Based on Juliet McDaniel’s 2018 novel Mr. & Mrs. American Pie, Abe Sylvia has constructed a wickedly funny adaptation of Palm Royale, set in the High Society of Palm Beach circa 1969. The quirky dramedy stars Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney, Ricky Martin, Laura Dern, Josh Lucas, and the legendary Carol Burnett. Creator Abe Sylvia spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about his adaptation process.
Sylvia reveals that he was enamored by the world of country clubs and their strict membership rules. It’s not something we often see on television – especially the lengths that some people go to in order to gain that coveted membership – and keep it.
“I’ve always wanted to set a show in the world of Slim Aaron’s photography,” quips Sylvia. “I’ve always been captivated by those images and by the invisible tension that exists in what’s being depicted in the photographs. ‘Beautiful people doing beautiful things in beautiful places, as Slim Aaron’s would like to say.‘”
1969 Was A Very Wild Year
Tumultuous would be an understatement to describe the events of the late sixties. “The world was on fire and it doesn’t seem to be interrupting these people’s good time. The Vietnam War is raging, there’s social unrest, and yet these people remain walled off from the rest of society and the rest of the world. That was the jumping off point for Palm Royale.”
The era wasn’t strictly about hedonism or exclusivity. It was about the desire to feel safe and protect what you have. They found this safety (real or imagined) in the confines of an exclusive country club. Palm Royale depicts a beautiful world that is both “unattainable, but also universally understood.”
The writer didn’t lean heavily into stories of aspirational wealth and achieving monetary glory. That’s been done many times before. Palm Royale doesn’t focus on rich snobs, but rather finding a place where you belong.
Abe Sylvia. Photo by Joe Viles
“I still have to come at it from a humane place and something that’s relatable to everybody. It’s not just a craven story about the haves and the haves not… and wanting what the haves have.”
Despite the heightened flavor of the show, Palm Royale illustrates a time when the world was more “yellow” and straightforward. Everyone had their place and there was a place for everyone. Society was more or less stable.
Ostensibly a period piece, Palm Royale is prescient in its social issues such as women’s rights which have come full circle of late. “Some of the events of Mar-a-Lago, over the last couple of years, have some pretty prominent metaphors in Palm Royale.”
“If we were writing a straight up satire, it wouldn’t have the same energy and innocence. It was funny that we were sort of shooting from the hip, and yet we ended up hitting on some fairly prescient themes and events,” adds Sylvia.
We asked Abe Sylvia how the rights to the book came into his orbit. “It started with my producing partners, Laura Dern and Katie O’Connell Marsh and Jamie Lemons who identified the book. They had a development deal together, and they identified this as a pretty interesting vehicle with a really wonderful, central female character. They brought the book to the director, Tate Taylor, and asked if he wanted to attach himself to direct the pilot.” Tate agreed and then reached out to Sylvia who was excited by the prospect of working with Laura Dern before he read the book.
Then Abe read Mr. & Mrs. America. “It is hilarious and has this wonderful iconoclastic woman-edit center. Over the last few years, almost all my work centers on iconoclastic women and iconoclastic people, so it was right at my alley.” He subsequently wrote the pilot which Apple TV purchased.
Abe mentions that he always wanted to write a show set in Palm Springs and wanted to figure out how Palm Royale might have a life beyond the book. “Our aspirations for this is to have multiple seasons of Maxine’s (Kristen Wiig) adventures.” He set out building out a world that warrants exploration over hundreds of episodes. This involves creating new characters.
I think that the kernel of Maxine’s character is this bull in a china shop in high heels.
That was really the jumping off point. And then from there, I just let my imagination run wild.
“We’re entering the age AI scripts being written by computers. My goal with this show is, when our when our scripts are ultimately fed to the machine, we break it. It is a it is a handmade show that is the manifestation of seven writers’ imaginations and a computer could not replicate it.”
Who Is Maxine Simmons?
Ironically, the upheaval of the sixties also represent a time of profound change when many people craved the status quo. It was a mix of innocence and aggressive pursuit for women. “Maxine has already subscribed to all that. But her path to glory is in making her husband happy. And in trying to do so, she has to do all of these things that show that she is a powerful woman.”
“As much as she excused feminism, she is a woman who uplifts herself and the other women around her, even as she denies she’s one of ‘those’ types of women. She’s more.”
“I thought that was a wonderful way to have this female Archie Bunker who, is prescribed as a common conceit who’s going against the grain of conventional progressivism.”
Much Of Maxine’s (mis)adventures lie in her relentless insistence that she belongs at Palm Royale which clearly doesn’t reciprocate her sentiment.
Maxine’s self-confidence is a bit of a ruse. She’s relentlessly positive.
“I think we were trying to capture her character based on television over the last twenty years.”
“There’s been a glut of anti-hero shows in pursuit of their goal and we were rooting for them, even as they break the law and do terrible things. What if I did an anti-hero who was relentlessly optimistic and positive? Even as Maxine’s doing wrong things and coloring outside of the lines, she’s never bad in the way that maybe Tony Soprano or Walter White were.”
“I was really trying to corral this feeling that a lot of Americans share, which is the best version of myself is somewhere else. Many people believe there is a better life for them out there, but don’t realize that happiness begins within.
Why are we saying that in this absurd world, that is ultimately empty at its core, is where my best self is?
This is the driving force behind Maxine’s character. “That’s why she’s so relatable even though there’s a real specificity to the time and place of her experience.”
Maxine wipes her slate clean and reinvents her future to her liking. She begins her journey on shaky ground when her identity is completely defined by her husband Douglas D’ellacourt Simmons (Josh Lucas). Sylvia took this concept a step further and asked, “What if it’s beyond defining herself through her husband? What if she had nothing to define herself by prior to him?”
Douglas D’ellacourt Simmons (Josh Lucas) Photo courtesy of Apple TV+
“What parts of herself is she giving up that she’s never discovered because she’s hanging on so tightly to this to this guy who is of this world that she’s trying to get into, but not currently in?”
Maxine Simmons maybe considered to be an empty spiritual vessel seeking to be filled with an identity built from perception rather than her true self.
Her yearning is to be accepted by the members of Palm Royale which speaks to the wider human desire to be part of a system that embraces and values us.
Absurd Fun
Abe Sylvia doesn’t overthink the theme of his show. “First and foremost, it’s a good time. I want to entertain people.”
He cut his teeth in musical theater and simply wants people to watch his show and enjoy it on a cellular level. But Palm Royale is about over-the-top people finding themselves in absurd situations and working out how to get out of them.
“I hope people have a real laugh and a good cry and want to watch the next episode. If they take the moral lessons from it, fantastic,” quips Sylvia.
“I love how the season progresses and that Maxine has no idea that, not only is this thing she wants completely absurd, but by wanting it, her circumstances become even more absurd. Once she’s in that world, the deeper she gets, the sillier and crazier it becomes. It just becomes this compound fracture upon compound fracture.”
Maxine Simmons keeps getting into more trouble as the series progresses. She desperately tries to cling onto the life she thinks she’s built on the rocky ground of Palm Royale. She’s gone from crashing parties to hosting them.
She mulls over the emotional cost of her pursuit to become the queen of Palm Beach. But she is warned by Linda Shaw (Laura Dern) that just because she’s of this place, she may not necessarily be safe.
