‘Paradise’ Creator Dan Fogelman Lied to Disney to Get Sinatra’s Julianne Nicholson on the Show
Paradise creator Dan Fogelman has a confession to make. He lied—OK, it was more like a white lie—to get Julianne Nicholson (fans know her as Sinatra) on his new post-apocalyptic thriller Hulu series. What he lied to Disney about and how it all started with a “screw-up.”
Fogelman ‘really wanted’ Nicholson to play Sinatra on ‘Paradise’
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Fogelman shared how ever since Paradise started he had Nicholson, 53, in mind for the role of Samantha Redmond, or Sinatra. She’s the person behind the bunker in the Colorado mountains who quietly wields power over Sterling K. Brown’s Agent Xavier Collins and the community’s 25,000 residents.
“She was somebody I wanted from the very beginning. I’d admired her from afar,” Fogelman said of Nicholson. “I didn’t want Sinatra to be like a mustache-twirling villain. I wanted her to be softer. But also quietly commanding. I really wanted Julianne and we Zoomed, I sent her the scripts, and we hit it off. I thought she wanted to do it, and then I got word that she did, and I was so excited.”
Alas, a “screw-up in communication” ensued and “the dates weren’t going to work” because Nicholson would be working on another project. That didn’t stop Fogelman. He “moved heaven and earth,” attempting to rearrange the shooting schedule with no luck.
“There was too much overlap. Eventually, I received the call, like, ‘You have to move on,’” Fogelman recalled, saying he “was devastated.”
Fogelman lied about needing to prep ‘Paradise’ longer so Nicholson could be on the show
So what exactly did Fogelman lie about? Needing more time to prep. “I’m saying it now, because it looks like the show might be moderately successful, so no one will care,” he said. “But I actually lied to the people at the studio [20th Television, which Disney owns] and I said: ‘We’re not ready to make the show. We need more time in prep,’ which cost a lot of money to extend prep.”
That, he explained, gave Nicholson just enough time to finish a project and start Paradise. “I made it [seem] about 12 different things,” he explained. “But that allowed for us to delay starting shooting, and allowed Julianne to be free. Now, obviously, everyone’s so glad we did it. I lied to Disney to buy a couple of weeks of time for Julianne Nicholson.”
Julianne Nicholson ‘gasped’ reading the episode scripts for ‘Paradise’
There’s a lot of love within the Paradise team. Fogelman’s admiration for Nicholson runs deep and she couldn’t put down the scripts once she picked them up.
Speaking to CBR, Nicholson shared that she read the scripts for episodes 1-4 in a day, something she “never” does, following Fogelman’s twists and turns in the story.
“I gasped throughout the reading of every single episode. I always thought that I was one step ahead of Dan Fogelman, our brilliant writer, and then I would every time [get] it wrong,” she said.
“And that was the exciting thing—you just wanted to read the next episode. Read the next episode. I never do that; I don’t have time. I can’t give you three and a half hours in one sitting. But I read the first four, all they sent me, I just read the first day.”
Watch Paradise on Hulu. New episodes drop weekly.
