As an executive producer and star of the new Hulu series “Paradise,” Sterling K. Brown put the hours of TV he watches to good use and cast actors he admires.

Paradise is a science-fiction thriller that taps into contemporary fears from an indirect angle, and that shrewdness ultimately lends it much of its underlying power. Reuniting him with his This is Us star Sterling K.

The actor and creator tried something much less weepy this time: a sci-fi thriller. Still it was “a homecoming on so many levels,” Brown said.