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Shailene Woodley left a heartrending mark on the second season of “Paradise.”
Her plucky Annie Clay dominates the first episode, “Graceland,” riding out a worldwide apocalypse in Elvis’ mansion. Apprehensive yet eager for human connection, she poignantly can’t find the courage to leave her refuge with a lover who passes through.
Woodley’s Emmy nomination for guest actress in a drama series is technically for that hour. Deserved, no question. But it’s her other major appearance, a few episodes later, that raised the high bar Dan Fogelman’s dystopian drama already set.
“A Holy Charge” teams Annie with Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier Collins, the sci-fi series’ lead character. Wary, pregnant Annie joins the optimistic Secret Service agent’s quest to find his lost wife. But her journey ends in an abandoned diner, where she dies in childbirth after charging this stranger she has come to trust with the holy task of protecting her infant daughter.
No stranger herself to powerful performances — she was previously Emmy-nominated for her supporting role as a sexual assault survivor in “Big Little Lies” — Woodley strove to capture Annie’s final moments as honestly and intuitively as possible.
“It’s a fine line between being melodramatic and being truthful” in birth and death scenes, the Southern California native tells The Envelope. “I try to be honest and authentic and raw and feral and committed in a moment, so that there’s an invitation of experience versus a force-feeding of something that I hope the audience should feel.”
Ken Olin, the “thirtysomething” star-turned-director who helmed many a baby-filled episode of Fogelman’s earlier series, “This Is Us,” marvels at how Woodley delivers devastating emotions beyond anything he thought he captured on set.
“It’s like a chemical interaction with the medium,” Olin says. “I can watch the birth scene and go, that’s pretty extraordinary what Shailene’s doing, taking tremendous risks and putting herself out there, and then I would watch the dailies and go, ‘Oh, my God, it brings you in even closer than what you thought you were seeing.’”
Woodley shrugs off any effusion.
“To play with experiences that I have not personally gone through — having not given birth yet and, obviously, still being very alive — I can be philosophical about it, I can go into an intellectual answer,” she notes. “But at the end of the day, it’s just adult make-believe. Being given the opportunity from Ken and Sterling to have a space where I felt comfortable and safe, and enough time to allow myself to really pretend to be in Annie’s situation, maybe is what’s being commented on.
“Ken gave me a lot of trust in that moment, and Sterling held me so purely with such presence, I felt like I could be completely consumed by the experience of what I imagined giving birth could be like.”
Woodley’s work was informed by a cousin who’s a midwife, friends who are parents and a few births she’s attended. She avoided watching filmed depictions so as not to replicate other actors’ work.
Novelist Stephen Markley, whom Fogelman tapped for “Only Murders in the Building” before bringing him to the “Paradise” writers room, also has no children and turned to a midwife friend for tips on how to depict a difficult, deadly labor.
“That was incredibly helpful in envisioning the terror of Annie’s situation,” Markley notes.
Additionally, he had less than 45 minutes to build deep bonds between suspicious Annie and hopeful Xavier.
“What are the things you say to one another that make you love and trust somebody?” Markley says he pondered each night. “I just went through the Rolodex of my experiences trying to find the situations that can create that.”
Faith blossoms as Annie comes to understand Xavier’s driving need to reunite with his spouse, and the loving father of two employs a bag of flour to teach her swaddling lessons.
“We were able to explore a real love story together without any physicality,” Woodley observes. “Some of life’s most extraordinary relationships are friendships, where unconditional love is present and trust is gained and earned. It’s not often explored between a straight man and a straight woman onscreen.”
It all led to Annie sharing her final moments in Xavier’s arms.
“It was easier for me to melt into the reality that I could give him all of my life force and trust in what came next in Annie’s journey,” Woodley says. “Sometimes, there’s an alchemy with actors, of how we’re exchanging energy. There’s the alchemy of my own internal process of imagination. And then there’s this surrender to intuition, and hoping that whatever I submit myself to, consciously and subconsciously, will translate through the camera.”
What else goes into a good death scene?
“In a meditative way, I allowed myself to feel the physical sensation of what it might be like to stop breathing, to have every muscle and tendon and tissue in my physical body be completely dulled,” Woodley explains. “Other than that, it really was just be present and intuitive — and hope for the best!” [laughs].
Adult make-believe, indeed. Though she hasn’t heard if Annie will return to the flashback-heavy show, Woodley knows the character’s spirit will endure.
“I mean, I’m such a fan of ‘Paradise,’” she affirms. “It was so fun, the second season. I purposely didn’t ask questions, didn’t read anything beyond my episodes, so I got to enjoy it as a fan. And I know nothing about Season 3, which is even more exciting.
“But Annie, she packed a big punch. She brought a lot of heart into the series. I’m curious to see how her legacy unfolds, how the storyline of her child ends up.”
