In wake of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles earlier this year, Episode 7 of Dan Fogelman’s hit Hulu series, Paradise, hits a little too close to home for LA-based cast members like Krys Marshall.
Written by John Hoberg and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Episode 7, “The Day,” shows the end-of-the-world climate catastrophe that led 25,000 people — including Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi), Secret Service agents Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), Robinson (Marshall), Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), and the late president Cal Bradford (James Marsden) — to seek refuge in a billionaire-funded bunker.
The disaster movie-esque installment is one of 2025’s most distressing TV episodes, and ever since the wildfires, the cast views it with a renewed sense of urgency.
“When we made this show, I had to use my imagination to see what a climate catastrophe would look like for me. And now, we’ve essentially lived through one,” Marshall, who lives in Topanga and was directly impacted by the wildfires, told Decider. “I personally was evacuated from my home for 11 days, and the fire was less than a quarter mile away from my home. So this was my very upfront and personal experience of what it looks like when we don’t take care of Earth.”
In “The Day,” the White House learns that a supervolcano erupted under the Antarctic ice sheet, expelling millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere. The explosion caused trillions of gallons of water to melt from the ice sheet, which triggered a 600 mph tsunami with 300-foot waves — but that’s not all! As governments scrambled to secure resources, Russia and China exchanged fire. Los Angeles experienced an 8.9 magnitude earthquake. And news that Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and more countries had been destroyed trickled into the Oval Office.
While Paradise‘s extinction-level event took place on a global scale, in wake of the wildfires and with today’s ongoing climate concerns, the events and the palpable fear portrayed on-screen deeply resonated.
“Having to tell the story of what the essentially end of days looks like was just a wild one,” Marshall continued. “I think that our writers are incredibly intelligent, dreaming up this fictional world that feels very, very real. Of how each day, waste and mismanagement of our resources has very real consequences. So it’s heavy. It’s really heavy.”
“When we made this show, I had to use my imagination to see what a climate catastrophe would look like for me. And now, we’ve essentially lived through one.”
Krys Marshall, Paradise
Paradise star Julianne Nicholson hopes the episode will inspire viewers to pay more attention to the world around them. “It is kind of amazing that it does hit so close to home, especially being in LA right now with the fires,” Nicholson said over Zoom. “It may hopefully wave a little flag to those who are not believing, or [serve as a reminder to] pay attention and do your do your part where where you can.”
Even Marsden, who masterfully stepped into the shoes of a man tasked with calling the shots in the world’s most unprecedented moment, recalled a heaviness on set while filming the terrifying scenario.
“It was challenging, for sure. Because you’re sitting there hoping that the audience is on board at this point, and you’re also thinking this is so unfathomable, what we’re witnessing,” Marsden told Decider when asked about shooting Episode 7.
“You’re standing there in disbelief. So there was a weird, eerie vibe on set that day,” Marsden continued. “It wasn’t unpleasant, I could just tell every person in all the scenes we shot through that whole episode were privately thinking, ‘What would I be doing in this situation? What kind of person would I be? What would I choose? What would be important to me?’ And so it was a real reflection as we were shooting these scenes.”
“There was a heaviness on set, because it was like, ‘Are we too far away from this?’” the Paradise star asked. “There was a real determination to get the scenes right, to make [viewers] feel the importance and the level of threat and the sadness of all of it. There were definitely more fun scenes to shoot than those, but they were also gratifying in their own really specific way.”
New episodes of Paradise air Tuesdays on Hulu.
