‘Superman': A ranking of all the live-action versions of the Man of Steel
Matt Bomer
It's a shame that Matt Bomer, who
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Hugh Jackman
While he's better known for his work with Marvel as the razor-clawed Wolverine, Hugh Jackman did play Superman in an unofficial capacity in a 2001 episode of 'Saturday Night Live.' Will Ferrell also put a hilarious spin on Superman's dad Jor-El, played by Marlon Brando in the 1978 film.
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10. John Haymes Newton/Gerard Christopher
Following the end of the Christopher Reeve era on the big screen with 1987's much-maligned 'Superman IV: The Quest for Peace,' Clark Kent was reborn on the small screen with 1988's 'Superboy' TV show (later titled 'The Adventures of Superboy'). Initially played by John Haymes Newton, who left the series after one season and was replaced by Gerard Christopher, this version of Kal-El features the hero during his younger years, navigating college life and a growing rogues gallery. While 'Superboy' was campy and over-the-top, Newton and Christopher turned in admirable performances as the Boy of Steel, with the underrated show laying the groundwork for future series that investigated Clark's early years, like 'Smallville.'
9. Kirk Alyn
As the first person to play Superman in live action, Alyn had a chance to continue to play the character beyond his initial film serial appearances in 1948's 'Superman' and 1950's 'Atom Man vs. Superman.' A dashing star who embodied the rugged heroics of that era's Superman, Alyn sadly
8. Dean Cain
Definitely a product of its era, the ABC series 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman' turned the superhero's story into a weekly romantic melodrama in the mid-'90s, as Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane swooned over Dean Cain's Superman.
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7. Henry Cavill
Drawing inspiration from the 'Injustice' video games, where tragedy turns Superman into a god-like tyrant, Zack Snyder's take on the character was pretty dark and dreary in 2013's
Henry Cavill in the 2016 film "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice."
Clay Enos
6. Brandon Routh
My vote for the most underrated live-action Superman goes to Brandon Routh, who absolutely nailed the look and feel of the Man of Steel in 2006's 'Superman Returns.' As a spiritual sequel to the first two Reeve movies, Routh perfectly captured his predecessor's ability to balance the bombastic heroics with his bumbling alter ego. Routh's Kent was incredible, but the film suffers from a severe drought of compelling Superman action, making this an unfortunate one-and-done situation for the actor. Well, that was until he suited up again for the CW's TV crossover event 'Crisis on Infinite Earths,' where Routh played an older version of Superman inspired by the 'Kingdom Come' comic.
5. David Corenswet
He may be the new super kid on the block, but David Corenswet has already flown up into my top five of live-action Superman actors. In the new film, directed and written by James Gunn, Corenswet brings a great mix of sincerity, hope, and humanity to the role, crafting a Superman that, as Globe film critic Odie Henderson
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David Corenswet in 'Superman.'
Warner Bros.
4. Tyler Hoechlin
The last actor to play the Man of Tomorrow on the small screen, Tyler Hoechlin brought super dad vibes in the CW's 'Superman & Lois' series, which ended its four season run last year. Hoechlin, who originally played a different version of Superman on the CW's 'Supergirl' show, really embodied the character's wholesome, family man side in 'Superman & Lois,' which saw Clark, Lois (Bitsie Tulloch), and their two teenage sons living on the Kent farm in Smallville. While the series was cut short, Hoechlin deserves a lot of credit for his incredibly earnest portrayal of a Superman who always puts his family first, and for anchoring the character's legacy in the final years of DC shows on the CW.
3. Tom Welling
Yes, 'Smallville,' which ran from 2001 to 2011, was at times a cornball fest that fused supernatural sci-fi with teenage melodrama, but for many millennial Superman fans, Tom Welling is their Man of Steel. Physically, Welling looked as close to the comic book character as a person could get outside of Christopher Reeve, and, even with the often cheesy dialogue, his gravitas made viewers buy into his super-powered Kansas do-gooder routine. 'Smallville' was far from perfect, and sure, he never really wore the Superman outfit until the final seconds of the finale, but Welling deserves his flowers, because no one has spent more time playing Clark on screen than him.
