{"id":137540,"date":"2025-11-13T12:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T12:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/137540\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T12:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T12:39:14","slug":"palm-royale-season-2-premiere-how-showrunner-cast-patti-lupone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/137540\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Palm Royale’ Season 2 Premiere; How Showrunner Cast Patti LuPone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This article contains mild spoilers from the season two premiere of Palm Royale<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ladies of the Palm Royale have returned<\/a> to TV screens with noses not quite as up in the air as they were in season one of the Kristen Wiig<\/a> comedy, as the stakes for maintaining their place in West Palm Beach high society are now raised higher than ever.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve certainly upped the ante on all the characters. Everybody knows their lane this season,\u201d showrunner and creator Abe Sylvia tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cSometimes TV shows start out really strong and then lose their way. Or other shows start strong and keep building on what they did before. That\u2019s certainly the challenge I put to the cast and writers and designers every day \u2014 how do we not bore ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBoring is hardly the word to describe the Nov. 12 season two premiere of the Apple TV+<\/a> series that finds the show\u2019s protagonist Maxine (Wiig) once again on the outs<\/a> \u2014 this time, literally in a mental institution \u2014 following her public breakdown during the Beach Ball in the show\u2019s season one finale<\/a>. With her is Laura Dern\u2019s Linda Shaw, who\u2019s been apprehended for the assassination attempt on President Nixon \u2014 that was actually perpetrated by Mary (Julia Duffy) \u2014 which left Robert (Ricky Martin) shot in the crossfire.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet as Dinah (Leslie Bibb), Evelyn (Allison Janney) and Mitzi (Kaia Gerber) all try to manage their precarious positions with their respective partners in the backdrop of their quests for luxury lifestyles and independent living, Norma (Carol Burnett<\/a>) remains more steadfast than ever in her pursuit to use everyone around her as pawns in her scheme to take Maxine down and ensure the Dellacorte riches remain in her control. <\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Sylvia talks with THR about writing season two, including the real-life individuals who inspired two character arcs, shaping Norma with Burnett\u2019s help, and bringing his \u201cicon\u201d Patti Lupone<\/a> in as a guest star.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s pretty impressive these days to be talking about season two\u2019s release just a year and a half after Palm Royale launched. How were you able to turn this around so quickly?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe have the writers and actors strikes to thank for that, because our season one premiere was delayed from the strikes, so we were already well into breaking season two and the show hadn\u2019t even premiered yet. That was a nice sleight of hand by Apple that they opened the writers room during post of season one, so we were a little bit ahead of the game. Then there was the delay in the premiere and it all evened out. It\u2019s the magic of hard work that we turned it around in nine months.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou open season two with a musical number performed by Ricky Martin. Was that your way of letting the audience know his character, Robert, is back after that season one finale cliffhanger?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe knew the first episode was going to have some dark themes, even though we handle them with our signature lightness of touch. We knew Maxine was going to be in a home for wives \u2014 that\u2019s what they\u2019d called them in Palm Beach back in the day. So for the first episode, so we thought, \u201cWe don\u2019t want it to be such a downer. We want to see her in the club. The audience wants to see her by that pool. They want to see her and Robert together.\u201d So that\u2019s where that was born out of. The desire of seeing her in this place and then pulling the rug out from the audience\u2019s feet, saying that it\u2019s not all as it seems. We have Ricky Martin in our cast, so why not have him sing? I was so nervous to ask him to do it, because oftentimes actors will want to keep things separate, but Ricky was game. He\u2019s so willing and fearless. We\u2019ve got one of the world\u2019s biggest pop stars on our show.<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you keep him in the dark at all about Robert\u2019s fate, or did he know his character was always coming back for season two?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe always knew he was coming back. He knew he was coming back. In fact, the inspiration for the turn at the end of the season finale is the story of Oliver Sipple, who was the man who thwarted Sarah Jane Moore from killing Gerald Ford. He was a gay man who was then outed because of his heroism at a time when his family didn\u2019t know he was gay. So there were a lot of real-life inspirations for what Robert goes through this season.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, Norma appears to be the villain of season two. Is this how you saw things panning out from the outset?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, she\u2019s the biggest foil in the series, so if Maxine\u2019s our hero, Norma is the villain that you just love. And going back to this idea that we handle things with a lightness of touch, even if Norma\u2019s character is \u201cevil,\u201d you have Carol Burnett delivering the performance and making it just as delicious. She has such an awareness of style, as everybody knows, from her television show. She did all of those fantastic movie parodies and our show, Palm Royale, plays with that same kind of pastiche where it\u2019s a little bit of a hag movie. It\u2019s also a musical, a melodrama and high farce. We are so lucky we have this group of actors who can play with style in that way. And, of course, Carol Burnett\u2019s the queen.<\/p>\n

