Kristen Wiig and the creative team behind the Apple TV+ show 'Palm Royale' open up with THR's Mikey O'Connell about crafting their period comedy — simulated whale calls and all.
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00:00Hi, I'm Mikey O'Connell with The Hollywood Reporter, and welcome to A Closer Look with
00:07the Apple TV Plus comedy, Palme Royale.
00:11We have all the creatives, not all of them, there are quite a few, but we have six great
00:17ones with us today.
00:18Abe Sylvia, the showrunner, executive producer, and director, and writer.
00:23Tristan Wigg, actor and executive producer, Tate Taylor, director and executive producer,
00:30Josh Lucas, an actor, Ellen Reed, set decorator, and Jeff Toyne, composer.
00:36I'm going to start one for all of you.
00:39Casting obviously impacts a project so much.
00:44It changes the character, and the cast that you assembled on this show is crazy and insane.
00:51How much did the ensemble that you landed inform the arc of the show, and the different
00:56characters, and where they went?
00:58It impacted tremendously.
00:59A lot.
01:00Yeah.
01:01On a daily basis.
01:02Yeah.
01:03When Carol Burnett agreed to do it, I had to go back to the writer's room and say,
01:06Norma wakes up.
01:07She has to wake up.
01:08Norma has to wake up now, guys.
01:11Was there a version of this show where that character is not awake at all?
01:16Correct.
01:17And you got Carol Burnett to sign up for that?
01:19Yeah.
01:21We had already massaged it into that slowly but surely Norma would wake up and be aware
01:25of what was going on around her, and then when we got Carol, we said we had to turn
01:29that up.
01:30Yeah.
01:31It has to be a little bit earlier in the season.
01:32Yeah.
01:33Yeah.
01:34We just moved it up.
01:35And what about you?
01:36Obviously, when you have Kristen Wiig, you want to lean into some of her talents, and
01:38I mean, watching the show, it doesn't seem like anyone else could have played this character,
01:42so how did it change when you came on board?
01:45I don't know how it changed, but I mean, as far as Maxine, I mean, I read the book
01:51and obviously the pilot and started to see Maxine a little bit, but it was really through
01:57everybody here kind of influenced Maxine, what she looked like, how she is with other
02:04people.
02:05It was very collaborative, I think, finding her, because there's so many different aspects.
02:09Yeah.
02:10Yeah.
02:11It was such an embarrassment of riches from our costumes and set design and decorating
02:17that it really, even on set, I would look over and there would be this amazing bowl
02:24that would just be there, and it would affect how we would shoot stuff, just because it
02:28was such a character in our show.
02:31And then back to the acting thing, a testament to these ladies, Carol Burnett said that when
02:37I heard who was in this, it was automatic, yes, because these are my heroes, and to
02:44have a 90 plus legend speak of these women as their heroes too, it was pretty cool.
02:51She's amazing.
02:52While we're on the subject of Carol Burnett, Kristen, Josh, there is a moment in this show
02:58where for lack of a better description, you're kind of like Weekend at Bernie'sing a 90 year
03:05old international icon.
03:06We pretty much are Weekend at Bernie's.
03:08Fully.
03:09What is going through one's mind when you have Carol Burnett in your hands and you're
03:14like flipping her on a hospital bed?
03:18Not only is she gay and poor, but part of it is like, you know, she's not Carol Burnett
03:22to us.
03:23Ellen, Tate, can you talk to me about sort of establishing the visuals here?
03:28There's so many different directions you can go in with the 60s, and obviously Palm Beach
03:32is its own specifics.
03:35What did you want to capture visually with this era and this location, which was not
03:40a time or place you actually could go to?
03:42Well, as it's been said, it began with slim errands, and the way we wanted to shoot this
03:49where their beautiful work and our costume designers work, you just, you wanted to see
03:55everything going, especially in Greyman's.
03:57I mean, there's a lot of wide shots because you guys are such a huge part of this show.
04:04That's what people say.
04:05They go, it's total escapism, and I feel like I'm there.
04:09You could speak more about it.
04:10We just basically also said, go nuts.
04:12There'll probably not be a no in your request.
04:16That's for sure.
04:17Yes, yes, and you all were very generous with us and allowed us to really create that character
04:21of the environment and to support that, and I think it started with a trip with you and
04:24John Carlos, our production designer, down to Palm Beach and seeing the history that
04:31was there.