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2. George Reeves
For fans of a certain age, George Reeves is the gold standard when it comes to the classic portrayal of Superman. After debuting as the hero in 1951's 'Superman and the Mole Men,' Reeves returned to play the character for six seasons on the hit TV series 'Adventures of Superman.' Becoming the face of the Man of Steel during his TV golden age (he even appeared as Superman in a 1957 'I Love Lucy' episode), Reeves brought an imposing, strongman physicality to Superman that made him that era's ultimate tough guy.
1. Christopher Reeve
Did you really think it'd be anyone else? The
Christopher Reeve in "Superman."
Courtesy of The Kobal Collection at Art Resource
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CNN
19 minutes ago
- CNN
The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'
A baby arrives in America from a home in turmoil. A family in Kansas raises him. And he struggles to balance two identities. Comic books, TV shows and films have repeatedly recounted these details from Superman's backstory over the past 87 years. But the director of the latest big-screen adaptation drew backlash recently when he stated something that's been said many times before: Superman is an immigrant. 'I mean, Superman is the story of America,' director James Gunn told The Times of London. 'An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.' Coming as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdowns, the comments quickly sparked criticism from right-wing media personalities. A Fox News banner blasted the new movie as 'Superwoke' as pundits offered their takes. 'We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us,' said former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. Dean Cain, an actor who starred for years on TV in 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman' and is now a conservative commentator, told TMZ he didn't like Gunn's comments and speculated that the director's decision to invoke immigration while promoting the film could be a costly mistake. So far, it hasn't been. The movie, released by CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, finished No. 1 on its opening weekend with $122 million in domestic ticket sales and continues to draw large audiences. And longtime fans and historians of the comic books note that Gunn's comments weren't superimposing a new storyline on the beloved hero. 'The idea of Superman being an immigrant, or maybe a refugee, has been part of the character's mythos since the very beginning. It's not something he invented or tried to shoehorn in,' says Danny Fingeroth, author of 'Superman on the Couch: What Comic Book Heroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society.' The first Superman story, published in 1938, stated he was sent to Earth from Krypton, a fictional doomed planet. 'It makes him not an immigrant of choice. It makes him an immigrant of necessity…a refugee,' Fingeroth says. 'He's someone who comes to Earth and to America, to then blend in and become as American as mom, the flag and apple pie.' And, Fingeroth says, there are a lot of good reasons why these details are such a key part of Superman's story. Take the comic's creators, for example. Artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel were both the children of Jewish immigrants who'd fled rising antisemitism in Europe. 'Just given their backgrounds and their sympathies, I think it's always been important that Superman comes from somewhere else,' Fingeroth says. The Cleveland-based duo wrote Superman's story as World War II loomed. The first page of his story describes him as 'champion of the oppressed.' 'The clouds of fascism are rolling through Europe. There's echoes of it here in America … and Superman's early adventure are fighting for the little guy, fighting for abused women, fighting for exploited mine workers, fighting against corrupt politicians,' Fingeroth says. Even before America was fighting Nazis in World War II, Superman was fighting them on comic book pages, he says. Through it all, 'Superman is the immigrant embodying the best of American qualities, even though he's from somewhere else.' It's a connection historians and immigrant rights advocates have made, too. More than a decade ago, comic book historian Craig This organized a panel at Wright State University highlighting the immigrant backgrounds of Superman and Wonder Woman. The idea resonated with the college students he was teaching at the time, he says. 'People were coming to this large public research university, maybe thinking that they were an outsider, and then said, 'Oh, wow, look, I can see these individuals as role models. I want to try and fit in. But really, it's going to be my differences that make me survive and be successful, not just here on a college campus, but also here in the United States.'' In 2013, the organizations Define American and the Harry Potter Alliance launched a social media campaign inviting people to share selfies and their family's immigration stories with the hashtag #SupermanIsAnImmigrant. Last week that campaign's creators pushed back against critics who've been accusing Gunn of politicizing his take on Superman. 