Laura Dern on Bringing 'Palm Royale' From Page to Screen
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Bringing Palm Royale to television took Laura Dern years.
The process began when Katie O'Connell Marsh, then the CEO of Platform Media, passed along a copy of Mr. & Mrs. American Pie by Juliet McDaniel to Dern and her producing partner, Jayme Lemons. "She thought there might be something in it that we may respond to, and she was right," Lemons tells T&C. "We read the book and found the world to be completely delicious; the women to be dynamic and complicated. We saw in it the opportunity to springboard out of the book, and maybe create a larger world around it."
Lemons continues, "We talked about it amongst ourselves and decided to ring up a friend, Tate Taylor, to see his thoughts on it. He saw the same thing we did and, thought Abe Sylvia might be the right man to step in as a writer/showrunner and he felt the same way as the three of us—four of us with Katie. So Abe took the basis of the book and grew the world into what you're watching now, and we're super excited about it."
Mr. and Mrs. American Pie
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The characters in McDaniel's novel differ from the ones who ended up on screen in Palm Royale. In first working on the adaptation of Mr. & Mrs. American Pie, "it really centered around Maxine as a lead protagonist," Dern tells T&C. "As producers, we were interested in the world, and as an actor, that was an exciting protagonist character in which there would be a balance of emotion, desperation, physical comedy, and certainly satire—and that's always been a really interesting space to me." While Maxine remains the lead, the Palm Royale airing now, expands the world around her, and introduces a large ensemble cast—including Evelyn (Allison Janney) and Dinah (Leslie Bibb).
Dern says that over the nearly five years they developed Palm Royale, she was initially drawn to play Maxine, "I dove in to asking questions as I would as an actor for the various characters as Abe started to expand and build the world." But the pandemic messed up the production timeline.
"When it became clear that we would be partners with Apple TV+ and this would be the time period that we could make it, in the chaos of production and the pandemic, I was committed to two films that I was making," Dern says. "So then the question was: How could I still be part of it as an actor and support this amazing first season with the time that I had. That's when we realized we needed to find the perfect Maxine as our muse."
It was at this point, she says, when they realized a new character was needed for Dern—one that was not in the novel. "That's when Abe came up with the idea of taking some of the themes that mattered so much to all of us—and Jayme and I specifically—that we wanted to have embedded in a subversive way in this story, about creating Linda as sort of a beacon of those themes," Dern says. "So it was really fun as the antithesis to Maxine and to be at play."
The Palm Royale team also had to find someone new to play their heroine. "Honestly, we all came together with the same thought: We have to go get Kristen Wiig to play this part," Dern says. She gushes about Wiig, calling her a "deeply honest actor" and "brilliant comedian" whose knowledge of writing and production made her "an incredible partner" on the journey to get the show on air.
Wiig immediately said yes to take over the role of Maxine from Dern. In an interview with CNN, the actress shared, "From getting a call from Laura Dern to reading the scripts and meeting everyone involved, it was really just, yes, across the board. I've never played a character like Maxine before and it honestly was just a gut feeling. You just kind of know in those cases whether it's gonna be like a yes or a no. And this was just a very, very strong yes."
So while the plot of Palm Royale may be quite different from its source material, Mr. & Mrs. American Pie, the heart of both stories feature strong women—and a fascinating look into the art of social climbing.
The first three episodes of Palm Royale are now streaming on Apple TV+. Shop Now
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