ — Watch
Warning: This post contains spoilers from Paradise Episode 7, “The Day.”
Nothing but respect for Paradise‘s president.
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Episode 7 of Hulu’s mystery drama, which began streaming today, takes viewers back to the harrowing day that civilization as we know it ended. The eruption of an Antarctic supervolcano kicks off a global climate catastrophe. Then that incident triggers an international nuclear crisis (yep, simultaneously). And American President Cal Bradford is called upon to record a comforting — if not wholly honest — address to the American people before he and a few selected others are whisked to safety in the bunker city of Paradise.
Cal follows the plan until his conscience spurs him to call an audible and go live with a new broadcast, one that lets his countrymen know exactly how bad things are. In a stirring speech from the Oval Office, POTUS encourages Americans to spend what little time humanity has left with their loved ones — advice that burns like acid later when Cal admits to Xavier that he knew Xavier’s wife, Teri, wouldn’t be able to get to the Paradise transport on time. (Read a full episode recap here.)
In the video above, James Marsden tells me that he didn’t expect Cal’s second Oval Office monologue to affect him so deeply, “but I found myself getting lost in it… Because in that moment, he’s giving a kind of cookie-cutter speech that he just thinks is bulls–t.”
Sterling K. Brown, sitting next to him, nods. “Right.”
Marsden continues, “And then he’s like, ‘No, this is not the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to do this, is to give them the truth and speak honestly with them.” As he delivered the address, he adds, “I imagined myself for a second that, if I were president, this is how I would want to speak.”
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Just in case your nervous system hadn’t taken enough hits in the first two-thirds of the hour, the episode’s final scenes find Brown’s Xavier learning some hard-to-believe details, courtesy of Sinatra: Teri is alive and looking for him, Cal was killed by someone from outside the bunker, and if Xavier wants to see his wife (or kidnapped daughter!) again, he’ll find out who that mystery assassin is.
“The manipulation of this mother-effing…” Brown says, breaking off as he starts laughing. “I hate Sinatra so much, and I love Julianne Nicholson [who plays her] so much because she makes me hate Sinatra so much!”
Press PLAY on the video above to hear Marsden and Brown go deep on the show’s penultimate episode, then hit the comments with your thoughts on what the finale might reveal!
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