In just a few scenes of Paradise, Shailene Woodley established herself as someone who can portray an entire life in the shortest of timespans: A caring daughter, a struggling med student, a Graceland guide facing the apocalypse alone before intruders invade her space, in what could be the start of a brand new community or a violent end to her road. And that is just the beginning of Annie Clay’s arc on Season 2 of Dan Fogelman’s post-apocalyptic political thriller.
It is not very often that an actor receives a script that wide-ranging, says Woodley. “It’s something I’ve thought about a lot since,” she says. “Often characters are written to support the plot and the story. I think what makes Dan Fogelman so special is that the story is almost written to support the characters.” While the season opener runs just an hour, somewhere out there, she reveals, is another episode’s-worth of her acting opposite a framed image of Elvis Presley. “There was so much room to play,” she says. “It almost felt like theater.”
Here Woodley unpacks her performance, updates us on her upcoming Janis Joplin biopic and reveals why she is eager to return to Big Little Lies for a third time, nearly a decade after its previous installment.
DEADLINE: What was your preparation like for Paradise?
SHAILENE WOODLEY: I was hired and within eight or nine days I was on set filming, so there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare. I arrived and I was like, “Hey guys, what do you think of Annie having a relationship with a framed photo of Elvis on the wall?” And they were like, “Cool, let’s try it.” There were a lot of montage sequences that didn’t make the final cut, simply because of time. But in filming that, there was this playground to explore, by means of reacting off a still life, instead of reacting off something that had movement and breath, like another actor or even an animal. It was like a presence that had to exist because in Annie’s storyline, for the first half of it at least, the only thing she had to react to was her environment and her own thoughts.
DEADLINE: Having watched the first episode a while ago, I remembered you being alone for a really long time, but in actuality there are not that many scenes where it is just you. Was it helpful to play that out all the same?
WOODLEY: It was so helpful. It’s funny because, when I think of it, I think of the whole first episode as just being Annie and Elvis, but it’s not because it’s really Annie and Gayle [Angel Laketa Moore], and Annie and Link [Thomas Doherty], and the other men that arrived with Link. The reason why it was so helpful in the beginning was that Annie doesn’t have a lot of time to think about her. The things that I was thinking about as we were filming was, how does one not go insane being alone for so long? It’s very rare that a human being spends so much time alone without even the noise of another person in the next room, the next-door neighbor or the next town over. The way that I found my ‘in’ with her, into her humanity and into her sanity, was through the play that we created in the scenes that didn’t make the final cut – the play of entertaining oneself when all there is oneself.
I just wanted to be as honest as possible. The thing that made it challenging was that I have yet to give birth and I have yet to die. So there were two things that I just actually physically couldn’t relate to and had to pretend. And when pretending occurs, I think it’s easy to find false moments in that space.
DEADLINE: When you said yes to this, did you wish you had more prep time?
WOODLEY: I’m a chameleon. When I start projects, often the director will say, “What is your process? What do you like and what don’t you like?” And I think because I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, where it wasn’t intellectual, it was just fun and instinctual, that’s how I approach everything. There was no part of me that wished I had more time to prepare. I just approached it as a new challenge and a new opportunity to flex a brand new muscle. And, by way of that, it required more presence than I think I’ve had in the past, because it has been a little bit more intellectualized. Also, I had just finished a play on Broadway and I think coming off of that experience, where all systems are firing at the same time and you have to be on for 90 minutes straight, when I arrived to the set of Paradise my brain was still operating in this theatrical mode of needing to be aware of 360 degrees of my environment.
DEADLINE: There are so many versions of Annie. There’s Med School Annie, there’s Graceland Annie, there’s Apocalypse Annie. Was that all on the page? How did you figure out her different confidence levels?
WOODLEY: It was a team effort. I always think that building a character is a team effort. It requires the attention of myself, the directors, the writers and the other actors – even the mood of the caterer that day. Creating a character is a very inclusive experience, most of the time. And with Annie, a lot of it was on the page because we did have the specific beats that we needed to hit, but the piece that maybe wasn’t on the page was the time and the space that the directors gave me to really … I keep using the word play, because my memory of filming Paradise was a lot of me suggesting something that was perhaps not written, by way of her feeling something or playing with the textures of Graceland and the directors going, “Huh, that’s cool. Let’s try it.” And them coming up to me and going, “We really think that this beat might be very important, but we’re open to what it might look like.”
Her being in Graceland during the montage sequence, which is not very long anymore, there were moments where I was like, “What if instead of in a notebook, she’s writing in a book because that’s all she has left?” And then that seed would be planted with the directors and the writers and then we’d come up with a new scenario. All of it felt – I don’t want to say improvisational because that’s not correct. Dan’s scripts were very tight and very clear – but there was room for magic. That’s oftentimes when you get the best work out of everyone is when it’s a collaborative experience and people are open to honoring what’s written and also exploring what might not have found the page.
DEADLINE: What was it like to finally interact with someone? Was it a relief or as jarring as it is for Annie to have people in her home?
WOODLEY:
It was funny. We did film for a few weeks alone and then Thomas Doherty – we had met once before for a quick meeting – our first scene was when we were in the jungle room and he asked me my favorite Elvis song and I break down in his arms and we break down together. We didn’t know each other, and we just shook hands and decided to trust each other and give each other our feral. It turned out to be really stunning, because both of us allowed one another to see the other and there was no pretense, no forethought, no, “this is how the scene should be or what it should look like.”And the directors actually wanted that. They were going to cover it from multiple angles, and I think we did cover it from multiple angles, but once they started filming the first take and Thomas and I were just reacting and being present with one another, our camera operator kept following us and they didn’t cut, so we kept going. It was supposed to be broken down into multiple segments, and it turned into one very long sequence. That’s what I mean by the beauty of Paradise – this team of people were open to these moments of magic. Thomas was open to me doing something that wasn’t written on the page, by touching his hands and playing with his hands and putting them on my face. And I was open to him hugging me and touching me.
