Shailene Woodley couldn’t resist a little celebrity name dropping at Televerse 26. During a panel for Hulu’s Emmy-nominated drama Paradise — where Woodley is up for Best Drama Guest Actress — she credited George Clooney, her costar on 2011’s The Descendants, with shaping the way she’s carried herself on set ever since.
The panel brought together Woodley, Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, director Hanelle Culpepper, visual effects supervisor John Weckworth, and casting director Josh Einsohn to look back on a season that awarded Paradise seven Emmy nominations, including Best Drama Series. Asked how the show’s directors create room for the kind of vulnerable, unguarded work fans have responded to, Woodley traced it back to some formative words from Clooney.
“I remember being given advice when I was 18 years old from George Clooney when we did a film together,” Woodley said, referring to the Alexander Payne-directed feature. “He was like, ‘Whoever’s number one on the call sheet and whoever the director is, if those two people show up to set every day in a good mood, in a positive way, and they’re kind to everyone, it changes the entire environment, not only of the set, but also the final product of the show or the film.’ I didn’t quite know what he meant then, but I absolutely know what he means now.”
Woodley said that philosophy is exactly what she found on the Paradise set. “There was so much freedom and so much room for play,” she said, describing “an openness for collaboration and a tampering of the ego that is quite rare, actually, on a set.” Much of her early work on the show was solo, and she recalled moments that didn’t make the final cut — like speaking to a picture of Elvis on the wall and cooking meals — just to find her footing as an isolated Annie.
That freedom paid off in Episode 4, when Woodley and Brown, who is up for Best Drama Actor, filmed the scene of Annie giving birth with Xavier by her side. “Every once in a while as an actor, you have an opportunity to witness a performance up close, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I think I’m watching something pretty freaking great right now, and I get to be right there,'” Brown said of that moment. “And then you have these pinch-me moments. It’s like, ‘Brown, keep acting, don’t stop.'”
The actor added that he could feel Woodley’s breath halting in the scene, “like a convulsion” — and that he was fighting back tears while trying to stay in character himself.
Woodley credited the writing and her trust in Brown for making the scene work, calling their dynamic “one of the first relationships I’ve ever had the opportunity to play between a male and a female that truly represents love in its most holy, divine form,” without any romantic or physical complication attached.
“I felt Sterling’s strength and kindness and generosity and presence holding my body with such an ‘I’ve got you’ [energy] that I kind of just got to melt into it and surrender into it,” she added. “It really just does make the biggest difference. It’s one of the greatest highlights of my career.”
Meanwhile, Culpepper shared a memorable story about the moment she learned about her directing nomination — a category she noted is notoriously hard to break into, especially as a Black woman.
“I was going into prep for Paradise, and as I was walking into the production office, there’s a little alcove,” Culpepper recalled. “I heard them saying my name, and I walked in — I don’t know what my face looked like — but they were like, ‘It’s all good. It’s all good. You were nominated for an Emmy.'”
Culpepper said that her first reaction was disbelief. “I’m like, ‘That’s AI,'” she said. “And they’re like, ‘No, it’s not.’ And I burst into tears and was like, ‘I have to call my husband.'”
The follow-up call didn’t go much smoother. “I called my husband, and I said, ‘I got nominated for an Emmy.’ And he’s like, ‘What?’ He made me say it five times! I was thinking, why doesn’t he believe me? Later on I found out — he told me, ‘You were crying so hard, I thought someone had died.'”
Culpepper said the honor means something bigger than her own career. “As a woman director, as a person of color directing, you always want to continue to open the door for people to come through,” she said. “When you get this, you’re like, ‘Okay, great, let’s open that door a little wider so we can have more of us come through.'”
She closed with a shoutout to the show’s leading man. “I thank Sterling so much, because he is the reason I am here. He is the one who told Dan Fogelman, ‘You all should meet Hanelle — I think she’d be great.’ He brought me into this family, and it has changed my life.”