'You can't politicize the truth,' Define American founder Jose Antonio Vargas and narrative strategist Andrew Slack wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. 'Superman has been an 'illegal alien' for 87 years.' A one-time undocumented immigrant himself, Vargas says today he sees an even more important message in the superhero's story. 'I think for the first time, because of this movie, because of what's happening in the country … I have people who have never talked to me about immigration talking to me about immigration,' he says. 'So we have people's attention. Now I think the question is, what are they going to do?' Of course, Superman's origin is just one part of his story. And in the initial comic, it was also a convenient plot device, Fingeroth says, allowing the authors to explain his powers. In some versions, Fingeroth says, 'Superman's immigrant status is not mentioned.' The hero could be from Metropolis or Kansas or anywhere, 'depending on the era, depending on the creators.' Each version of Superman comes with its own plot twists. In the new film, for example, the backstory of the superhero's parents takes an unexpected turn. Superman sometimes changes with the times. And sometimes different audiences perceive him differently. Many superheroes are outsiders. And one common thread that gives them such staying power is that people from many different walks of life connect with the characters, says Fingeroth, a longtime editor of Spiderman comics. 'Their mythos and storylines and origins speak to various aspects of the human condition, and that makes them appealing. Their adventures are enjoyed by people from a wide variety of political and social and religious backgrounds,' he says. 'And yet, the myths are so powerful that they all take it as their own.' In other words, all of us can see ourselves in Superman. And that may be a reason why so many people have such strong opinions about the character even today. Last week the White House's social media accounts shared an AI-generated image based on the new movie's poster, depicting President Trump in the title role. A few days later, though, it wasn't the Man of Steel that the Trump administration referenced on social media when it drew a connection between a beloved sci-fi character and today's undocumented immigrants. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security shared the iconic image of ET's bicycling silhouette. The text superimposed over the moon: 'GO HOME.'
CNN
32 minutes ago
- CNN
The director of ‘Superman' calls his hero an immigrant. Critics call him ‘Superwoke'
A baby arrives in America from a home in turmoil. A family in Kansas raises him. And he struggles to balance two identities. Comic books, TV shows and films have repeatedly recounted these details from Superman's backstory over the past 87 years. But the director of the latest big-screen adaptation drew backlash recently when he stated something that's been said many times before: Superman is an immigrant. 'I mean, Superman is the story of America,' director James Gunn told The Times of London. 'An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.' Coming as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdowns, the comments quickly sparked criticism from right-wing media personalities. A Fox News banner blasted the new movie as 'Superwoke' as pundits offered their takes. 'We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us,' said former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. Dean Cain, an actor who starred for years on TV in 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman' and is now a conservative commentator, told TMZ he didn't like Gunn's comments and speculated that the director's decision to invoke immigration while promoting the film could be a costly mistake. So far, it hasn't been. The movie, released by CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, finished No. 1 on its opening weekend with $122 million in domestic ticket sales and continues to draw large audiences. And longtime fans and historians of the comic books note that Gunn's comments weren't superimposing a new storyline on the beloved hero. 'The idea of Superman being an immigrant, or maybe a refugee, has been part of the character's mythos since the very beginning. It's not something he invented or tried to shoehorn in,' says Danny Fingeroth, author of 'Superman on the Couch: What Comic Book Heroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society.' The first Superman story, published in 1938, stated he was sent to Earth from Krypton, a fictional doomed planet. 