SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Paradise Season 2, Episode 8.

Paradise Season 2 finally gave Samantha Redmond a problem she couldn’t solve. The Hulu drama ended its sophomore season with Sinatra making the painful decision to stay behind in the collapsing Paradise bunker so that all of the other survivors would be shielded from its nuclear meltdown. It was a 180-degree turn for the character who seemed to want to win at all costs last season, so how did she become so different?

“I feel like that was intentional,” Paradise star Julianne Nicholson told TVBrittanyF.com of her character’s growth between seasons. “She was left at her most vulnerable at the end of last season, on her knees, in a coma. And so I think it really shook her that you can have all the money in the world, you can have all the power in the world, but you’re still vulnerable. No one’s untouchable—and so it’s building from that place. Still definitely maintaining control and keeping her hands on the wheel, but recognizing the vulnerability also, so just sort of softening her edges a little bit.”

That led to the most satisfying character arc in Paradise Season 2. Fans saw Samantha deconstructed, going from the villain that they had spent all of Season 1 rooting against to someone whom they could understand or even relate to. There was more for her to overcome than just being shot by Jane Driscoll; she had a lot of personal problems to work out, and they were not going to be solved by throwing money or power at them. Most notably, the core friendship between Samantha and Dr. Gabriela Torabi wound up being shattered to pieces early on in Season 2. Julianne explained what it was like to play the demise of that bond after spending Season 1 creating it with her co-star Sarah Shahi.

“That’s what I think [Paradise creator] Dan is good at—actually creating these bonds, these relationships, so that you feel the loss of them,” she said. “I thought that was a pretty beautiful and unexpected friendship that the two of them had, that we learned more about this year. Even in the ending of that relationship, we learned more about their history and that connection. And I feel like that breakup was so sad to me.”

Yet even as everything seemed to be going south for Samantha, with her best friend abandoning her and her apparent loss of power, audiences got closer to the character than they’ve ever been. One of the wonderful aspects of Julianne’s performance was that she was able to bring forward the vulnerability in Samantha without sacrificing any of the strength that the character is known for. There was still no doubt that she was the smartest person in the room, but the audience had more of a window into what she was feeling. The early Season 2 scene of her adjusting to house arrest, simply spending time on the couch with her family, was something that couldn’t have been done in Season 1. It was a glimpse of a different Samantha, which is one of the elements that Julianne appreciated.

“It’s kind of what I love about the character,” she commented. “I feel like people are continue to root for her to do the right thing, even though there’s really not been a lot of evidence of her doing that. She believes she’s doing the right thing for her family, for the good of the Paradise community. I feel like for the audience, they’re cheering for her and yet cautiously hopeful that she might do the right thing.”

That hope paid off in the Season 2 finale in the worst possible way, when Samantha gave it all up in order for Xavier Collins and literally everyone else to escape from the collapsing bunker. But what made her ending even more hard to swallow was that she’d been warned about it—twice.

At the beginning of the finale, a message from the AI told her that she would die that day. But in Episode 7, it was revealed that Samantha’s old friend Cal Bradford had warned her about the bunker’s stability during their first tour of the place years earlier, pointing out that empires end. There was no better character to give Samantha that speech than Cal because of their history, and we asked Julianne what it was like to revisit that dynamic with James Marsden—whom Paradise fans may not recall she co-starred with in the final season of Ally McBeal.

“They’re not close friends, but they’ve known each other for years and years. And I feel like it’s actually a very smart thing that Dan did hiring the two of us, because though we’re not like in each other’s lives on a regular basis, we have history, we have a connection, we have memories. And so when we’re together, those things are already in place,” Julianne explained. “I feel like that deepens Cal and Samantha’s relationship, and makes people believe it and invest in it. He’s like an annoying little brother, but he’s also the President, and he also comes with intelligence. He’s definitely a fun character to play opposite.”

As if flashbacks with Cal and fighting with Gabriela wasn’t enough, Paradise Season 2 also gave viewers the story of Samantha and Tim Redmond’s son Dylan. Dylan was said to have passed away, but then later in Season 2, the show revealed that militia leader Link (played by Thomas Doherty) was also named Dylan and was born on the same date. Julianne said that she knew some of Paradise‘s significant plot twists in advance—but not all of them—and talked about how she approached the show’s very layered and nuanced scripts.

“I got most of the storyline in the earlier days of filming, but I didn’t get it all at once. There’s still definitely things that I learned along the way,” she said. “But the big stuff, I knew. Dan told me at the beginning of the season what that was going to look like.”

“It continues to reveal itself,” she said of working on the series. “And we had the great luxury of always having a writer on set, and a fantastic script supervisor. And Sterling [K, Brown], too, is often around; he understands all the storylines, top to bottom. So if you had questions, you’d go ask whoever the on-set writer was for that particular episode, and they always had the answers. They always were able to break it down.

“Sometimes I fully understood what they meant,” she laughed. “And sometimes I had to say okay, I hear you. I understand most of what you’re saying, and I’m going to say the lines and trust that it was going to make sense when it was all put together.” Which is the sentiment that makes Paradise so special—it really does feel like an adventure that everyone is on.

And one of the reasons that adventure has been so compelling is the presence of Julianne Nicholson. The folks that remember her from Ally McBeal were probably not expecting her to be on Paradise as the ruthless billionaire trying to build an entire new world. Yet that subversion of expectations is what has made Samantha Redmond such a great character to follow. And playing her felt like a change of pace for Julianne as well.

“I tink this was really interesting casting by Dan,” she told us. “I probably wouldn’t be the first choice or the first idea for for someone like this character’s described on the page, but now the exciting thing for me in this job is seeking out characters that are different from any that I’ve played before. That’s where you can find the joy and discovery—and it was so fun to play the bad guy.”

Yet her tenure as Samantha Redmond may not be over yet. Paradise Season 2 was proof that dead characters can still have lives within the story, as flashbacks brought back both Cal Bradford and Billy Pace. Plus, if Xavier is able to fulfill Samantha’s request to find Alex and save the world, who knows what happens? Until Season 3 reveals that or not, though, we asked Julianne to name a few other favorite roles that Paradise viewers can watch to enjoy more of her work.

“There’s a couple of films that I’ve done,” she said. “I did this movie called Janet Planet with Annie Baker that came out a couple of years ago, that I love. It’s very different from Paradise. And I also did this other film called Monos, which I filmed in Colombia in 2016, which is a pretty remarkable story, and I’m going to call it a visual masterpiece. It’s a pretty spectacular movie.”

But to a lot of people, Julianne Nicholson will now be known as Sinatra from Paradise. And that’s a pretty cool character to be associated with; love her or hate her, viewers can’t deny she’s had some shocking scenes and now, in the second season, some very touching scenes. A lot of TV characters try to make that villain-to-hero turn, but very few feel authentic in doing it, and Samantha has done it well because of the depth Julianne has brought to her. There have been so many great moments for the character during Season 2, so which ones stand out the most to the person playing her?

“Most of the stuff that landed for me happens in the [finale],” Julianne said. “I’ll say that there’s one scene in particular with Sinatra walking through the streets of Paradise, which was pretty moving. And we had nothing to do with each other until the end, but Sinatra and Xavier do come head to head again, and that was also super-fun.”

“The way we end Season 2. It feels like I get to know her even more,” she reflected. “I can’t even begin to imagine what Dan comes up with. And so it’s so fun just to be in his hands and see where she goes next.” Hopefully there’s something else Fogelman has in mind for Samantha Redmond, because Paradise wouldn’t be the same without Julianne Nicholson.

Paradise Season 2 is now streaming on Hulu. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Hulu.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.