04:32I don't know how it's changed, so it wasn't shot there, but seeing the history that was
04:36there, trying to break into the breakers?
04:38No, was it the breakers?
04:39I said, we can't shoot there.
04:40You can't shoot in Palm Beach unless you're CNN in front of Mar-a-Lago.
04:45That's it.
04:46And sometimes not even then.
04:47Not even then.
04:48And so I said, we got to go down there, so we flew down there just to walk the streets
04:52and just to feel the energy of the women, and it has not changed.
04:57It's very much the same.
04:59And so there was a club there that we modeled Palm Real after, and I said, we got to go
05:03look in there, and you cannot.
05:06It's like our show, our Palm Real.
05:09You can't go in.
05:10And I said, well, I'm going in, and he, John Carlos, was scared.
05:15I was in board shorts and flip flops, and I broke into the club through a back door
05:21and was caught and kind of roughly escorted out of the club, but I did it for the art.
05:28You did.
05:29I did it for Kristen.
05:30Thank you.
05:31But I did peek in there, and it was as stiff and rigid and beautiful as you would think.
05:40And your photo is now on a wall there as well.
05:42I hope so.
05:44They didn't take a photo.
05:45Ellen, can you talk to me about Los Angeles, a place that, at this point, neither looks
05:50like the 1960s or Florida at all.
05:54Never really did.
05:55How do you work around those outside environments and decorating a set when you're not just
06:01on a set?
06:02Well, LA was established at the same time as Palm Beach, so you had architecture that
06:08was happening here at the same time it was happening down there in the 20s and 30s.
06:13And so John Carlos was able to find locations where they really mimicked some of the buildings
06:18that were down there.
06:20And so the interiors may have changed, but the exteriors were very much similar.
06:24And so that really helped us.
06:25When we had to go to West Palm Beach, we went into San Fernando.
06:28And San Fernando, some of the streets haven't really changed from the 50s and 60s.
06:32The signage has, but the structure of the buildings hasn't changed.
06:36So when we went and did that entire street scene in which you famously crashed a car,
06:43we went in and just changed the facades of the buildings and changed the signage and
06:47then went into the buildings and changed the interiors to meet our show.
06:53But some of that was here, so it made it a nice transition.
06:58I think part of it, too, is when you walked onto the sets that were built at Paramount,
07:02you'd bring people who had been on movies that cost $300 million, who were walking through
07:07being like, I've never seen anything like this.
07:08The rooms themselves, they didn't have a fourth wall conceit, right?
07:12They were whole.
07:13And you'd look around, and the design elements were so, so deep, and the coloring and the
07:19schematics and different things that they were doing.
07:21Oddly enough, my sister-in-law is the costume designer of the show, purely coincidentally,
07:25and she and Giancarlo and you guys would get together, and they'd be matching fabrics with
07:30the wallpaper, and it was like this really deep layer of attempting to make something
07:36that was visually just spectacular, to say the least.
07:40Which almost becomes, weirdly, like a problem for us, because you're walking into it.
07:43I mean, first of all, in the costumes, everything is so heightened and so deeply colorful.
07:50And as the show does as well, it begins to have a kind of LSD hallucination to it.
07:55It was really amazing to walk through and see it.
07:58At one point, literally.
08:00Yes.
08:01That's true.
08:02Yeah.
08:03Can the producers and Ellen also talk about sort of tailoring these environments to tell
08:08more about the characters, because that's something that we just spoke about before
08:12this.
08:13Yes, yes.
08:14That was really important to us, was to talk about how we could further develop the characters
08:18that you've created.
08:20And the environments were to be these lush, incredible environments that would support
08:24the characters.
08:25And the one thing was that the ladies always shined, so the ladies always had to shine
08:29within the environment, but that environment had to support that.
08:34And also, to be a little bit of a tell of who their character was.
08:38As their characters develop throughout the season, if you start to look at their environments,
08:42you start to realize there's tells there.
08:45For Evelyn Rollins, when you go in her office, there are birds, there's plumage everywhere,
08:50and you find out later in the season that there's a reason for that.
08:54There's a reason for ... Well, the fact is that all of us have authorship
08:58of all of these characters.
