'Palm Royale' and the Art of Social Climbing
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Call it Society Physics 101. If you gather a bunch of rich, powerful people behind a wrought iron gate or a velvet rope—whether at Versailles in 1685 or Zero Bond last week—you’ll have outsiders desperate to get in. (Similarly, as Julian Fellowes wrote in his novel Snobs, “Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.”)
The desire of have-nots to make it through a forbidden door has long been a driving force in the stories we tell. Literature and film are lousy with arrivistes: Becky Sharp, Undine Spragg, Lily Bart, Eve Harrington. Just last winter, Bertha Russell ended season two of The Gilded Age in a voluminous green gown selling her daughter off to a duke to cement her standing in society.
Add to this roster of parvenues Maxine Simmons, in the new series Palm Royale (premiering March 20 on Apple TV+). Maxine is a desperate pilot’s wife who will do anything to enter 1960s Palm Beach society and gain access to the series’s titular, and very hard to join, country club—as well as the glittering, powerful, and mysterious people who circulate inside it.
A former Miss Chattanooga, Maxine (Kristen Wiig) is new in town from “tawdry old Atlanta,” determined to elevate her standing and live among the elite. But unlike the millionaires’ wives and widows of Palm Royale, Maxine doesn’t have the cash to pay the $30,000 membership fee until she gets “assistance” from a relative, Norma Dellacorte (Carol Burnett), and things devolve from there. As she climbs, Maxine uncovers the twisty secrets and lies that stitch these socialites together, including just who is blackmailing whom.
Series creator Abe Sylvia says that a dramedy set in Palm Beach during the era of sipping grasshoppers poolside in Pucci delivers instantly recognizable intrigue. “I’ve always been captivated by Slim Aarons’s [Palm Beach] photos,” he says. “These people built a wall around themselves. And all it takes is one iconoclast to bring it all down.”
Of course, to tell a story about these people in this place, there’s a lot to get right. Take the outfits of society maven Evelyn (Allison Janney). “She is the queen, so for her it’s jewel tones, custom Courrèges, Chanel, and Pierre Cardin,” says costume designer Alix Friedberg. In a later episode two characters have a fashion war over a paisley Malcolm Starr maxidress, a particularly Palm Beach ensemble. “That dress was everywhere back then,” Friedberg says. “We were able to get a lot of original couture of that era. Etsy is miraculous for that.”
Of course, the clothes in the series can also reveal what someone doesn’t have. In this world, where business deals happen on the tennis court (and affairs happen with the instructor), it’s easy to be one outfit away from social ruin. “Maxine’s using clothes from 10 years ago,” Friedberg says. “She’s wearing early Lilly Pulitzer, and her hemline is not as refined.” (Similarly, Ricky Martin plays a club employee whose white uniform is a distinct reminder that however hunky one may be, wearing loud prints is a privilege, not a right.)
The goal was to exemplify the time when lifestyle-as-identity was being born. “Women started dressing for more attention. Labels were coming into play at a lower level, being mass produced,” says Mindy Cohn, who plays the society columnist Ann Holiday. “The bold prints, living out loud: These women really were early influencers.”
But watching (or hate-watching) today’s power-hungry social climbers doesn’t provide the same vicarious thrill. Maybe we prefer to watch naked ambition dressed up in another era, looking sharp. The distance allows us to fully admit our own craven desires.
“Everybody has impostor syndrome, certainly in this country,” Sylvia says. “We’ve all grown up with the idea that ‘my best self is just out of reach.’ ” Something about it just looks better in a Paco Rabanne caftan.
This story appears in the March 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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