DEADLINE: It does sound like theater, in a way.
WOODLEY:
It was. And also, we were filming on the Paramount lot, which in 2025 is very rare and very special because so few things are filmed in Hollywood these days. The lot was empty when we first began and we were the only crew on the lot at the time. Being in this soundstage on this massive studio lot that was quite empty, in and of itself, felt a little bit isolating and a little bit sad. You expect to go to a studio lot in Hollywood and feel the pulse of a props department and construction workers, and you just didn’t feel that because there was no one there. So not only, when Thomas arrived, did it feel like there was human connection again, I think all of us felt this desire to remove loneliness from this space and really put our all into something.DEADLINE: How would you describe the relationship between Xavier and Annie?
WOODLEY:
One of the things I love the most about it is that it really is a true love story, these two people, but it’s a love story with emotional intimacy, not physical intimacy. And that is a rare thing to see on television between a man and a woman, especially with the age gap between Sterling and I. And, really, both of us spoke a lot about how wonderful it was to play characters who were in love, but who didn’t have the complication of physical intimacy.I don’t watch things that other actors do because I never want to feel like I’m trying to emulate something else. I think that when I try to emulate is when I fall; it’s when I don’t do as well.
DEADLINE: What was it like to work with Sterling?
WOODLEY: The first day that Sterling arrived, there was music bumping out of a makeup tent on the soundstage. I was like, “Oh. That must be Sterling. I haven’t heard that in a month and a half since being here.” It was him. He plays such a serious character in Xavier on Paradise, and in real life, he’s so silly and he’s got such a big personality. He really fills space by being present and acknowledging everyone. And he’s a phenomenal leader. You can tell that he leads with a lot of integrity and dignity, and working with him was a lot of fun because we would drop into these very serious modes and then as soon as the cameras cut, we’d go and return to being silly people together. And I think it aided the character arc of Annie and Xavier.
DEADLINE: Was there a scene or sequence that you were particularly nervous about?
WOODLEY: I don’t know if nervous is the right word to use, but the sequence when Annie gives birth and then passes. I wasn’t nervous, but I was aware and I felt a lot of responsibility for that scene. I felt a responsibility to my friends who are mothers, to my own mother, to the fans of the show and Dan. I just wanted to be as honest as possible. The thing that made it challenging was that I have yet to give birth and I have yet to die. So there were two things that I just actually physically couldn’t relate to and had to pretend. And when pretending occurs, I think it’s easy to find false moments in that space. I felt a big responsibility to not to fake something that actually was fake.
DEADLINE: How do you go about it? Do you talk to other actors who have given birth on TV? Do you watch birthing footage?
WOODLEY: No. I mean, my cousin is a midwife, so I have seen lots of births and talked about births with her. And I’ve had many friends give birth and I’ve been in the room. So, I felt like I’d experienced seeing different versions of what different women go through. To answer your question simply, no, I don’t watch things that other actors do because I never want to feel like I’m trying to emulate something else. I think that when I try to emulate is when I fall, it’s when I don’t do as well.
For the death part, I really just tried to lay in Sterling’s arms and imagine being in the safest place in the world and knowing that the thing I loved the most, which was this child that I had just given birth to, would be okay and that I could go in peace. Leaning into the make believe of my own imagination is what drove that scene more than external physical preparation.
DEADLINE: The Janis Joplin biopic, you’ve been working on that for a long time. What is it that makes you continue to sit in it? And what kind of prep goes into portraying her?
WOODLEY: It’s a lot of prep by means of wanting to know the ins and outs of her life and reading about her from other people’s perspectives and then whatever I can find that’s from her personal perspective. It’s musical prep. But I love Janis. I adore this woman. I think that in many ways she was ahead of her time, the things that she was saying, the way that she was singing, the things that she was preaching. She wasn’t always perfect when she sang, she wasn’t on pitch all the time. But what made her so magical and such a force was that she felt the music. She wasn’t simply singing the music.
I think in today’s world, I’m personally missing the feral nature of ourselves and of each other and the way that we relate to one another. And Janis, to me, is such a pure example of a comet who blasted to this Earth and wasn’t afraid, although she had her own personal wounds and traumas and things that she had to fight against in a way, but because of those things, she wasn’t afraid to explore the depths of what it meant to be alive. I find her very inspiring and it’s been a joy to sit with her for so many years.
DEADLINE: Do you feel like that’s moving forward? Are we going to see something soon?
WOODLEY: I cannot tell you anything.
DEADLINE: What do we know about Big Little Lies Season 3?
WOODLEY: I mean, what I know about it is that supposedly it is happening. That is what I know.
DEADLINE: Why is that a well you want to return to? What is it about that character and these women?
WOODLEY: Oh my gosh. I love my girls. That’s what makes it so special. We’re each other’s people. We love each other and we’re here for each other and, also, it’s a blast to play these characters. I’m really excited about the third season, and for the opportunity that might exist in exploring who these ladies are 10 years later. We’re all 10 years older. The children are all 10 years older. They’re not really children anymore and most of them are adults now. So the prospect of that is very cool.
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