When This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman first approached James Marsden about playing the president of the United States on a new TV series, Marsden was lukewarm. “I just didn’t see myself doing that,” the actor says. “I’ve done that once before on The Butler, and felt like I was too young.” Then Fogelman explained that Paradise ’s Cal is a complicated president: a hard drinker, a man with secrets, and, most importantly, someone who “doesn't really want to be in that position,” says Marsden. “He was sort of shoehorned into the career of politics by his overbearing father, and that immediately just sounded interesting to me.”

Marsden’s Cal is killed in the first episode of Paradise. The series follows his secret service agent ( Sterling K. Brown ) as he tries to figure out who mu

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