09:00And to Ellen's point about the birds, so Ellen and Giancarlos and Alex Friedberg, their image
09:06for Evelyn Rollins' character, played by Allison Janney, was that she's a peacock.
09:10So her colors and her patterns is all peacock.
09:13And so they created this bird room.
09:16We think of birds when we think of Evelyn.
09:18They were just flamingos and stuffed birds and peacocks, and that was not a direction
09:24we gave them.
09:25But then it became part of the script.
09:27And so that's really exciting when everybody's adding layers to the characters, to the point
09:32where there's one moment in episode eight, I believe, and Kristen's in ... Evelyn's having
09:39to pack up her bird room.
09:42And Kristen says to Janney, yes, you have so many birds.
09:46And Janney, off the cuff, says, you should see my bird room.
09:48We didn't write that.
09:49So it's just funny when everybody's sort of on the same page and everybody's writing it
09:55together.
09:56Yeah.
09:57And I remember actually going into your office before we started shooting and seeing all
10:02the drawings of Dinah, played by Leslie Bibb, her house.
10:07And it was like, oh, I kind of got who she was a little more.
10:12The whites and the blues.
10:13The whites and the blues.
10:14And I knew it through wardrobe, but having teams be so collaborative and lift each other
10:21up and be like, oh, I love that.
10:22Let's do this.
10:23It creates better art.
10:25I mean, it really does.
10:27And it's rare.
10:28Yeah.
10:29You see what happens when it happens.
10:30It was really a beautiful thing.
10:31Jeff, what was your mission statement here?
10:34Because obviously there are so many different directions one could go in with the 60s, because
10:39America was very fractured at the time, culturally, politically, in every way possible.
10:46I just had to live up to what I was trying to support on the screen.
10:49There was so much layers and details and vibrant color.
10:56It was my mission to try and bring that to support the show with music that had layers
11:02and color and a really expansive sound.
11:06That allowed us to dig into some of our favorite music from the 60s, because the stuff that
11:11we loved also did that, had terrific color and big scope.
11:16We wanted it to feel like a movie that was made in 1969 that broke the studio, like in
11:20the end of the 60s before we're transitioning to the Easy Rider mindset.
11:25They were spending more and more and more on these movies, and it's like big orchestras,
11:29big production, CinemaScope.
11:30It was like, that's what we're doing.
11:33We're shooting in 2, 3, 5, and we have a full orchestra, and Jeff was able to record so
11:38many of the songs in the studios for Henry Mancini.
11:41It's a pretty remarkable gift that Apple gave us, that they supported us in this mission
11:45of maximalism.
11:46How does that impact the process, being in a space like that, a storied studio for someone
11:50who is so synonymous with the time?
11:53It's terrific.
11:54It's inspiring, to say the least.
11:56Having live musicians, in some ways, there's more work to get the music onto the stands
12:03in front of them, but there's less work because the music gets mixed in the room.
12:09The musicians can all hear themselves, and they can balance to each other, and they can
12:14respond to direction immediately.
12:17We want this to be a little more affertive.
12:19We want this to be bigger.
12:22It's really exciting to be in the studio with the musicians.
12:25The show is handmade, in that way.
12:28This is not an AI-generated show.
12:30There's very little visual effects.
12:32This is about great craftspeople working at their craft by hand, every day.
12:39Well, you just said it, I've never heard the mission of maximalism, which is so true.
12:45The embarrassment of riches that we had from every aspect of it, the cast.
12:50Part of it is, everyone is bringing not just such an A-game, there became, I say, a heavyweight
12:56boxing match at every level, where people are coming in, you go see what these guys
13:00are doing before you'd arrive, and the amount of work that was going into it.
13:04The same thing, I think, was happening with the cast, as well, particularly when you're
13:08led by Kristen, and Carol, and Allison, and nobody's showing up not knowing what they're
13:14doing.
13:15If anything, it was the exact opposite.
13:17People were really dedicated to bringing a maximalism to it, at performance, at visual,
13:25at design, so it had that challenge, in a weird way.
13:31Before we move on from people who are not here, I do want to talk about Ricky Martin
13:35for a moment, because in the pilot episode, he's not heavily featured.
13:39By the end of the show, he's almost the heart of it.
13:43How much of that was impacted by casting him in finding that character?
13:47Tremendously.
