Apple TV’s new series Palm Royale is a Slim Aarons photography book come to life—particularly if that book were full of his sun-soaked snapshots of Palm Beach in the 1960s. It’s immediately apparent in Palm Royale’s aesthetic: the transportive sets, the fabulous clothes, the lurid juxtaposition of jewel tones and sandy beiges. The very first person to appear on screen is even modeled after a woman in Aarons’s iconic “Poolside Gossip” photo; played by Furly Prado, she wears the same midriff-baring white crochet outfit, turquoise jewelry, and blonde bouffant as the photo’s real-life subject, Helen Kaptur.
It’s a sly introduction to the “opulent, delicious, salty, cool” world of Palm Royale, as Executive Producer Katie O’Connell Marsh puts it. The award-winning creative team, including production designer Jon Carlos and costume designer Alix Friedberg, referenced dozens more Aarons photos to create environments and wardrobes for the larger-than-life women depicted in the series, who were all but defined by their clothes, their homes, and their cars. (The show’s cast is equally extraordinary.) The show takes place in 1969 Palm Beach and follows Maxine Simmons, played by Kristen Wiig, an outsider in a miniskirt, who is desperate to erase her past and break into high society—at times, literally. The allure of an easier, more beautiful life is irresistible to Maxine, so much so that she will do almost anything to get it.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the world of Slim Aarons and mid-century high society,” says Abe Sylvia, the writer, executive producer, and showrunner. His screenplay was loosely based on Juliet McDaniel’s novel Mr. and Mrs. American Pie, which he received by way of O’Connell Marsh; she optioned the book in 2020 and tapped Laura Dern and Jayme Lemons’ Jaywalker Pictures to executive produce it. “Palm Beach is a world that exists a bit in my imagination,” Sylvia adds. “It’s such a rarefied community, and there hasn’t been a lot of film or television that takes place there. Television now is so much about universe-building, and this was a wonderful opportunity to explore a world that I’ve certainly seen images of, but have never seen a fully fleshed-out story.”
That the island is famously difficult to shoot adds to the allure; aside from a few aerial shots, Palm Royale was mostly filmed in Los Angeles. Carlos was tasked with bringing Palm Beach to Pasadena, locating similar Spanish-style estates and working closely with the Palm Beach Preservation Foundation. “Historical accuracy was really important to us,” Carlos says. “We wanted to make sure that when [the cast] was in those spaces, it was as believable as being in Palm Beach in 1969. They had to feel like they were really there; it was this all-encompassing environment.”
The Aarons parallels aren’t just on the surface. Like the show’s protagonist, Maxine, Aarons was a master of reinvention, leaving behind his dark memories as a war photographer to document “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” He turned his lens on the beautiful and ultra-wealthy without contempt or judgment, aspiring to live life as easily as they did. Maxine is on a similar pursuit—eager to become one with the queen bees: Evelyn (Allison Janney), Dinah (Leslie Bibb), Mary (Julia Duffy), and Norma, played by the great Carol Burnett. Maxine goes to crazy, comical, cringe-worthy lengths to erase her past, carve out space for herself, and prove she belongs in Palm Beach, or “the last American sanctuary,” as Evelyn puts it. Seemingly immune to feelings of rejection, Maxine remains fixed on her goals, even as her new friends—like Linda, a denim-clad feminist played by Laura Dern, and Robert, a closeted bartender played by Ricky Martin—try to guide her towards a gentler path.
As the show goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that Maxine isn’t the only one who doesn’t quite fit. “The challenge with a show like this is that it could seem like a bunch of unlikable characters,” O’Connell Marsh says. “And I think what Abe and the writers did so brilliantly was really dimensionalize the characters. Every character has an arc. This is a group of people who all want to belong and want to find their place.”
To create his layered socialites, Sylvia began by watching archival video interviews with Palm Beach women during the ’60s. He was charmed by their innocent, ignorant bliss. “The documentarian asks one woman, ‘What do you love about Palm Beach?’ And she says, ‘It’s just beautiful… It’s just so beautiful here.’ And I was really taken with that,” he says. “In a world where there’s so much chaos, and the Vietnam War is happening, this woman is trying to hold on to her beautiful life. That, too, can be a noble pursuit, and I think it’s what a lot of Americans are pursuing right now. They want to feel safe, they want to live a beautiful life. It’s just that the real world always has a way of creeping in…”
Consider that a teaser; viewers will have to watch all 10 episodes to see just how real things get. The season ends not just on one cliffhanger, but multiple, a dramatic counter to the shows light, silly early episodes. “The show is an escape, and you can certainly tune in and go along for the ride and be perfectly entertained,” Sylvia says. “But if you look closer, we’re having a pretty profound conversation about the state of the world right now. It’s just done in true Palm Beach style. It goes down easy.”
PALMER sat down with a number of the key creative people behind the show, including Abe Sylvia, Katie O’Connell Marsh, Jayme Lemons, Jon Carlos, and Alix Friedberg to discuss the making of Palm Royale, from their specific visual references to what it was really like to work with Carol Burnett.
JAYME LEMONS: Laura [Dern] and I read the book and started thinking about a world that could be built out of it… but we also asked ourselves, Why? Why would we want to tell a story about this period, and about women at that time, and society at that time, and the politics of that time… It can all seem so specific to that era, but it’s also really reflective of where we are now. I think there are a lot of subversive looks at that in this show.
