Abe Sylvia, the creator of Apple TV+’s Palm Royale, had for years been trying to make a show that takes place in Palm Beach, and he finally cracked it with the Kristen Wiig-led comedy series about a woman who strives, and will do anything, to be a part of high society in the exclusive community. The writing, the star-studded cast (including Carol Burnett, Allison Janney, Laura Dern and Ricky Martin) and the vibrant production and costume design all helped the show resonate with Academy voters, who awarded the series 10 Emmy nominations, including best comedy.
Below, Sylvia talks filming in Los Angeles, how the script was tailored when Burnett came on board and why multiple seasons were always the endgame.
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Talk to me about the conception of the show, originally called Mr. and Mrs. American Pie andbased on the novel of the same name, correct?
Very little of the original novel remains in the show — spoiler alert! The book is wonderful, I should add, and certainly was the jumping-off point for this iconoclastic woman who’s sort of a bull in a china shop and does things that are not in her self-interest. … But for a series to have ongoing legs, sometimes you have to really build out the world because we didn’t envision this as a limited series. And I’d tried my hand several times in developing Palm Beach-centric shows. It was a world I’ve been wanting to explore for a long time, and I finally found the way to do it.
Why Palm Beach, specifically?
I hadn’t seen it before. And I’m obsessed with the photos by Slim Aarons. He always said, “I photograph beautiful people in beautiful places, doing beautiful things,” but I think the reason those photographs hold up as high art is that there’s a real tension in them, because there’s no sense of the outside world. Sociologically, the world was changing, the Vietnam War was raging, and these people are just oblivious, going about their lives. And I think there’s a really nice corollary to contemporary society in that, in television, we’re always looking for new worlds to explore, and Palm Beach just hadn’t been done. So many of the centers of power are now there. In fact, we sort of base Carol Burnett’s character on this idea that there is the grand dame and Palm Beach has been this center of power, separated from the mainland by a drawbridge. They say, if the world goes to sh*t, we’re just going to raise the bridges, so it’s this cloistered society where people think they’re safe. I think all of those themes found their way into Palm Royale. But I think, first and foremost, the guiding principle of this show is to just bedelightful.
Why can’t you film in Palm Beach?
They don’t want it. I think they don’t want the disruption. They also want discretion and privacy and just to remain exclusive. What’s exciting is The Shiny Sheet has embraced us, because that’s a real newspaper.
Where did you film instead?
All in Los Angeles. We had sets on the Paramount lot, which was super fun to be shooting on the Alfred Hitchco*ck stages. That’s another dream come true for a young filmmaker. Then, around Pasadena, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, we were all over. The nice thing about shooting Los Angeles for Palm Beach is that they were developed in similar times, so that there are mansions that are done in the same style, so we didn’t have to search that long and hard to find things that would been right at home in Palm Beach. And luckily, the people who own those homes have taken care of them.
Do you write your characters with actors in mind?
Not initially, but once we have our cast, you do shape to the specific talents of the performer. When Kristen Wiig decided to come and do it, she’s a superpower and you don’t want to leave anything on the playing field with her. You have this person who’s primarily a comedian, a physical comic, but also is this tremendous actress who can break your heart in the span of 45 seconds. She’s one of our greats, a once-in-a-generation talent. I put her up there with the great tragic, comic, slapstick artists of the past.
When Carol Burnett signed on as Norma, I know you went back to the writers room.
Yes, Aunt Norma was supposed to stay in the coma for almost eight episodes. And [when Burnett signed on, we thought] that cannot happen. While she stayed in the coma for the first episode, by the second episode, we put in the dream sequence where she wakes up and Kristen pretends to smother her with a pillow. And then in episode three, the flashbacks were added so that we could deploy our American icon, our living legend, in a way that was befitting of her. In some ways, it could have been a really baller move just to have her sleep the whole season, like when George Clooney went on South Park and was the voice of a dog.
You left the finale on a cliffhanger, which aired before the second season was announced. Was that a risk you were willing to take?
I wanted to create a situation where the audience gasped at the end, and we have to know what happens next. I would have done that whether I had a second season or not. You don’t want your show to feel settled, especially if you want multiple seasons. In all the shows that I’ve worked on that were not limited series, we always wrote the best finale not knowing what was to come. … We certainly had very strong ideas of what happens next when we wrote the finale of Palm Royale.
What can we expect for season 2?
I think the audience should expect the unexpected. I think they should expect us to double down on all the things that we did in season one, and go bigger. What is the whale of this season? We have asked ourselves those questions because luckily, in one season, we’ve developed a fantastic and rabid fan base, which is really exciting. The show seems to be in the cultural conversation, and that’s really gratifying. We want to make sure that the people who loved season one don’t get tired of us in season two. In what ways can we expand their experience of Palm Royale and also invite people who haven’t yet checked out the show to come.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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