Note: The following story contains spoilers from “Palm Royale” Season 2, Episode 1.
“Palm Royale” Season 2 opens with a luscious, dreamlike sequence that sees Kristen Wiig’s Maxine return triumphantly to the club, before joining Ricky Martin’s Robert for an elaborate dance number to the tune of Mel Tormé’s “Comin’ Home Baby,” letting all notions of Robert’s potentially fatal injury at the end of Season 1 fall to the wayside.
That dream is interrupted, however, when reality fades back in for Maxine, recalling the traumatic events of the Beach Ball — from Robert taking the bullet meant for Nixon to learning Mitzi was pregnant with Douglas’ baby — and her subsequent admittance into a mental hospital, or what showrunner Abe Sylvia identifies as “a home for wives who dare to have a feeling.” “There are real places in Palm Beach in the ’60s where if a wife became inconvenient to her wealthy husband, he could put her away from life and remarry,” he told TheWrap. “There’s so many stories of socialites who were put away and never heard from again.”
With Maxine trying to escape from both the sanitarium and the realities of her situation for the entirety of the season, Sylvia noted the opening sequence was not only an opportunity to give audiences a glimpse of Maxine at the club, but also declares Maxine’s mission of the season: finding her way back to Robert.
“How does she get back to this place in her mind that’s so beautiful and dreamlike where she and Robert can be happy and dance together?” Sylvia pondered, noting that Maxine is trapped in the asylum while Robert is at death’s door.
Sylvia and his writers started breaking story for the premiere episode while editing the final parts of Season 1 thanks to Apple’s confidence in the series to get the Season 2 writers’ room going before the entirety of the first season even aired. The early go-ahead gave him a chance to calibrate how to seamlessly transition the installments into one another and craft where the second installment could go.
While Sylvia noted he tries not to let viewer feedback dictate where the plot — “if you start writing to the mob, you’re lost” — one place he and fans were aligned was in wanting to see more of Carol Burnett, whose character, Norma, spent the majority of the freshman season in a coma. “[Burnett’s appearance] was deeply felt by the fans and and we were certainly excited to give Carol a lot more to do in Season 2,” Sylvia said. “It was really fun to see her tackle it.”
Season 1 introduced Burnett as Norma Dellacorte, the matriarch and keeper of the Dellacorte wealth, but the end of last season revealed that Norma, whose real name is Agnes, had stolen the identity of her boarding school roommate, whom she pushed to the bottom of the stairs and killed, adding a new cutthroat flavor for Burnett to play with. As Sylvia envisioned how this version of Norma could come alive in Season 2, Burnett was more than willing to collaborate.
“She sent me this text that said, ‘I think Norma is in her power — it’d be wonderful to have a cane. Should I have a cane?’ And I said, ‘I love that idea,’” Sylvia recalled. “‘And in the cane,’ [she said] ‘Norma will hide her flask and so that she can be sneaking drinks,’ and I said, ‘Well, I said, I don’t think Norma has to hide her drinking from anybody — nobody in this show hides their drinking from anybody — but it could be, however, where she hides her gun.’”
It’s that cutthroat side of Norma that comes out in the Season 2 premiere when she meets with Axel, played by “The Carol Burnett Show” alum Paul Sand, who was once in love with the real Norma while at school. Though we don’t quite see how it happened, the next time we see Axel… he’s dead.
“I like to think that in some ways, it was a bit of mercy and he died of a broken heart. That Norma, in those final moments, told him the truth, that the love of his life, that he’s longed for all this time has been dead for 70 years, and I think his heart stopped,” Sylvia said. “So whether Norma poisoned him, or whether she just left him with the truth and knew it wouldn’t end well, I think Axel died happy.”
While Sylvia noted Maxine drove most every scene in the first installment, he and the writers wanted to delve into standalone stories for each of the high society ladies of Palm Beach, from the new love story for Allison Janney’s Evelyn to the consequences facing Laura Dern’s Linda. Widening the scope of Season 2 also gave Sylvia a chance to further develop Kaia Gerber’s Mitzi, who rises from a manicurist to the next lady of high society.
“We talked a lot about where she’s pitching her voice and that being the tells for how Mitzi is code-switching, whether she has to be the little girl for Douglas or the social wannabe for Norma, or the conniving woman that we start to suspect that she is,” Sylvia explained. “There’s more here than meets the eye.”
Just as new alliances are formed between Norma and Mitzi, what Sylvia calls an “unholy alliance” comes about between Maxine and Evelyn, who picks up Maxine from the mental hospital at the end of the premiere episode as they agree to “go take Palm Beach.”
“Evelyn is on her back heel as well, and Norma is not happy about Evelyn’s ascent — she’s not happy that Evelyn tried to take over the Beach Ball, so she really sees Evelyn as a threat, and in that way it’s one of those ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” Sylvia said. “But I think also Evelyn sees a lot of herself in Maxine, whether she chooses to admit it or not.”
Sylvia added that Wiig and Janney are “miraculous” together, noting that every rehearsal is like watching a masterclass.
“We have the best of the best on this show, and they’re able to play style and remain grounded, which not every actor knows how to do,” Sylvia said. “I really wanted to weaponize this murderous murderer’s row of comedy geniuses — and not just comedy geniuses, they’re just brilliant actors.”
“Palm Royale” Season 2 drops new episodes Wednesdays on Apple TV.