'It makes him not an immigrant of choice. It makes him an immigrant of necessity…a refugee,' Fingeroth says. 'He's someone who comes to Earth and to America, to then blend in and become as American as mom, the flag and apple pie.' And, Fingeroth says, there are a lot of good reasons why these details are such a key part of Superman's story. Take the comic's creators, for example. Artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel were both the children of Jewish immigrants who'd fled rising antisemitism in Europe. 'Just given their backgrounds and their sympathies, I think it's always been important that Superman comes from somewhere else,' Fingeroth says. The Cleveland-based duo wrote Superman's story as World War II loomed. The first page of his story describes him as 'champion of the oppressed.' 'The clouds of fascism are rolling through Europe. There's echoes of it here in America … and Superman's early adventure are fighting for the little guy, fighting for abused women, fighting for exploited mine workers, fighting against corrupt politicians,' Fingeroth says. Even before America was fighting Nazis in World War II, Superman was fighting them on comic book pages, he says. Through it all, 'Superman is the immigrant embodying the best of American qualities, even though he's from somewhere else.' It's a connection historians and immigrant rights advocates have made, too. More than a decade ago, comic book historian Craig This organized a panel at Wright State University highlighting the immigrant backgrounds of Superman and Wonder Woman. The idea resonated with the college students he was teaching at the time, he says. 'People were coming to this large public research university, maybe thinking that they were an outsider, and then said, 'Oh, wow, look, I can see these individuals as role models. I want to try and fit in. But really, it's going to be my differences that make me survive and be successful, not just here on a college campus, but also here in the United States.'' In 2013, the organizations Define American and the Harry Potter Alliance launched a social media campaign inviting people to share selfies and their family's immigration stories with the hashtag #SupermanIsAnImmigrant. Last week that campaign's creators pushed back against critics who've been accusing Gunn of politicizing his take on Superman. 'You can't politicize the truth,' Define American founder Jose Antonio Vargas and narrative strategist Andrew Slack wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. 'Superman has been an 'illegal alien' for 87 years.' A one-time undocumented immigrant himself, Vargas says today he sees an even more important message in the superhero's story. 'I think for the first time, because of this movie, because of what's happening in the country … I have people who have never talked to me about immigration talking to me about immigration,' he says. 'So we have people's attention. Now I think the question is, what are they going to do?' Of course, Superman's origin is just one part of his story. And in the initial comic, it was also a convenient plot device, Fingeroth says, allowing the authors to explain his powers. In some versions, Fingeroth says, 'Superman's immigrant status is not mentioned.' The hero could be from Metropolis or Kansas or anywhere, 'depending on the era, depending on the creators.' Each version of Superman comes with its own plot twists. In the new film, for example, the backstory of the superhero's parents takes an unexpected turn. Superman sometimes changes with the times. And sometimes different audiences perceive him differently. Many superheroes are outsiders. And one common thread that gives them such staying power is that people from many different walks of life connect with the characters, says Fingeroth, a longtime editor of Spiderman comics. 'Their mythos and storylines and origins speak to various aspects of the human condition, and that makes them appealing. Their adventures are enjoyed by people from a wide variety of political and social and religious backgrounds,' he says. 'And yet, the myths are so powerful that they all take it as their own.' In other words, all of us can see ourselves in Superman. And that may be a reason why so many people have such strong opinions about the character even today. Last week the White House's social media accounts shared an AI-generated image based on the new movie's poster, depicting President Trump in the title role. A few days later, though, it wasn't the Man of Steel that the Trump administration referenced on social media when it drew a connection between a beloved sci-fi character and today's undocumented immigrants. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security shared the iconic image of ET's bicycling silhouette. The text superimposed over the moon: 'GO HOME.'
