(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Money has a way of abruptly changing plans. No one knows this more than the women of Palm Royale, who find (and lose) power through connections to wealth.
As the show’s technicolor world of the ultra-rich bids farewell to the 1960s, it remains a challenge for its characters to gain acceptance into this community if they come from nothing. Just ask Maxine Dellacorte (Kristen Wiig), whose marriage publicly fell apart, and with it, her access to the Dellacorte millions.
It is not often that a woman branded a homewrecker will receive more favorable treatment than the scorned wife. But Palm Beach is not your typical community. When a trust fund worth millions is on the table, all bets are off. In its Season 2 premiere, which is now streaming, the Apple TV melodramedy immediately thrusts us back into this world of backstabbing, gossip, and greed.
Norma Dellacorte (Carol Burnett) has grand plans for former manicurist Mitzi (Kaia Gerber), now that she is pregnant with the heir apparent to the Dellacorte generation-skipping trust gathering dust (and millions in interest) in a Swiss bank.
“My baby is rich?” Gerber repeats Mitzi’s realization to The Daily Beast Obsessed in a recent interview. “That was such a fun scene to film.”
Before this revelation, Mitzi was ready to pack up and flee for good. She told Norma that Palm Beach isn’t for her. Norma declares, “Then we will make a new you.” Now, that’s a vote of confidence.
Even though his personal life is in shambles, baby daddy Douglas Dellacorte (Josh Lucas) has done something to make his grandmother proud. If only he hadn’t lost the woman he loves in the process. Now, he must resist Norma’s insistence that he divorce Maxine to marry Mitzi to unlock the cash.
In a battle of Norma versus Douglas, there can only be one winner, and by the end of the second season premiere, Mitzi is introduced as the newest member of the affluent family. Maxine never got this treatment.
Gerber and Lucas enthusiastically discussed with Obsessed the many head-spinning Palm Royale twists and turns, with some teasers for what is to come.
“I had spoken to Abe [Sylvia], our incredible showrunner and writer, who said that Mitzi was going to have quite a transformation this season, and that we were going to get to see more of who she is,” says Gerber. “It’s such a fun and rich—quite literally rich—backdrop for comedy, for drama. Everything is heightened like you can’t imagine.”
Adding to Gerber’s excitement about Mitzi’s journey this season is that she is peeling back the layers while spending more time in the Dellacorte mansion opposite Burnett and Lucas (“You really didn’t see us together that much the first season”). “I knew it was going to be a recipe for absolute absurd and wonderful drama and comedy,” says Gerber.
The model-actress, who continues to build an impressive body of work, is eager to play and learn opposite Burnett, Lucas, and the star-packed Palm Royale ensemble. “The wonderful performances that somehow, within that insanity, there’s deep, deep heart and tenderness that the actors on the show are able to find,” says Gerber. “That’s something that I look up to them so much for.”
While Mitzi quickly gets on board with Norma’s plan that will set her baby up for life, Douglas is another story. He wants to save his marriage to Maxine. But by the end of the premiere, he has been outmatched. “Douglas’s relationship with Norma is so complicated because she’s been this mother figure,” says Lucas. “There’s been so much animosity, because she thinks he’s an idiot—and he is an idiot—so he’s just desperate to prove himself.”
Douglas wants to show the world (and Maxine), but Lucas points out that “he can’t make a single good decision.” Lucas goes on to describe this structure for Season 2 as “boiling in this cauldron of what becomes pain and chaos.” Don’t worry, this is the Palm Royale version of that terrifying combination. “It becomes very soap opera-y in a very fun and wonderful way to watch,” Lucas adds.
What you see is what you get with Douglas; he doesn’t have to consider the long-term implications of his choices. “One of the things I love about these women in this show is that they’re all so multifaceted and complicated. They’re all survivors. They’re all wearing masks,” says Lucas. “What you see with Mitzi in Season 2 is that Season 1 was sort of a facade, and now she gets to take that off and gets to step into her power.”
Given that Mitzi has Norma as her guide (whom Lucas calls “an incredibly duplicitous, even dangerous character filled with diabolical lies”), Douglas faces an uphill battle. Not to mention that after the events of the Beach Ball, Maxine is sedated and taken to the Sunny Tides mental hospital, where Norma hopes she will remain.
On many occasions while watching Palm Royale, I have wondered whether I am experiencing a fever dream or if I have consumed as many Grasshopper cocktails as Maxine. The premiere takes this to new heights with scenes flipping between the Palm Royale and Sunny Tides to reflect Maxine’s mental state. When Douglas visits his wife to reassure her, Maxine doesn’t know she is at Sunny Tides. Wiig and Lucas had to figure out how to play this disorienting conversation, taking into account that Douglas is not the most perceptive.
“Kristen and I talked about that with Abe because you’re having to do scenes where on one side it’s real and the other side it’s a dream,” says Lucas. “Even down to thinking about ‘Was Douglas in the dream? Does Douglas know he’s in the dream?” Douglas is just as disoriented as Maxine, and he hasn’t even been given a sedative: “I love playing Douglas, because he’s just not a very smart person, and he’s just like, ‘Well, wait, where am I? What’s happening?”
Toggling between different states of mind isn’t the only brain-wrinkling element on a show that Gerber calls an “absolute tornado of chaos and deliciousness.” There are also the ongoing and ever-changing alliances and rivalries. “It’s wild. There are so many times where I’m trying to track all the storylines in my head and where we’ve been and who is fighting and who’s getting along,” says Gerber. “There’s so much information that it makes it so fun and energizing as an actor because you’re constantly being stimulated by everything that’s going on around you.”
Gerber teases one such moment for later this season: “There is a scene between Mitzi and Douglas in which Douglas is shirtless, wearing antlers, and that’s all I will say about it, but it was one of the most fun scenes. I’m very excited for people to see that scene.”
Events that resemble a fever dream (including a forthcoming hootenanny) are grounded in history. Many of the extravagant parties and choreographed sequences are based on actual Palm Beach balls from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. “There’s these great rituals that happen of the rich people showing how rich they are. The bigger and more over the top it can be, the more power that they have,” Lucas says. “But in reality, it’s so ridiculous and it’s actually almost embarrassing, but they have no idea of that.”
If Norma has her way, Mitzi and her unborn child have a lifetime of surreal Dellacorte soirées to look forward to, and who could say no to that?