\n\tI laughed so hard when Norma is chastising the women of the Palm Royale in episode one and says, \u201cYou aligned yourself with this gutterslut,\u201d referring to Maxine. How does Carol respond when she gets her scripts?<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s a pro. She comes in and nails her dialogue. She texted me very early on as she was reading the scripts, and said, \u201cOh, I think it\u2019d be wonderful, as part of Norma being back and making her more imposing, what if we give her a cane?\u201d Then Carol said, \u201cAnd it\u2019d be funny if she hides a flask in it.\u201d I said, \u201cLet\u2019s make it a gun.\u201d So the whole time, this cane is actually a gun, and those are the kinds of collaborations where we build on top of each other. But no, she didn\u2019t flinch at saying \u201cgutterslut.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn this first episode, we see Maxine confused and admitted to this home for women. What else will she be up against in season two?<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s up against the world. This is why she\u2019s such an incredibly relatable character, particularly to women. The whole season is really a tribute to the ways in which women have to work outside the system to get anywhere. Of course, on our show, is writ large, but we have the metaphor of the tunnels, and they have to work through their husbands. Certainly in this political climate as well, being able to do something with a wink of satire towards the insurmountable obstacles that are put in a woman\u2019s path if she has any ambition or a dream for herself, and how that hasn\u2019t changed. Our show is set in 1969, and we all saw that election. We were shooting this show during the [Trump] election and the whole season is a parable for right now. In our trailer, that\u2019s why we use the Shirley Bassey song \u201cHistory Repeating.\u201d You may think you\u2019re watching a throwback, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast season, there were these on-the-nose parallels, like the discussion of women\u2019s reproductive rights just as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and I wondered if we\u2019d see more of that.<\/p>\n

\n\tI wrote the pilot in season one before the Dobbs decision and sometimes we\u2019re like, \u201cOh gosh, this is just so far-fetched,\u201d and then it turns out we\u2019re right on the money. When we were in the writers room, we were like, \u201cIs it a little far-fetched that Norma would have this Rolodex of secrets under her bed in Palm Beach on all the powerful people in the world?\u201d And my first assistant director comes up to me the day we\u2019re shooting that scene, and said, \u201cWell, Mar-a-Lago was just raided, and they found all these files that Trump stole from the White House.\u201d I said, \u201cI guess we\u2019re doing something right.\u201d And that happened a few times this season. Not planned. It\u2019s just smart writers who are worried about the world and read the paper every day. <\/p>\n

\n\tVirginia [Amber Chardae Robinson] turning out to be an undercover FBI agent is a fun twist. When did that idea come to you?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe knew it in the season finale. She\u2019s in the basement with Linda, and we\u2019re already teasing that that\u2019s the twist. She says, \u201cI have friends in high places.\u201d All of the women from the bookstore are still locked up. Why is Virginia out? And we\u2019re basing this on the first Black woman who became an FBI agent in the same year, and was the only African American woman in the FBI for many years. For the particular challenges of that space for a Black woman, we worked really closely with Amber to make sure we\u2019re dealing with things with our signature lightness of touch. But we thought it would be a great way to flip things because in season one, Virginia was the only character that seemingly didn\u2019t have a secret. She was a straight shooter; what you saw was what you got. I was like, gosh, that\u2019s not entirely fair to that character, that she\u2019s just good and decent. She gets a secret, too.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoing back to production on this season. Were you impacted by the fires at all?<\/p>\n

\n\tVery much so. We had to shut down for a couple of weeks. We had just come back from our Christmas hiatus, and we were going to start up again on the day the fires started. Multiple crew members lost homes. It was really a hard time. And yet, getting back to work and into the sandbox with all these fun people was also incredibly therapeutic for everybody. One of the real gifts of that week was that Patti LuPone was with us, and there was something about her energy that lifted everybody\u2019s spirits on set. This new person sweeping into town, everybody\u2019s coming out of the fires, all traumatized, and here comes Patti and her fabulous nudie ball gown saying, \u201cLet\u2019s go, guys.\u201d It galvanized all of us. So we owe her a big of debt of gratitude for the energy she brought after the fires.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you go out to Patti to guest star?<\/p>\n

\n\tPatti LuPone has been my movie star since I was probably 10. My person, my hero, my icon. And not only do I love her, she\u2019s my neighbor in Connecticut. So we go to dinner this Friday night, and I can\u2019t believe my luck. I\u2019m meeting my childhood hero and having dinner at the local pub. I said, \u201cI have this one part in this season that I think you\u2019ll be really, really wonderful in,\u201d and we went from there. It was a real full-circle moment for me to have somebody I\u2019ve admired for so long notice my work. It was very moving.<\/p>\n

\n\tCarol Burnett told THR<\/a> she\u2019s always dreamt of working with Meryl Streep and that it would be \u201cwonderful\u201d if she appeared on Palm Royale. Has she mentioned this to you at all?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ve not discussed it, but if Carol wants to make that call, I won\u2019t stand in her way.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tPalm Royale is currently streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes releasing weekly on Wednesdays through Jan. 14, 2026.\u00a0
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