‘Emperor Of Ocean Park’ Exclusive: Grantham Coleman And Paulina Lule Open Up About Their Problematic Pairing

Have you been watching the MGM+ series Emperor of Ocean Park?

This highly-anticipated new thriller stars Academy Award-winning actor, Forest Whitaker, who leads a stellar ensemble cast of talented players including Grantham Coleman, Paulina Lule, Tiffany Mack, Bryan Greenberg, Torrey Hanson, Keith Powers, and Jasmine Batchelor.’The ‘Emperor of Ocean Park’, adapted from Stephen L. Carter’s best-selling debut novel, premieres this Sunday, delivering intrigue, excitement, and a high-stakes narrative built around Whitaker’s character, Talcott Garland – an ambitious law professor drawn into a dangerous world of political power play, personal vengeance, and familial tragedy after his father’s mysterious death.

Grantham Coleman and Paulina Lule play problematic spouses Talcott and Kimmer Garland in the MGM+ series Emperor of Ocean Park, based on Stephen L. Carter’s bestselling novel. The series follows Tal as he digs into his late father’s secretive dealings, unintentionally endangering himself and his family in the process.

BOSSIP Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden spoke with Grantham Coleman and Paulina Lule about their complicated relationship and how both Tal and Kimmer are lying to each other left and right.

“It was a lot of fun,” Lule said, about playing Kimmer, who is obviously keeping secrets from her husband throughout the series. “Let me defend Kim a little bit. Kimmer is just one of those people who is not quite aware of how her actions affect others in the moment and she doesn’t think about it. She worries about it after the fact when it’s already happened. She’s an ambitious woman, so she’s got to do, what she’s got to do to get where she wants to go, especially being a Black woman in the field that she’s in — in the field of law trying to become a judge. She’s also stuck in a sticky situation where she’s received the best news she could receive career wise, all the while trying to manage supporting her husband through grief, through the death of his father.”

“She could be problematic, but she ain’t the only one,” Lule added.

Meanwhile, Tal, who is easily the most even-keeled of the three surviving Garland siblings (we learn that their youngest sister, Abigail died in a hit-and-run), finds himself unraveling as the episodes progress — mostly because he realizes that everything he thought he knew about his loved ones is built on lies.

“You know life is a journey,” Grantham Coleman told BOSSIP. “The story starts with him on a specific track and a path that he thought he chose and that he thought he wanted to go on, and as he starts finding out all these things about the people who are close to him in his life, all the people who’ve actually made him the person who he is, who pushed him with ambition and desire for him to do better and want to do things and he starts seeing they’re not who we thought they were. I think his journey towards growth and towards what might be his own desires, he just wants to get to the bottom of the truth, he doesn’t know he was lied to, so every time we see Tal he’s uncovering another aspect of a lie or betrayal or a loss and as he goes along I think he just starts to finally put some bass in his voice and starts doing for him as he didn’t do before.”

This highly-anticipated new thriller stars Academy Award-winning actor, Forest Whitaker, who leads a stellar ensemble cast of talented players including Grantham Coleman, Paulina Lule, Tiffany Mack, Bryan Greenberg, Torrey Hanson, Keith Powers, and Jasmine Batchelor.

Episode Four airs exclusively on MGM+ this Sunday, August 4, 2024, with new episodes scheduled to be released on a weekly basis.