Shailene Woodley preparing for ‘Paradise’ delivery scene

Shailene Woodley suspects she left a bruise on Sterling K. Brown’s arm during the birth scene in Episode 4 of “Paradise.” She held him during the birth and forced her breath to leave her body, as if she were actually taking her last breath. Woodley did not even see Brown’s face at the time, but did not see it until later when he tearfully watched the completed episode at home.

“I felt like if I died at that moment, it would be okay because Sterling had my back,” she says. Variety. “It was a raw, honest exchange.”

That scene was the culmination of a guest arc that Woodley built in less than ten days with barely a completed script in hand. She had just been on Broadway for five months when her agent called with a message from creator Dan Fogelman, who wanted to discuss a role in Season 2.

By the time it was over, she booked a flight to Los Angeles. Fogelman was honest: Woodley’s character, Annie Clay, a former medical student turned Graceland tour guide, would fall in love with a fellow survivor, Link (Thomas Doherty), become pregnant and die during childbirth. “I thought, Dan! Oh, my God,” Woodley laughs.

The lack of preparation may, counterintuitively, be exactly why the performance works so well. Five months of live theater had taught her something she’d been told since childhood: take it easy.

“The piece created a slowness ingrained in me,” she says. “There was a calmness and fortitude in the fact that I was okay with taking that time. The directors gave it to me.”

The Season 2 premiere, “Graceland,” is all about Annie, following her life from the day the disaster drove the Season 1 cast underground, through the years she spent above it, alone, asking audiences to abandon familiar characters and invest in someone new. Woodley built Annie’s inner life largely in silence, on a replica of a Graceland set, wandering the rooms during lunch breaks and wondering what a woman would actually do during two years of total isolation. She made up scenes of Annie talking to the portrait of Elvis on the wall, thinking she was beginning to believe he was real. Most of it didn’t make the final cut, but it subtly informed everything that did.

“Annie is very practical, very linear, very type-A, compared to me, who would have been goofy and overly emotional. Fear didn’t make her cry,” Woodley says. “Sitting in those rooms, staring at those walls and asking myself what I would do, that was more the way I created her.”

For the birth scene, director Ken Olin gave Woodley and Brown room to find the moment rather than execute something predetermined, and several of the women hired as midwives were real nurses; one was a doula. For the kind of actor Brown is, Woodley turns to a word borrowed from fellow actor Ben Foster: beast.

“There are people who are not afraid to look a certain way, sound a certain way, be a certain way, and that’s what really transcends a screen,” she says. “Sterling K. Brown is a beast.”

At its core, Annie’s story is about a woman who has spent years confusing control with security, and what happens when love makes that bargain impossible. “This baby helped Annie finally face her deepest fear,” says Woodley. “And by facing her fear, she gave her baby a chance at life.” She pauses. “I truly believe that we all help each other, and sometimes the way that help manifests can look difficult or trivial.”

When asked if Annie might return for season 3 via one of the show’s many flashbacks, Woodley’s response is immediate: “Of course I’d like to go back. Someone has to call me.”