13:48Our initial conception of Robert was another bitchy gay friend.
13:52It's like, oh, we've seen that so many times, and then we have this wonderful feeling, empathetic,
13:59sensitive guy who rivals Cary Grant when you put a camera on him, and it's like, okay,
14:04this is going in a completely opposite direction that we need to follow.
14:07For a showrunner, it's always like, what is happening now?
14:10What is your show today?
14:11What is your show showing you that it wants to be?
14:14And don't be afraid to embrace it when those moments come.
14:17So for Ricky, it was like, oh, we already have enough cattiness, and so, interestingly
14:24enough, the straight man on the show, comically, is the gay character.
14:29And I haven't seen that before.
14:30But that was impacted by the essential qualities of who Ricky is as an actor, and who Ricky
14:35is as a person, guiding our choices along the way, and it's how you get the best out
14:38of everybody.
14:40There are a lot of fantastical elements to this show, especially in the last third of
14:45the season.
14:46There's a whale, there's an astronaut, there's a lot of wild coincidences.
14:52Did you set up guardrails in the writers' room about how much fun you could have with
14:58stuff like that, but also remain grounded, which I really feel you did, because there
15:03are such stakes in this show, knowing that it starts with this sort of gunshot, and you
15:09spend the entire season wondering who's on either end of that.
15:13I think the guiding principle for everybody is make the choice that delights yourself,
15:19and if it delights you, then it will come through on screen.
15:24I think when we were developing the arc of season one, the idea was, you're on the journey
15:30with Maxine, so she's trying to get into this world that she knows all about it, but the
15:34audience doesn't.
15:35So you're learning about these people in real time.
15:36So she's just meeting Ricky.
15:38We know something's going to happen there, but we're not quite sure.
15:42And as she gets into the world, and the things that she has to do to keep up appearances
15:46become more and more absurd as she gets to know the world, the situations become more
15:50absurd.
15:51And we just thought it was a very human thing.
15:53It's like, once people attain wealth, what are the absurdities that come along with that
15:57kind of wealth, and what are the absurdities in terms of what they have to do to hang onto
16:02it?
16:03What do those things become?
16:04And Maxine's just, she's on this sinking ship, and she's just plugging the holes as fast as
16:08she can.
16:09And the things that she has to go through to keep her head above water, that's where
16:12the absurdity comes from.
16:13And it's a human absurdity.
16:14Yeah.
16:15Yeah.
16:16And also, it is sort of reflective of movies from that time, and sitcoms.
16:21We've sort of talked about, you would just go to the movies, and this thing that would
16:24never really happen, you just kind of accept it, because it's in the movie.
16:28And I think we love that sort of escape, and that sort of, like, the coincidences, like
16:33you said.
16:35I think we kind of wanted to embrace that, and sort of pay homage a little to that kind
16:40of storytelling.
16:41Yeah.
16:42Josh, I feel like actors have two different approaches sometimes with serialized characters.
16:49They want to know where it's going, and the sort of journey they're on, or they want to
16:53read it script by script, and just let it unfold for them.
16:57What was your approach?
16:59Was the learn as you go, as well.
17:03I also would say, it was developing, and changing, and growing, and Abe talks about the moment
17:08where he sees Ricky and I together for the first time, and that becomes something that
17:12they want to heavily accentuate that relationship.
17:16And I think that was consistently where I felt that, too.
17:19It was like, oh, wow.
17:20This is...
17:21I mean, I did have a sense the character was going to grow, and not just be a fantasy,
17:27but that I think that was part of the whole thing about this show.
17:30I also think that from a tonal aspect, too, so tremendously fun to play, because everyone
17:37was there, like the same way you have the embarrassment of riches, the mission of maximalism
17:43is that the joy of the experience of making it was so deep for all of us, that I hope
17:50and think that comes through the life, even when they're all...
17:53You watch Maxine, she's wildly stressed out for most of it, but it's terrifically fun.
17:59And so, for Douglas, it was a particularly interesting challenge, because I don't think
18:03he's very bright, but he's from the world, he exists within it, he's totally comfortable
18:07within it.
18:08And the thing for me that I take away from the show as well is that so much of what we're
18:12seeing in entertainment these days has a message, a tone to it that you're being taught something
18:16or whatever, and I think this was clearly from all of us to say, no, this is Pillow
18:21Talk, the movie he gave me, this is those movies that you're talking about from the
18:25late 60s before that change happened, where it was purely just a work of joyful entertainment.
