INTERVIEW: Dean Devlin, writer of global mayhem, now tries to find ‘Paradise’

Photo: Almost Paradise stars Christian Kane and Samantha Richelle. Photo courtesy of Electric Entertainment / Provided by J Goldstein PR with permission.

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The new WGN America series, Almost Paradise, finds a retired Drug Enforcement Agency agent leaving the United States and hanging out on a remote island in the Philippines. Alex Walker (Christian Kane) wants to get away for a while, especially since his old ways almost killed him. He was undercover for a long time, and now, after his partner’s betrayal and a bad case of hypertension, he needs a cool drink and a warm sun.

What Walker doesn’t realize is that there are many criminals who have traveled to this very same island to enjoy some similar rest and relaxation. The former DEA agent finds himself being pulled away from his new job (running the gift shop at a resort) and tending to the world of jet-setting criminals on vacation.

Almost Paradise, which continues with new episodes Mondays at 10 p.m. on the network, comes to TV screens courtesy of Electric Entertainment, the same company behind hit shows The Librarians and Leverage. Joining Kane in the cast are Arthur Acuña as Ernesto Alamares, Nonie Buencamino as Ike Ocampo, Ces Quesada as Cory Santos and Samantha Richelle as Kai Mendoza.

Dean Devlin and Gary Rosen are the co-creators of the show, with Devlin serving as showrunner.

Devlin is one of the most successful people in Hollywood. His writing, directing and producing credits are almost unparalleled. Here’s a brief peek into his menagerie of cinematic toys: writer or co-writer of Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and Universal Soldier; director of Geostorm and Bad Samaritan; and producer of The Outpost, Flyboys, The Visitor and so many other projects.

For Devlin, Almost Paradise is a personal project that has reenergized his creative output and let him achieve a lifelong dream: shooting a TV show in the Philippines. The fascination with the country can be traced back to Devlin’s mother — Pilar Seurat, a Filipino-American actress. His father, Don Devlin, was a movie producer, so it’s no surprise that their son grew up to have a career in the movies.

Recently Hollywood Soapbox had the chance to talk with Devlin about Almost Paradise and how his disaster films connect to the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s what he had to say …

On the coronavirus pandemic …

What weird, bizarre, Andromeda-Strain times we live in. … My career has always really been focused on escapist entertainment, and there’s times when it feels like it’s a kind of frivolous art form. But then there are other times where people really need to escape. I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that right now if I can get an hour to not think about all the stuff I’m going through, it’s a godsend.

On how Almost Paradise came to be …

It actually began a long time ago on my honeymoon. My wife and I were honeymooning in Hawaii, and I was watching the local news. And there was a piece about how the local citizens had arrested these drug dealers because they were tired of waiting for the police to get involved, and it got me thinking about island justice and island culture.

And I really wanted to do a show that took place on a Pacific Coast island, but it didn’t really evolve until years later when I was thinking again about the project. I thought, well, you know, I think the reason I’m so interested in that culture is because I, myself, am half-Filipino, and then I thought, why do this in Hawaii? Why not have this take place in the Philippines? And then suddenly everything started to accelerate.

That’s when Gary Rosen and I got together, and we started writing this thing. Suddenly it became really fresh and really interesting. It was the first time I got to explore that part of my DNA, but it’s also the first U.S. series ever shot in the Philippines.

On the experience of filming in the Philippines …

It was remarkable. Over the last 10-15 years especially the level of talent has increased dramatically in the Philippines. I mean, they’re making wonderful movies now, and they have great directors and great cinematographers and great production designers and costume people. They’ve really stepped up to this much higher level, and yet most people have never seen their work.

So we really got the best of the best in the Philippines coming to do the show, and it was just so exciting to work with all these people. And, of course, the way in which we work is extremely different from the methods that they use in the Philippines. Part of it was us showing them how to get this much done in a day, and the other was us learning from them on the techniques that they’ve developed.

On how he would describe the main character of Alex Walker …

Well, Alex Walker, who had been a superstar undercover DEA agent, had a nervous breakdown, and he suffers from hypertension after his longtime trusted partner betrayed him and tried to kill him. He was basically forced out of the DEA into a forced retirement, and his plan was to go to a secluded beach that he remembered seeing maybe 15 years ago. But when he arrives there, he discovers that in the interim, dozens of giant high-end resorts have been built on that beach, and it’s no longer the tranquil place that he remembered.

And he also discovers that the rich and famous criminals from around the world tend to come here to vacation, so he finds himself drawn back into the very lifestyle he’s been trying to get away from. And he’s a very damaged character. He uses humor to cover his malfunctions, and he’s on this island to try and heal. But it feels like the world is working against him.

On working with Christian Kane and the cast …

This is a long-term partnership that I’ve had with Christian Kane now. This is the third TV series we’ve done together, and over the years we’ve developed such a great shortcut language where I feel like I really know his instrument. And he trusts me to push him to do things that he hasn’t done before, and this really I think has pushed him farther than anything anyone has seen Christian do before.

