Hanelle M. Culpepper directs genre television with an eye on the person doing the fighting. We rate her care with actors, though the engaging, uneven Paradise shows what happens when the plotting asks too much of them.
Fi1m perspective
Sterling K. Brown keeps Paradise (2025) worth watching when its plotting becomes improbable. That is a useful place to begin with Hanelle M. Culpepper, who directs multiple episodes and moves comfortably between intimate drama and large-scale action. We stayed involved because Brown made the emotional scenes convincing, even when we doubted the story.
Her route to that work ran from shorts to Within (2009), her first feature, a supernatural thriller, then into episodic television in the early 2010s. The decisive step was Star Trek: Picard (2020), for which she directed the first three episodes. Establishing a series gives a director particular responsibility for its look and tone, and that task suits her interest in character. The pilot of Kung Fu (2021) followed, before her work on Star Wars: The Acolyte (2024).
The fight work gives us a clearer sense of her priorities. She favours choreography that expresses character and, where possible, lets the actors perform the action themselves. That is a useful preference: seeing the performer do the movement can keep a fight connected to the person whose danger is meant to concern us. On The Acolyte, that attention extends to collaboration on fight choreography and practical effects.
There are limits to what that can achieve in Paradise. Working with series creator Dan Fogelman and cinematographer Yasu Tanida, Culpepper contributes to a drama whose emotional scenes usually work. The second season nevertheless asks for considerable patience with loose plotting and flashbacks. We would not lay the whole series’ writing problems at an episodic director’s door, nor give her sole credit for Brown’s performance. Try it for the acting and the mystery, with some patience set aside for the flashbacks.
Biography
Hanelle M. Culpepper is an American television and film director. She was born on 22 September 1970 in Birmingham, Alabama. She earned a B.A. from Lake Forest College and an M.A. from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. After working as an assistant to screenwriter and director Callie Khouri, she completed the AFI Directing Workshop for Women.
Culpepper is known for directing episodes of series including Lucifer, The Flash, Westworld, Supergirl, Criminal Minds, Gotham, The Originals, Grimm, Chicago P.D. and Castle. She directed the pilot of Star Trek: Picard (2020), becoming the first woman to launch a new Star Trek series, and received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing for the episode. She has also directed episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte.
Her recent credits include directing episodes of the Hulu series Paradise (2025–), for which she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the season 2 finale. She co-executive produced and directed the pilot of Kung Fu (2021).
