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