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Paradise' Boss on How Their End-of-the-World Research Sets Up Season 2
[This story contains spoilers from season one of .] By now, everyone should be caught up on Paradise. More from The Hollywood Reporter Emmys Nominations Snubs: 'Squid Game' Shut Out, 'Handmaid's Tale' Only Lands One Nod - Uzo Aduba Surprises Emmys: HBO and Max Score Most Nominations, Apple Takes a Big Bite 'The Last of Us' Season 2 Just Scored a Bunch of Emmy Nominations After becoming a runaway streaming hit when it launched on Hulu in early 2025, the Dan Fogelman-created post-apocalyptic drama then became a linear hit when ABC re-aired the season weekly in the spring. Now, for the trifecta, the Sterling K. Brown-starring saga just picked up four Emmy nominations this week, landing more nods in top categories than even awards experts predicted. Safe to say, Paradise is a hit and people are watching. The Hollywood Reporter previously spoke with executive producer John Hoberg, who wrote the groundbreaking seventh episode, 'The Day.' That penultimate episode of season one flashed back in time to reveal to viewers what exactly happened on the day of the extinction-level event that preceded the beginning of the series. Paradise viewers had been imagining how the show's world ended ever since the twisty premiere. But nothing prepared them for how current it would feel when it was revealed. Paradise opened in a post-apocalyptic world, where 25,000 people were saved from some sort of catastrophic climate event that nearly wiped out civilization. That event, we find out in episode seven, was from a super volcano erupting in the arctic, shattering the ice shelf, melting trillions of gallons of water and triggered a tsunami traveling 600 miles per hour with a wave as high as 300 feet. The coastal cities were wiped out first and global devastation followed. The president, played by James Marsden, and his hand-picked survivors were the only ones who escaped — to the underground bunker-society called Paradise. 'Imagine writing it, it destroyed me for a month,' Hoberg recalled to The Hollywood Reporter about his experience of penning the propulsive hour, which was directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Read our chat below on all the research that went into 'The Day' and how it informs season two, which is now filming in Los Angeles. *** How did you get to be the lucky one to write this episode? Well, I'm an EP with Dan [Fogelman] so I'm in the room. I was either going to write the second-to-last or the last episode. I will tell you, it wasn't my experience writing on Galavant [the 2015 musical series created by Fogelman] that made them think I should do the end-of-the-world episode (laughs). But it had a lot to do with White House and the Air Force, and those are my obsessions. My wife [Kat Likkel] and I have always written together until this show; she wanted to write a novel and so I took this job with Dan. We have a place up in Solvang and she's like, 'I'm going to take 10 days and dive all the way in up there.' So basically, all I did for 10 straight days was just live in the feeling [of this episode]. It's such a minute-by-minute episode. I've never written this way where I just completely submersed myself in the experience. All season long, we had ideas about what happened, but it still didn't prepare me for what I saw. Good. Why did you place this episode as the penultimate one of the season? There are so many mysteries in Paradise, right? Always a new card turned over. We like to answer questions the whole time, because we don't want to frustrate an audience. So we hint at what happened, but don't say specifically. It's why Xavier [Brown] was so angry at Cal [Masden]. The show at its core is the mystery, and then tied around that mystery is, 'What happened out there? We know something cataclysmic happened, what is it?' We knew for Xavier's character that we wanted to hold that back, because you could tell he liked Cal. But something happened. If we had revealed much earlier [that Xavier blames Cal for his wife's death in the event], then we'd be giving up that mystery as well as the mystery what happened to the world. So it kept drifting. There was talk about it being the fifth episode at one point, but then it felt right that it would be the one before the end. So you finally have that mystery resolved, before getting into the murder-mystery resolve. you spoke to in order to research the end of the world, like the architect who designs cities who wrote you a 40-page dissertation, and experts on nuclear fallout and environmental catastrophe. He said you all were worried it might put you on government watch lists, because of what you were Googling. As far as we know, that didn't happen! Though I feel like my computer runs a little bit hotter than it needs to, so maybe they're in there now. (Laughs.) He did say that you are going to use a lot of that research in season two. How did you go about funneling all that into one hour of television, but also holding some of it back for season two? Stephen Markley, who's the novelist on the show, and Katie French, who was the story editor, were so helpful with the outline and helping to piece this whole thing together. It's a collaborative process when you break it out in the room. We have cards on the board and we're talking through everything. So by the time I was going to script, I felt very confident that I knew what the bigger pieces were. Then it was a matter of, 'What