Enuka Okuma Goes Inside Terri and Xavier’s Reunion

[This story contains spoilers from Paradise episode seven of season two, “The Final Countdown.”]

Last week’s Paradise ended with the highly anticipated moment of Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) finally laying eyes on the wife he had been searching for ever since finding out she was actually alive. And this week’s episode picked up right from that cliffhanger to play out their long-awaited reunion.

Xavier had thought his wife and mother of their two children, Terri, played by Enuka Okuma, had died in the near-apocalyptic event that kicked off the hit Hulu series created by Dan Fogelman. He found out at the end of the first season that she actually survived, and he left the safety of the bunker to go and find her in season two. Against all odds, Xavier found Terri, tracking her to the location where she had called in on the radio. This episode, however, shows how Terri’s friend Gary (Cameron Britton) had misdirected Xavier into thinking Terri was in danger as a ruse, since Gary is also in love with Terri. Xavier and Terri must contend with Gary, which they do, before setting out on their mission to return to the bunker in Colorado.

Each of them now has an additional child in their care when they reconnect and vow to go get their children — Xavier is taking care of Annie’s (Shailene Woodle) baby in hopes of reuniting her with father Link (Thomas Doherty) and Terri comes now with a boy named Bean (Benjamin Mackey), whom she has protected since The Day the world changed. “I never stopped trying to find my way back you — you just found me first,” she tells him.

“We learn that Terri is as tough as Xavier,” executive producer and writer John Hoberg tells The Hollywood Reporter about how Xavier and Terri have changed in the three years since The Day. “The two of them both have this irresistible force quality. When they are together, they’re almost unstoppable. Xavier is a different person, and she’s a different person. So now this is like a marriage where two people took different jobs away from each other for a few years and are coming back together and, how is that going to work?”

For Brown, also an executive producer, the comparison between present day and the levity of their meet-cute was a fun and flirty color to put on, he says, of filming their flashbacks in season two. “Then finally, after going through so much, to be reunited… I hope there’s a sense of relief that the audience feels in getting a chance to see these two people find one another again,” he tells THR, “because that’s what it felt like: relief. Like, ‘You’re here. I didn’t know if you were going to be here. So many things kept me from getting to you. I made it to you. I love you. Let’s go.’”

Below, THR speaks with Okuma about when she found out that Terri would be entering the present-day story in such a big way, what it was like filming Terri and Xavier’s reunion, and what she knows about the already renewed third season.

***

What did you know after season one about if this reunion between Terri and Xavier would happen in season two?

I had no idea how or if that would ever happen. I did know that Terri was going to be a larger role and that you would get to see into her world, but I didn’t know how. Especially reading the beginning of the season and seeing that flashback episode, I figured — in [Dan] Fogelman-style — that I would be in a lot of flashbacks. So it was a nice surprise to know that we would dive into what happened to Terri outside, but then of course that wonderful episode seven was a nice surprise, too!

Did you have a chat with creator Dan Fogelman and the writers about Terri’s arc ahead of time, or did you find out as you were receiving scripts?

It was mostly finding out from reading. But then once we were shooting, being able to talk to our directors and to Dan about exactly that. Just how long it has been that those two have been missing each other.

Had you been peppering Sterling K. Brown with questions leading up to this?

Oh, he knows everything [as an executive producer also]. I would always ask him, but at the same time I didn’t want any spoilers. So he wouldn’t tell me, but would look at me and say, “It’s good. It’s gonna be good.” So I would just trust that it was going to be great.

How did you react when you got to the end of episode six and read that they finally lock eyes on one another, but that Gary potentially stands in their way?

I was pretty concerned. As an actor, we all have our worries and insecurities. I wanted to do it justice. As an audience member myself I had been hoping that those two get together, so I wanted to do it justice and was putting extra pressure on myself. But once we got to set — and it was so hot! Plus there were trains and explosions and hundreds of extras. It was just so massive. The stakes were so high, that all I had to do was surrender and lean into the what-if of it all, and it was all fine and natural in the end because it was almost like the stakes were actually happening.

Did you film their reunion scene in one day?

No, we didn’t. In fact, the tearful reunion — part two of the reunion — was shot in studio. We had done everything outside a week before. That informed everything going on in the tent, but it also gave a lot of time to really sit with that second level. It’s all pretty crazy when they first see each other, so I love that the writers gave us that moment to truly connect. There’s so much grief and loss for the time that has passed, the time they didn’t have with each other and how they couldn’t be there for one another. Giving those characters that moment was great.

Up until this point, you and Sterling had only filmed flashbacks to establish their relationship. What was it like to bring their relationship up to date and portray them now?

That was very much informed by how these two were leaders in their own way, in their own worlds. So coming together was now, in many ways, falling back into the pattern of who they are as husband and wife. But then it became two people who have a mind of their own and are on their own mission. Terri is not going to be told what to do, and has been running things in her own camp. So it becomes a dance of leadership.

How would you say their time away from each other has informed how they’re able to step up for each other and for their family by the end of this season?

I think because they have been away from each other for so long that coming back together as a unit, no matter what — no matter this butting of heads, in terms of leadership — shows that they have found each other and it is that union. They are going forth together and now it’s about getting the rest of that [family] unit back together, as the world is falling apart around them. I think you see very quickly the harmony they have and how they do work together.

They are this unbelievable, one-in-a-million story to have found each other again. What do you hope viewers take away from their hopeful love story?

Both of them don’t give up, and that is what makes the story so special to me — they’re steadfast in their belief and their faith that they will get back together. I read the story of their standoff with Gary in a cynical way, thinking, “Okay, they just got back together and this is how she’s going to die.” Maybe my heart is a little bit dark! But I do love for them that this was the fire that was stoking both of them. My love is out there, and I must find them. I must be with them again. I think it’s a beautiful message of hope and strength, and the fact that they do get together is an affirmation that it can happen.

***

Paradise releases its season two finale on Monday. Read THR‘s coverage.