KATIE O’CONNELL MARSH: When we read it, we were like, Oh my God, if someone like Kristen Wiig could play Maxine…and then we couldn’t unthink it. You have fantasies of who could star in a show, and you don’t always get them. But she was 100 percent our prototype. She was just it.
JL: We had a blast and we made ourselves laugh. We made ourselves cry, and it was just a glorious experience. I feel like [this show] could have been relevant at any time, because women are always finding themselves in positions where they need to carve out space for themselves. I think that is just part of being a woman. But is it particularly relevant right now? You bet it is.
KOM: These women are the most un-woke women that exist. They don’t want change, they want the status quo, and it’s that combustible time in 1969 when the country was super-divided. There were so many people who just wanted to hold on to the past. [And] I feel like that theme, while resonant and universal, feels particularly trenchant right now.
ABE SYLVIA: It’s a natural human response to try to keep the violence of the world at bay. I don’t judge the characters for that, but it’s certainly present. There is a world out there, but we’re behind the gates of the Palm Royale.
JL: Carol [Burnett] is the youngest 90-year-old you’ll ever meet. She hasn’t slowed a step. I mean, she’s ready to dive in, always. And she is collaborative in the most exciting ways. She’s got fresh ideas every day. She rolls with it. She improvises. I think she is disarming, and she wouldn’t say this, but I can see that she knows other actors are intimidated—she knows they’re awed.
AS: With actors this incredible, they’ve seemingly done it all, so they’re always looking for something fresh to do. And I think that was the appeal for Kristen. I think she felt like, Oh, I know how to do this. This is something I have not done before. And she too has an obsession with mid-century aesthetics.
KOM: On the page, I read [Ricky Martin’s character] Robert a little differently…I never thought of him necessarily as the heart of the show. And then Ricky steps into that role, and you’re like, Oh my gosh, he’s the heart of the show, this is the connective tissue, this is what makes all the sassiness and nastiness sort of makes sense.
ALIX FRIEDBERG: Laura called me early on and basically just said, It’s 1969, Palm Beach, Slim Aarons. I was like, I don’t even want to read the script; yes, absolutely yes, that is a world I want to live in. That is a happy, happy, happy world and so much fun. Jon Carlos and I worked really closely to create this world [of high society Palm Beach], just sucking all the earth tones and primary colors out of the environment, and just having soft whites and pastels. We had a very, very narrow palette to create this place where no one really ever gets their hands dirty. It’s all about martinis and meetings done on the golf course, just this incredibly aspirational world.
JON CARLOS: We wanted to create a division of colors between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Palm Beach proper is a little more soothing on the eyes—sages, mints, light pinks, creams, more desaturated, rich tones. And in West Palm Beach, everything is a lot brighter and more intense—that’s where the true culture and true life is. Rich oranges, teals, hot pinks. If you look at Norma’s mansion, it’s that more subdued, aristocratic Palm Beach look. But in the pool house, there are these bright orange couches. That’s Robert bringing his West Palm Beach palette into the space. You see the worlds collide. Alix would do that with costumes—when Maxine walks into the atelier and she’s finally in the Shiny Sheet [the unofficial name of the Palm Beach Daily News], she wears this really bright orange outfit in this pink and beige environment. We were playing with that throughout the season, and by the time you get to episode 10, you see the colors really start to mix together.
AF: In 1969, it was all about patterns and really bold choices, so [the costumes] could have gone wrong really easily. In places where I held back, Jon went for it [in the sets], and vice versa. If there’s a caftan that Evelyn wore in five sets, we had to be really specific about where she was sitting, or what wallpaper she was standing in front of, because Evelyn is the queen bee. She’s the top of the pyramid. Everybody wants to be her—her gowns are custom-made, and if she’s wearing Chanel, no one else can wear Chanel. We looked at Betsy Bloomingdale and Deeda Blair and these socialite women. They would have these incredible parties, and they were well documented, so we were able to cull from the society pages.
JC: The historical accuracy was really important to us. Ellen [Reede, set decorator] and I were pretty neurotic about that. When we did the bookstore, I went through the shelves and randomly selected books to make sure the copyright date was before 1969. And if it wasn’t, I took it off.
JL: [Most of] the sets were fully built. There were very, very few practical sets. We built everything on a lot, and that’s all from John Carlos’s magnificent brain. There is not one thing on screen that is not there for a reason. It’s so intentional.
JC: There was so much love that went into [Norma’s home]… Every single drawer was dressed. You could open up the top drawer, and it was her underwear drawer, and the next drawer was her watch drawer. I remember the first day when Kristen and Allison [Janney] were walking through the set and opening every drawer, and they couldn’t believe it.
AS: We kind of created our own fantasy country club, a mash-up of Bath & Tennis and the Everglades Club. I believe the building you see at the beginning is a real club in Palm Beach, but we modified it in visual effects and added to it.
JC: I did a deep dive on the entire history of Palm Beach…It was a ton of books on historic Palm Beach architecture, and trips to Palm Beach where I met with the Palm Beach Preservation Foundation. I did a big deep dive on Addison Mizner [who developed Palm Beach in the 1920s]. I downloaded every single Architectural Digest from 1955 to 1970, I combed through every single page.
AF: It’s interesting because [in 1969], a lot of the world was into denim and wood and macramé and the hippie culture, but there’s this little microcosm of Palm Beach that’s hanging onto the earlier ‘60s.
AF: It was kind of like doing a musical. They created scenes around the sets and the costumes. I don’t think I’ve been on a project that allowed that much freedom, in a more-is-more way.