do you get rid of? What do you keep? How do you take something that might be a page of research and make it into a line, but sell it so that the audience feels it without having to be told what it is?' You prepare with a nice bunch of information and a plan before you even get in there. I understand you listened to recordings of similar tragic situations, like former President George W. Bush after 9/11 when he was on Air Force One, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. How did all of that help inform the real-time reaction we saw in with President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) as the global tsunami was building? I have a grandfather who was an advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was there during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So as a kid, I was growing up around this Air Force colonel and a lot of his officer friends would come over for dinner parties. When they tell stories, you wouldn't hear national secrets, but you would hear about the tension and how personal issues that have nothing to do with the topics can get in the way of things. I tried to sprinkle some of that in, like when [in Paradise] the general is giving a briefing and the CIA guy keeps interrupting him; you can tell he's annoyed because clearly this guy does this all the time. Some of that was like a lifetime of research from being around an Air Force colonel that helped me feel the rhythms of what was going on, from hearing his stories about the Cuban Missile Crisis era. You filmed this episode with a propulsive pace, and without a lot of cuts. What were the longest scenes you filmed? John and Glenn, the directors, sat down and we talked about filming this almost as a play. Usually, you'll do a rehearsal and then people feel their blocking. If you think of the scene where Xavier's in the hallway and the secretary comes over to say, 'What do you know? What's going on?' Then suddenly, the vice president comes through and trips and stands up and you're in the room, and we go around the table. We shot that entire scene as a oner. We had it to keep that energy up — let's make these scenes so that we shoot them once without cutting, and then we'll do our coverage so we can pick stuff up. If you go back and watch that, there's 70 people involved! We actually let the studio know, 'You're going to see we're not rolling camera for a couple hours and that's because we're doing this process.' It was a ton of rehearsal and then shooting it was really fast, because everybody had it down. It was brilliant. It was their idea, and it was 100 percent right. Where was your White House set? We had the Oval office set, which I think was from 24. Sometimes you'll see evidence of where a set has been before. I worked on comedies a lot and every now and then there'd be an ancient room from I Love Lucy or Happy Days. So we had the Oval office and the area outside the Oval where the secretary sat. We built that next-door Oval office, the cabinet room, the hallway outside the cabinet room and the hallways that went the other way around the Oval. That was all on a sound stage. Then we went to a country club in Thousand Oaks that matched the feeling. It feels so grand, where Cal talks to the janitor in the big marble hallway. Then we shot the basement somewhere downtown. So it was all pieced together, which was a challenge of keeping up that same energy. The key is, you can't have the energy at a 10 in the first act. You have to have it build so when you're jumping all over the city to film, you can check in and keep up that intensity level. Xavier has this painful goodbye on the phone with his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), who he believes died in the event, and then he blows up at Cal over it in this flashback episode. Any notes or conversations with your main actors for those scenes? I was a mess writing that goodbye scene. You can't help but think about [your family]. The fact that my wife was up in Solvang and I'm down at home thinking, 'What if I got a call right now and this was it, and I knew it was it?' I remember adding that he could see the screen as the missile hit, and thinking, 'Fuck, he's going to have to watch his wife die while he's talking to her.' I was super emotional writing that. The other scene that was super emotional was Cal and Xavier fighting on the [airport] tarmac, where Cal is like, 'You know what to do' and Xavier is like, 'I don't know what to do.' Xavier, who always seems to know what to do, this is the only time he's ever said that, and you really get into his head. We shot that scene at Long Beach Airport; there's planes flying around and it's loud and chaotic, and there were so many extras. Everyone who wasn't on camera just stopped to watch, because it was that intense in person. The actors know they have it when they're looking over at me and John and Glenn at village and our eyes are glassy. It's like, 'Okay, they got it!' Let's talk about the nuclear football. How much of what Marsden explains was true… that there's a nuclear fail safe that can set the world's technology back 500 years? I don't know! I do know that my grandfather was at the Air Force when they were developing the football, and he had something to do with the football, and I will say that he would not divulge national secrets to me, but what he did say is the chilling thing that that thing can unilaterally launch a nuclear war. We did our research into what it is. And there's all this speculation, because