Actress Paulina Lule would be the first to tell you Milwaukee is not exactly the bustling hotbed of Hollywood filmmaking.
However, it is in this small-market Midwestern town that Lule was able to make her dream come true of continuing her thriving career as an actress. From there, Lule virtually landed a dream role in the enthralling political thriller “The Emperor of Ocean Park” opposite Forest Whitaker.
The MGM+ series is a TV adaptation of author Stephen L. Taylor’s New York Times bestseller that centers around an affluent Black family of lawyers and judges who employ machinations to procure and maintain power.
The patriarch of this opulent family is Judge Oliver Garland, played by Whitaker, a highly regarded Ivy League law professor. He plays the titular role of the “emperor” who dies from a heart attack. Some of the surviving children, who are left in emotional ruins, begin to probe into mysterious circumstances surrounding their father’s death.
Lule said she’d define the series as political intrigue and intrafamilial tumult.
She explained, “It’s a political thriller, a murder mystery, but also a family story. Like, it’s about a family, right?”
Lule plays Kimmer Madison, a hard-charging and callous lawyer who is hellbent on manifesting a successful career.
“I think Kimmer is just human,” Lule said. “I mean, I think that’s what really attracted me to the role. Kimmer, along with everybody on this show, isn’t always telling the truth about everything all the time, and she moves in a way that works for her and that she’s learned that she has to work, right? You know, she’s a high-powered lawyer in a very male-dominated industry. She wants to be successful.”
Lule said playing in a TV series that runs on MGM+, opposite Whitaker, a legend and Oscar winner, was extra special.
“My character kind of exists on a storyline that doesn’t intersect with Forest too often,” she said. “Forest just has a presence. You learn by watching [people like that]. You learn by watching how they approach the work, about how they interact with crew, about how they present their ideas to the directors.”
‘Tired of living in LA’
Lule, who experienced the global life by living in Japan, Hawaii and Los Angeles a decade before returning to her Milwaukee stomps, had grown weary of L.A.’s pretentiousness.
“I was tired, Terry, of living in L.A.,” she said. “It is not an easy city to live in. And when you are country, like I am … it’s just the vibe here [in Milwaukee], the laid back [ambiance], the lack of pretension. The money stretches farther. A whole bunch of different things went into our decision to move back here.”
Like most professionals, Lule discovered Zoom during the pandemic, which became the equalizer in auditioning and helped her score roles 2,000 miles away from Hollywood.
“I think the pandemic really democratized auditioning in the sense that Zoom auditions and self-tapes just became ubiquitous,” Lule said.
Bringing the cameras to Wisconsin
Being in Milwaukee also enables Lule to appropriate time for her other loves and passions, such as conservationism, animals, and growing the filmmaking community in Wisconsin.
“I’m on the steering committee for Action Wisconsin, which is a coalition that is essentially lobbying our state legislature, the people in our Senate, to pass a bill to form a Wisconsin state film office because we do not have one,” Lule said.
