[This article contains mild spoilers from the season two premiere of Palm Royale.]
The ladies of the Palm Royale have returned to TV screens with noses not quite as up in the air as they were in season one of the Kristen Wiig comedy, as the stakes for maintaining their place in West Palm Beach high society are now raised higher than ever.
“We’ve certainly upped the ante on all the characters. Everybody knows their lane this season,” showrunner and creator Abe Sylvia tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Sometimes 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’s certainly the challenge I put to the cast and writers and designers every day — how do we not bore ourselves?”
Boring is hardly the word to describe the Nov. 12 season two premiere of the Apple TV+ series that finds the show’s protagonist Maxine (Wiig) once again on the outs — this time, literally in a mental institution — following her public breakdown during the Beach Ball in the show’s season one finale. With her is Laura Dern’s Linda Shaw, who’s been apprehended for the assassination attempt on President Nixon — that was actually perpetrated by Mary (Julia Duffy) — which left Robert (Ricky Martin) shot in the crossfire.
Yet 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) 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.
Below, Sylvia talks with THR about writing season two, including the real-life individuals who inspired two character arcs, shaping Norma with Burnett’s help, and bringing his “icon” Patti Lupone in as a guest star.
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It’s pretty impressive these days to be talking about season two’s release just a year and a half after Palm Royale launched. How were you able to turn this around so quickly?
We 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’t 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’s the magic of hard work that we turned it around in nine months.
You 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?
We 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 — that’s what they’d called them in Palm Beach back in the day. So for the first episode, so we thought, “We don’t 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.” So that’s where that was born out of. The desire of seeing her in this place and then pulling the rug out from the audience’s feet, saying that it’s 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’s so willing and fearless. We’ve got one of the world’s biggest pop stars on our show.
Did you keep him in the dark at all about Robert’s fate, or did he know his character was always coming back for season two?
We 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’t know he was gay. So there were a lot of real-life inspirations for what Robert goes through this season.
So far, Norma appears to be the villain of season two. Is this how you saw things panning out from the outset?
Well, she’s the biggest foil in the series, so if Maxine’s 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’s character is “evil,” 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’s a little bit of a hag movie. It’s 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’s the queen.
I laughed so hard when Norma is chastising the women of the Palm Royale in episode one and says, “You aligned yourself with this gutterslut,” referring to Maxine. How does Carol respond when she gets her scripts?
She’s a pro. She comes in and nails her dialogue. She texted me very early on as she was reading the scripts, and said, “Oh, I think it’d be wonderful, as part of Norma being back and making her more imposing, what if we give her a cane?” Then Carol said, “And it’d be funny if she hides a flask in it.” I said, “Let’s make it a gun.” 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’t flinch at saying “gutterslut.”
In this first episode, we see Maxine confused and admitted to this home for women. What else will she be up against in season two?
She’s up against the world. This is why she’s 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’s path if she has any ambition or a dream for herself, and how that hasn’t 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’s why we use the Shirley Bassey song “History Repeating.” You may think you’re watching a throwback, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Last season, there were these on-the-nose parallels, like the discussion of women’s reproductive rights just as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and I wondered if we’d see more of that.
I wrote the pilot in season one before the Dobbs decision and sometimes we’re like, “Oh gosh, this is just so far-fetched,” and then it turns out we’re right on the money. When we were in the writers room, we were like, “Is 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?” And my first assistant director comes up to me the day we’re shooting that scene, and said, “Well, Mar-a-Lago was just raided, and they found all these files that Trump stole from the White House.” I said, “I guess we’re doing something right.” And that happened a few times this season. Not planned. It’s just smart writers who are worried about the world and read the paper every day.
Virginia [Amber Chardae Robinson] turning out to be an undercover FBI agent is a fun twist. When did that idea come to you?
We knew it in the season finale. She’s in the basement with Linda, and we’re already teasing that that’s the twist. She says, “I have friends in high places.” All of the women from the bookstore are still locked up. Why is Virginia out? And we’re 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’re 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’t have a secret. She was a straight shooter; what you saw was what you got. I was like, gosh, that’s not entirely fair to that character, that she’s just good and decent. She gets a secret, too.
Going back to production on this season. Were you impacted by the fires at all?
Very 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’s spirits on set. This new person sweeping into town, everybody’s coming out of the fires, all traumatized, and here comes Patti and her fabulous nudie ball gown saying, “Let’s go, guys.” It galvanized all of us. So we owe her a big of debt of gratitude for the energy she brought after the fires.
How did you go out to Patti to guest star?
Patti 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’s my neighbor in Connecticut. So we go to dinner this Friday night, and I can’t believe my luck. I’m meeting my childhood hero and having dinner at the local pub. I said, “I have this one part in this season that I think you’ll be really, really wonderful in,” and we went from there. It was a real full-circle moment for me to have somebody I’ve admired for so long notice my work. It was very moving.
Carol Burnett told THR she’s always dreamt of working with Meryl Streep and that it would be “wonderful” if she appeared on Palm Royale. Has she mentioned this to you at all?
We’ve not discussed it, but if Carol wants to make that call, I won’t stand in her way.
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Palm Royale is currently streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes releasing weekly on Wednesdays through Jan. 14, 2026.