really nobody knows — there are people who know, but it's not us. He was not awed by a lot. He fought in two wars and still had shrapnel that popped out of the top of his head every now and then. And he talked about that thing in a way that was like, 'There's something going on there that's bigger than I could possibly imagine.' While we were shooting this, there was a question about if some foreign government was testing an EMP [electromagnetic pulse] device in space. There's all this research that that was one of the early things they discovered and that there are EMP weapons, but the danger with an EMP is that if you light one off in Los Angeles, there are physical wires connecting things all around the world and you don't know where it's going. So it's a very dangerous thing and that got us to this idea of like, 'Well, if this is the last chance of survival, you wouldn't worry about what it might destroy.' But the answer is, I don't know. The flashback ends, and then we heard Sinatra's (Julianne Nicholson) version of what happened: That they avoided a nuclear holocaust, but their Paradise bunker still had the tech they needed. How much are we meant to ? Well, that's going to be a question for season two. Did it work? There seems to be some real evidence it worked, with this audio recording of Terry and other survivors. We've done a lot of research about what happens with an EMP, what it destroys. It basically can destroy most electronic things, but the most rudimentary things can be brought back. Like shortwave radio would probably be one of the first things that started to come back. Diesel engines are based on compression versus a spark. So people would know how to start to rebuild, and it seems there's evidence that people with know-how are starting to try to rebuild. If I had to guess based on what Sinatra said, not on any knowledge I have, she said it seems that it worked, at least partially. We witnessed a nuclear bomb go off and there seemed to be others that were hitting around the globe. But the question is: Did they all hit or was one of them averted, or was a handful of them averted? Well, this explains why there's no communication with the outside world, right? When they sent those four people out there, they didn't know anything. They didn't get their shortwave communications until they sent them out and put up their own shortwave to communicate with them. Then that's why Sinatra started hearing these radio signals. It seems like Cal should have been more suspicious of Sinatra earlier since he pushed that button on the nuclear football, which theoretically shut down every nuclear weapon in flight. Right. There's a power dynamic difference in episode seven when they're on the plane and he says to shoot Sinatra. Clearly between then and when we've met him [in present day], it shifted and he's lost that sense of power. So I think there were a lot of emotional things that went on between those people and everybody else in the time from when he pushed that button to when we meet up with him in Paradise world. Sinatra put Xavier in this ultimate blackmail situation, when she informed him that his wife is actually alive. How does this change him going into season two? On set, that was a scene where Sterling [as Xavier] had to put his weapon away, and he was wrestling with that. He was like, 'I would just fire the gun.' But John, our director, was like, 'You're Sterling K. Brown. Show us that on your face.' He told Sterling, 'Live in that, because that's what we've put you in. This impossible situation.' That to me was one of the most impressive moments of acting in the show, because you could feel him wrestle with that and then put his gun away. What happens when you've just tried to overthrow the government and you've succeeded, and now you have to back down? Dan told me about his three-season plan and that the end of season one would reveal enough to shift course so each season can be its own thing, but with the same characters. So, obviously the season one ending is setting up some . Would you say the finale raised a whole new set of questions to explore? One of the goals early on was that we wanted to make the viewing experience satisfying. That we're not just dangling things and then not answering them until the end of the season, or not answering at all. So you're going to get answers to what you want and then there are new questions raised. We were in a room breaking out [season two since before the official renewal] with this anticipation of, 'If goes well, you never know,' but we know where season two [ends]. Is there a reason you named the billionaire bunker project 'Versailles'? You always have a temporary name for something in the room. The librarian at one point, I made a joke that we should get Trent Reznor to play that, so that became a reference name. With Versailles, it sounded like a far away place where the rich would go, and there was a little bit of irony in that, so it sort of stuck. That it was a retreat for the billionaires, but also there's violence there, too. There were strange real-world parallels as the season was airing. Like how after President Donald Trump announced he wanted to declassify the JFK assassination files, had in an episode a line from James Marsden that the second he took office, he asked about the secrets: Bigfoot, JFK and aliens. It keeps happening on this show. When we first started talking about it, it was probably two and a half years ago. I remember feeling like, 'Are people going to