'The crew speaks so highly of him,' star Shailene Woodley says of the Emmy-winning actor
By The Ankler
Monday, June 1, 2026
In the Running: Emmy Contenders in Conversation With The Ankler is a special series hosted by Prestige Junkie’s Katey Rich, Ankler Media awards editor. She chats with top talent from Disney networks and streaming platforms — including ABC, Disney+, FX and Hulu. In the Running is presented by Disney.
Shailene Woodley didn’t see Sterling K. Brown when he first showed up on the set of Paradise — she heard him.
The Emmy-nominated actress joined the Hulu hit’s sophomore season as Annie, who survives the global apocalypse inside Elvis Presley’s Graceland and meets Link (fellow cast newcomer Thomas Doherty), as detailed in the season premiere — a standalone episode that didn’t include any of the show’s season one cast members, including Brown’s lead character, Xavier.
“It had been a few weeks of doing Annie, and then Annie and Link, and then suddenly I’m on set, and I hear this booming music and loud laughter, and I was like, ‘That must be Sterling. Who else could that be?’” she says.
Her suspicions, of course, proved correct: Brown, the Emmy-winning actor and a nominee for the show’s first season, had arrived — not that his presence was ever far, even when he wasn’t on set.
Sterling K. Brown Photographed by Austin Hargrave for The Ankler
“The crew speaks so highly of Sterling,” Woodley adds. “People on that set brought the energy of Sterling by the way that he leads that set. And so when he finally got there, I feel like everybody was kind of like, ‘The president’s home, our leader’s here, dad’s here.’ It was really nice. It almost made everything kind of make more sense when he got there. It was a reminder like, ‘Oh, this is the show we’re making.’”
“He really is a leader,” Doherty adds. “He creates this culture on set every morning, saying hi to everyone. It’s really amazing and inspiring.”
Shailene Woodley Photographed by Austin Hargrave for The Ankler
Created by Dan Fogelman (This Is Us), Paradise focused its first season on the aftermath of a doomsday event, when the world’s population is all but extinguished except for the select few who live in an underground bunker in Colorado, code-named Paradise. In season two, the world outside the bunker is explored as Xavier searches for his wife, Teri (EnukaOkuma), and connects with Annie and Link along the way.
“When Dan first pitched the show to me, it was pitched as three seasons, and each season would sort of have its own different feel, and it reminded me a lot of The Wire,” Brown says. “All the seasons sort of interacted with one another, but each one had its own specific focus. So we did one inside the bunker. We do two outside of the bunker. Then those two things come together and then three… shit’s crazy.”
Thomas Doherty Photographed by Austin Hargrave for The Ankler
Brown is reluctant to say more about how crazy things will get in the show’s final eight episodes next year, but he credits his longtime collaborator, Fogelman, with always writing the best scripts no matter the circumstances.
“The scripts are so good when they first come in,” he says. “I was just talking to some other friends who were on other shows, and they were like, ‘Oh, we have to do a little bit more. We have to do a little bit more.’ I was like, ‘My scripts are really good. They’re really nice. You should come play over here.’”