18:32And I do think there's terrific subtext and layers to it about this world of people who
18:37are living inside of a cataclysmic time in America and totally don't care, like completely
18:44don't, and don't even want to care.
18:48Kristen, is that how you work?
18:50Do you want to know where things are going?
18:52And when you're an executive producer, does it force you to just have to know where things
18:57are going?
18:58Well, kind of like what Josh was saying, I mean, there was an element of things changing
19:02as we went, but I think for me, I did need to know sort of where she ended up in order
19:11to know how to get there.
19:15But yeah, things were sort of like, even with our relationship, I think doing scenes with
19:20Josh and seeing how we reacted to each other, I don't know, something about your relationship
19:25becomes born there when you're doing it.
19:28Tate, this was such a clearly expensive production and a lot of recreation, so many things going
19:36on.
19:37What was the most challenging scene or episode to direct of the ones that you directed?
19:42The finale.
19:43Yeah.
19:44Well, the pilot, because as we mentioned about Ricky Martin was barely in it, that was challenging,
19:51giving the real estate to everyone where you got who was in the show.
19:56But the finale was, and yes, thank you for the budget, Apple.
20:01That was fantastic.
20:02But the finale was really tough.
20:04There was a lot of things coming to a head that had been brewing all season, and it all
20:10goes down in one night.
20:12We were in one location, primarily the beach ball.
20:17So as a director, you don't want it to feel like you're in one room the whole time.
20:22So I worked with Giancarlos and you guys and Abe, and we came up with ways to make the
20:27tent feel like different parts.
20:29But then there just really was choreography with action.
20:32I don't want to give it away, but we have mermaids on trapeze.
20:36We have-
20:37It's fine.
20:38They're in the trailer.
20:39They're in the trailer.
20:40They know they're coming.
20:41We had so many stories and such a dance of people.
20:44In many ways, it was like shooting an action movie with beautiful clothes.
20:49And Kristen's work in the finale, it was so important to get her to this place, which
20:56it was just amazing to watch.
20:59People were crying at the monitor.
21:00It was a comedy.
21:01She did such a great job, and I took that very seriously.
21:07Some of it, I would say, has to do with too something, which is the background performers,
21:11which I saw this thing on Instagram the other day.
21:15Most of them were with us for seven months, including the dance team and the choreography
21:18team.
21:19And they were taking it with the same level that every single other person was too.
21:24There was such a level of pride in what they were doing, and obviously mixed with the costumes
21:30and all of it.
21:31But the choreography, and again, it goes to what I think Abe is doing with music.
21:35It's very dense.
21:38Those guys were there and proudly there for seven months.
21:40Yeah, people in the business would come to the Paramount lot because they had never seen
21:44it like this.
21:45It's such a long time.
21:46We had multiple stages, and you would just be walking through the corridors of the various
21:51stages and the alleys, and you've got mermaids walking around, and you've got sailors, and
21:56you have astronauts.
21:58It felt like a time capsule, and a lot of people in the business said, I needed to come
22:04and just sit here and feel the way it used to be.
22:08Abe, what was the biggest obstacle that you and the writers came up against in arcing
22:13this out, and how did you overcome it?
22:16I don't know.
22:20I didn't feel too many obstacles.
22:21I felt creatively supported by Apple.
22:25We certainly had the means to execute it to the level that we wanted to.
22:30Our line producer, Jesse Sternbaum, is amazing, and so we'd say something would change on
22:35the fly.
22:36We're doing Havana nights.
22:37I saw we were shooting at the Biltmore Hotel, and then originally it was supposed to be
22:40shot outside, and for whatever reason, we didn't want to shoot four nights of nights.
22:44We're like, let's not do that.
22:46John Carlos said, what if ... We haven't done anything at the Breakers, which is the big
22:50hotel in Palm Beach.
22:51He says, we'll go to the Biltmore.
22:53Let's look at the ballroom.
22:54We go to the ballroom where all the Academy Awards used to be shot, and there are 12
23:00balconies.
23:01I said, okay, I want 12 showgirls, and one showgirl in each balcony, and then suddenly
23:06it just starts to take shape from the choices that the designers are thinking as hard about
23:11it as the writers are.