buy that they're in a cave and there's a sky that looks real?' And then The Sphere [in Las Vegas] comes out and we talked to The Sphere people who said [Paradise] is based on 100 percent true science and you could do this. There were a bunch of things that keep mirroring reality. But for that particular one, I remember as a kid saying I want to run for president just so I can find out the secrets. That to me is the number one thing I would want day one as the president. Tell me everything. about how post-apocalyptic shows are usually in the far future, with zombies or something. But this show feels too close to tomorrow. Did it feel that way when filming? Yes. One of the things that was important for all of us is that the disaster wasn't one thing. It's a cascading series of events. This wave is going to kill all these people on the coasts, which is where a large percentage of the population is. But then it's going to black out the sky, and we did a lot of research into Krakatoa, which was a big explosive earthquake [in 1883]. That volcano actually had a sound wave that circled the globe eight times or something like that, a pressure wave. It was important for us that what happened in the show was real, but then also it's the human reaction and governmental reaction. So if the sky is blotted out, then one country would take a run for another country's resources to try to ensure their safety and before you know it, with all of our treaties, it would probably end in some kind of nuclear or regional war. That feels as real as it could possibly be, because the show is not just what happened. It's about how people react to what happened. That's where it gets messy. There are things that are going to happen naturally on the planet, but it's how we react to it that's so frightening. Amid global warming and climate change, this show tells us that the rich and the elite can survive. had a line about how the West Wing is stocked to feed those it could save for eternity. It who gets saved and who doesn't, which is interesting in this current moment in time. My grandfather had a tour in the Greenbrier Inn in West Virginia. You can now go tour it if you want, but it was the bunker to keep the government going in a nuclear war. The plan was that the government would all get on trains — all of Congress — but then you go in there and it's a bunker. They had a press room and hid the doors to close it off in plain sight. These bank vault doors. And my grandpa's job for a little was that he would be the person in charge of operations to get everybody in and out. But his job was then to close the door — and be on the other side of it. I visited that place and I've always thought about that. Who's in and who's out? He would have been like that guy who Xavier shoots on the side of the helicopter. Exactly! That realization of, 'Oh, you don't get to come in.' And he was fully aware of it. He said it was great during drills, because he wasn't in the bunker, he would get to stay at this fancy hotel. That part was nice. In reality, it wouldn't be nice. I grew up hearing this and my mom said when she was a teenager that he had the weight of the world on his shoulders because he was aware how real all this is. There are people who were doing everything to protect, and you can't protect everybody. The line has to go somewhere, and that's the crazy thing. Well, President Cal does the right thing in the end. He tells the truth. It creates chaos, but he tells the truth. We've been talking a lot lately about television capturing our current post-truth era. What do you hope people take away from President Bradford? I like that moment where he says that people are inherently decent. That's what he's seen, and he's speaking to all of us as like, 'Let's lean on our best version of ourselves.' You like to think that every president is going to wrestle with and tell the truth. Sometimes my guess is it's too dangerous to tell 100 percent of the truth. You have to hope that humanity comes through. Cal is playing someone who's got a big heart and really is trying to do the right thing, and even he got sucked into it. It took that interaction with that janitor to be like, 'This isn't right. I can't do this' to snap out of it. With any administration, it's like, when does the humanity of it make you make the decisions that are in the best interest of people? This is a fictional president. You don't even know what his party is, and we're trying to not make it about that. It's really about the people and the decisions being in power, what do you do? And the weight of power. But also, Xavier's wrestling with the same thing when he's lying to that secretary about being able to help her. It's healthy to explore that. It's easy to look at the people up above making selfish decisions. But then we put Xavier in that position, too. He's not telling 100 percent of the truth either. We wanted it to feel real and messy. What can you say about the murder-mystery reveal and how the season ended to set up season two? Having worked in comedies for so long, you don't have to worry about the mystery of it all. When I was first talking about this show with Dan, because this show has a little bit of This is Us in it, with its real heart, but also that apocalyptic thing like The Last of Us, my joke was that I started calling this show This Is the Last of Us. *** Paradise is now streaming on Hulu. Catch up on THR's season one coverage. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise Solve the daily Crossword