So that partnership was tremendous, but Christian is also a producer on the show. And Christian was with me when we were doing the casting, and that’s where we met Samantha Richelle and Arthur Acuña and Nonie and all the other cast members. … They really formed this enormous bond. Almost every night after long days of work, they would go out to have dinner together. They’d go to the bar to have a drink and unwind to talk about the day, and I think all that off-camera bonding and relationship-building really gets reflected and gets on screen. You’ll see as the episodes progress, the relationships between these characters just gets hotter and hotter throughout the season, and that’s really the most fun part of the show to watch.

On whether working on a TV show is like working on a movie …

Whether it’s within television or within movies or crossing the genres, every project is different and has different demands. Some have bigger budgets. Some have smaller budgets. Some have time constraints, but at the end of the day, it’s all bedtime stories. It’s just the way in which you tell the bedtime story.

I was saying to my eldest daughter that I tell her stories differently than I tell my youngest daughter, so I think that’s the same with platforms. You’ll tell a story slightly differently in a film then you will in a TV series or in a web show or in a documentary, so I think the differences are really in the language in which you use to communicate your story. But at the end of the day, it’s all storytelling.

On working with WGN America …

I’ve been wanting to make this show for a long time, and it was a little over a year ago that I met with the folks at WGN and talked to them about the show. And they were enormously supportive. When you go to do a show that is 90 percent Filipino actors and Filipino behind-the-camera talent, you’re kind of expecting a lot of resistance, and WGN as a partner they gave us no resistance. In fact, they were very excited about the idea. They really liked the idea of showcasing all this talent to the American people. This was a very unique experience working with them. We had very little interference and a tremendous amount of support.

On whether there will be a second season …

We can’t wait. Literally the last day of the shoot, I got to direct the finale, so on the last day of the shoot, it was such an emotional time because no one wanted it to end. Everybody was asking, when do we get to start it all over again? I said, ‘Well, unfortunately that’s in the hands of the American people right now. If they dig our show, if they watch it, we’ll get the opportunity to come back, and if they don’t, we might not.’

Every one of us can’t wait to go do more shows. The writers have already come up with story ideas for next year. The actors are already planning their life around wanting to do it again. This was one of those rare experiences where we had a group of people that really bonded, really became a family and can’t wait to get back together.

On how he became interested in a movie career …

My father was a movie producer. My mother was an actress. I grew up on movie sets. Unlike other children who wanted to be astronauts and policemen and doctors, I’ve never wanted anything else other than to be telling stories on television and in movies, but I also had a father who forbade me from doing it. That was quite a journey of being incredibly discouraged from being in the business to finally ending up in the business and winning over my own father’s approval. … I grew up loving genre entertainment. When I was a little boy, my mother, who was a Filipino actress, did a guest star on the original Star Trek series, and when she came home, she brought me a phaser. That was the crack that gave me the addiction.

From that moment on, I loved escapist entertainment. When Star Wars came out, I was the ninth person in line on the first screen at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, so I’ve just always had a passion for this kind of work. And to be fortunate enough to be able to have a career where that’s primarily what I’ve focused on most of my career, it’s been this enormous gift, an enormous gift.

On his early disaster films in the 1990s …

It was a remarkable time, and again we came at it through the backdoor. We didn’t come up through the studio system. Stargate was an independent movie. Independence Day might as well have been in that we had nine studios bidding on it and gave us complete and total creative freedom, so it was a wild time where we got to do our favorite genre of movies and with very little interference from people. We had a great time, and it did, it set the tables for me.

On how those disaster films connect to the current pandemic …

I will say that in many of my films there was a recurring theme of a scientist who screamed, ‘Listen to me, or we’re all going to be in trouble,’ and then there was a politician that said, ‘Ah, everything is fine.’ And I got a lot of criticisms for it, so I’d like an apology letter from every critic from the 1990s.

On the enduring legacy of Stargate …

We were hoping to make a really good movie that people would like. We also had planned to do two sequels for it, so we did think of it as a trilogy of movies. But the fact that it turned into such a phenomenon of multiple TV series for over 20 years still entertaining fans around the world, that was way beyond our wildest dreams.

On what he wants people to take away from Almost Paradise …

I think in the short I want an hour that you can escape away to paradise — well, almost paradise — and just forget about all the crap we’re dealing with and just have a great time for an hour. But on another level I really do hope that people can look at this show and see a people and a culture that they’re not familiar with and instead of thinking of them as the ‘other’ to see them really as us, as part of this great global community of people.

What I’m hoping is that the show doesn’t highlight the differences but the similarities and draws us closer. We’ve had this amazing explosion of diversity in entertainment over the last few years, which has been fantastic, but somehow the Filipinos got left behind. And if this can include the Filipinos to the party of diversity, that would be one of the greatest gifts that can happen with this show.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Almost Paradise, co-created and produced by Dean Devlin, airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on WGN America. Click here for more information.