23:12That layering process of this party that was supposed to be a backyard party around a pool
23:16suddenly became this joyful event in the Biltmore Hotel with showgirls and 200 dancers, and
23:23I said, God, I really am going to miss the pool, and John Carlos says, I'll build you
23:27one, so we built a pool.
23:28A fountain, you mean.
23:29And a bridge.
23:30No, it is a pool.
23:31It was a pool, and a bridge.
23:32It was a full pool with a fountain and a bridge, because I had staged the whole thing in my
23:35mind around this pool and this bridge.
23:37He said, well, we'll do it here at the Biltmore, and we'll just bring the pool and the bridge
23:40to the Biltmore.
23:42This show keeps getting more expensive.
23:45You ask about obstacles.
23:46I was like, we can do that, and they're like ... Jesse's like, I'll make it work.
23:50I'll make it work, and he's just a genius at ... He's like, if you can give me a little
23:54bit smaller next episode, I can pay for this.
23:57Marie, before we wrap things up, I just have a couple quick rapid-fire questions.
24:02Kristen, what required more prep, learning whale calls or singing like Peggy Lee?
24:09I think whale calls.
24:11I actually practiced, Googled and practiced in my house.
24:17Yes, probably I think the whale calls.
24:20I really wanted to sound like a whale.
24:22But the preparation paid off.
24:23You did it in one take.
24:27Who was the most distracting person on set between takes?
24:30I mean, it wasn't lost on us that Carol Burnett was on set with us, and that she was just
24:36so funny, and everyone just loved her, and she talked to everybody in between.
24:40Stories are so beautiful.
24:41Yeah.
24:42I don't know if distracting's the right word, but I mean, I was a little distracted by her.
24:46She wouldn't step out off set between set-ups.
24:48She would just stay where she was and talk to the crew.
24:50She stayed there the whole day.
24:51Yeah.
24:52Yeah.
24:53She's amazing.
24:54I mean, she looked like she had a nice seat.
24:55Yeah.
24:56What's your favorite scene now that they've watched the whole show, and it's...
24:59Oh, my gosh.
25:00Someone else has to go first.
25:01I have to think.
25:02Mine was her confessing to Linda in episode two about why she was doing what she was doing
25:08for her husband.
25:09I love the scene where you try to seduce Ricky.
25:13I think when you lay down on that, that, take me on this.
25:18What's the...
25:19Take me now on this ethnic rug.
25:20Ethnic rug.
25:21Take me now.
25:22Play Edelweiss Annie.
25:23And it's, the body language is just, yeah.
25:27I can't pick a scene.
25:28I can't.
25:29There's too many.
25:30I can't pick one.
25:31You don't have to.
25:32I think for me, it's the Peggy Lee sequence.
25:33Alan, what about you?
25:34Did you have one to style or to watch?
25:38I would have to say either the finale and just in all of its grandeur and everything
25:44that goes on in that tent is really incredible.
25:48Jeff, did you have a favorite musical cue?
25:51We really liked approaching the music for this show the same way like it was approached
25:56in the 60s.
25:57So it was very thematic and very melodic and we don't get to do that very often.
26:00So I really enjoyed writing theme.
26:02It wasn't easy because she's such a multifaceted character.
26:05I mean, she doesn't really have one theme.
26:06She has a trio.
26:08I really enjoyed writing Douglas' theme.
26:12For Douglas, we kind of embraced the Mancini sound and it made sense to me to have the
26:17instrument for Douglas be a chromatic harmonica.
26:20Well, also the amazing piece of music that's in The End of Six, which is during the hallucination
26:27of it.
26:28You have that warbling piece of music I've never heard.
26:30I don't know what.
26:31Oh, yeah.
26:32It's Buffy St. Marie.
26:33Unbelievable warbling, you know, 60s that so matches this thing that's happening, which
26:38was again kind of like, yeah, it was deep, the layering.
26:43I went and found that on Spotify right after I watched it.
26:46Yeah, exactly.
26:47It's beautiful.
26:48Obviously, I could talk about this show all day, but we can't.
26:50Thank you so much for being here.
26:52And if you haven't watched Pom Royale, it's on Apple TV Plus, and you should check it
26:56out.
26:57Thank you.
26:58Thank you.
26:59Thank you.