'Palm Royale' Creators Talk Casting Carol Burnett And Kristen Wiig

Have you had a chance to watch Palm Royale on Apple TV+?

Source: Courtesy / Apple TV+

Palm Royale creators Abe Sylvia and Katie O’Connell Marsh spoke to Bossip about assembling their phenomenal cast for the series, including Kristen Wiig, Ricky Martin, Laura Dern and Carol Burnett. The pair revealed how Dern, who also executive produces, was keen on working with Wiig.

“Kristen Wiig was the perfect Maxine, she really was,” O’Connell Marsh told BOSSIP. “Look at her range and what she can do and what she brings to the piece. She’d never done a television show before besides SNL , and when I had found the book and I gave it to Laura Dern and Jayme Lemons to see if they wanted to produced this with me and if they saw the vision, Laura basically said, ‘I’ve always wanted to work with my friend Kristen. What if I called Kristen?’ and Abe and I and Tate [Taylor] were all like ‘Yes!’ and she wanted to work with Laura and she read the materials and met with Abe and and really fell in love with it and it’s really hard to envision anyone else in that role.”

“Then as far as Carol, you know when you when you’re doing a television show you have the list of characters and you have your dream person and it was sort of like, ‘obviously Carol Burnett would be great as Norma,’ but you don’t think you’re actually going to get Carol Burnett. Again she read it, she had a conversation with Abe and as she says, when she knew she loved the material and to work with Kristen and Laura and Allison [Janney] it was really a no brainer for her. It was really a dream come true to have her sign on.”

Source: Courtesy / Apple TV+

Much of the plot of Abe Sylvia also spoke about writing a scene that includes a woman making the choice to terminate her pregnancy for a story set in 1969.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Sylvia told BOSSIP. “That certainly wasn’t our plan going into it but we were writing about that time period and we realized as we were shooting the scripts it was becoming more and more prescient. When I wrote the pilot, Dobbs had not been overturned. Spoiler alert — there’s a woman making that choice for herself that is a big part of the pilot, and it wasn’t under threat to the degree that we understand it to be now and so it was interesting, that was not in my mind when I wrote it. This is a particular issue for 1969 and I think because we came at it honestly and we weren’t trying to moralize that, the contemporary themes bubbled up on their own and I feel like that’s why they feel so organic to the show, not like we’re trying to teach a lesson but just putting the people in the world as they are. And then we said, ‘Ohh my gosh this is a reflection of the world now.”

Lastly, Sylvia opened up about the wardrobe budget and production design budget and how generous Apple TV+ was in that regard.

“We had the perfect partners in Apple because they knew the show wouldn’t work unless we were able to authentically recreate that world,” Sylvia said. “It is a rarefied space with with the quality the luxury goods the Rolls Royces they’re driving, and Alix Friedberg and Jon Carlos and their teams were on fire and they worked so beautifully with one another to make sure that even with all of the pattern and all the dazzling things that are going on within the frame, that the women still shine through that. The people still come through on top of it all and that’s a real testament to their artistry. But Apple, they said, ‘Go do it.’ It’s not worth doing unless we do it right.”

The first three episodes of Palm Royale are currently streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes airing every Wednesday.