We already know that past EBONY cover star Sterling K. Brown doesn’t play about Black love. Now on Paradise, which kicked off season two on February 23, he’s addressing a fear many Black women have voiced for years.
“I feel like there’s this thing where Black women feel like Black men will ascend to a certain point in their career, and then women sort of feel as if they get left behind. The conscious or unconscious conversation that’s happening is that you’re good up to a point. And then at a certain point, not good enough,” Brown expressed.
Not on his watch. Brown is calling B.S. on that narrative, in real life and through his on-screen ego, Xavier Collins.
This season on Paradise, the secret service agent is determined to find his wife, Teri Rogers Collins, after learning she is alive on the other side of the bunker. He’s risking it all to enter the post-cataclysmic wilderness to reunite with her.
Warning — Season Two Spoilers Ahead!
This season has given us solid reasons why their love is so unbreakable in the most adorable of ways. In a series of flashbacks, we learned that Xavier was recovering from knee surgery and that Teri was his hospital roommate. At first, she didn’t want to be bothered with his gaze, but after she returned from surgery with vision loss, it was Xavier who encouraged her through recovery. He was one of the first people she saw when her sight returned, and this time, she saw him through new eyes.
“There’s something really beautiful about seeing people in harmony together of the same hue that gives my heart a deliberate and delightful sense of joy,” Brown expressed. “I feel like so often we’re told what’s beautiful is something that doesn’t look like us. So for the two of us to get a meet-cute, it does my soul good.”
Brown isn’t just taking care of his co-star, Enuka Okuma, who plays his onscreen wife, as a fellow actor. In his role as executive producer on the series, he has the power to ensure the characters in his orbit are authentically reflected on screen.
“This man is at the top of his game,” Okuma expressed to EBONY. “He’s ready to catch you. And it feels safe. It allows me to grow as well, because the challenge is to grow on screen with him.”
Watching a Black man step up — emotionally and physically — for his Black wife? That’s the kind of love a Black man can have for a Black woman. And we’re tuned in for every minute.
The next new episode of Paradise airs on March 2 on Hulu.