Inside Palm Royale Season 2: Laura Dern & Jayme Lemons on Producing and the Power of Ensemble Storytelling
With Palm Royale returning for its second season, the world of 1969 Palm Beach looks as decadent and dazzling as ever but beneath the couture and cocktails, something deeper is happening. Actor and executive producer Laura Dern and her producing partner Jayme Lemons sat down to discuss how the show expands its world, sharpens its social commentary, and gives every character a chance to crack open.
Season one followed Maxine (Kristen Wiig) as she clawed her way into Palm Beach society. Now that she’s in, the entire tone shifts. Lemons describes Maxine as someone who is “always on the move,” even when she’s supposedly secured her place. The end of season one left her life “completely upended,” and season two begins with that same sense of freefall.
“She’s in the same setting,” Lemons explains, “but with a very different perspective.” Wiig plays Maxine as a woman carrying her past chaos while trying to rebuild in unfamiliar emotional terrain.
Dern adds that the series uses its humor and glamour as a Trojan horse, allowing the show to explore topics of gender expectations, power structures, and privilege with surprising sharpness. “The bigger it gets, the more embedded the story can become around larger themes we really care about,” she says.
One of the show’s strengths is its ability to drop razor-sharp observations inside seemingly throwaway lines. Maxine’s remark about being labeled “crazy” if she dares express anger says everything about the era’s double standards.
“They say so much by saying so little,” Lemons notes of the writing staff. “Douglas could feel however he wanted, but no one’s putting him in a sanitarium.”
The writers’ ability to fold profound social critique into glamorous, campy storytelling remains one of the show’s signature moves.
Laura Dern’s character, Linda, wasn’t in the original source material; she was invented by showrunner Abe Sylvia specifically to widen the show’s lens. She functions almost like a Greek chorus, an insider who chose to walk away.
“She knew there needed to be a revolution on the outside because no one inside the bubble was seeing what was happening,” Dern explains.
But Linda isn’t merely a beacon of feminist righteousness, she’s also hilariously human. Raised wealthy, she’s both radical and deeply attached to comfort. Even her imprisonment in a sanitarium reflects this contradiction: historically accurate padded cells covered in beautiful fabric. “Yes, we’ll lock them up, but we’ll make it cute,” Dern jokes.
Season two amps up the complexity for every supporting character—Norma (Carol Burnett), Robert (Ricky Martin), Dina (Kaia Gerber), Evelyn (Leslie Bibb), and others. Lemons says the team entered season two with a strong foundation: “Now the table is set, and they get to go play.”
What the cast brought to their roles in season one directly shaped how their arcs grew. Dern marvels at how actors like Bibb, Lucas, and Gerber reveal new emotional dimensions. “People are a mess,” she laughs. “They’re vulnerable and awful and greedy and virtuous. They may be all things.”
And Carol Burnett? Her arc this season is, in Dern’s words, “shockingly unexpected… villainous, delicious, hilarious, and deeply beautiful.”
While season one revolved around self-presentation, season two exposes the cracks. Secrets spilled. Alliances shifted. The façades have slipped.
This creates a new kind of tension. “They know what they know about each other,” Lemons says. “They can’t move forward in certain ways—and then have to move forward anyway.”
Dern and Lemons have built a producing slate that ranges from animated shorts (If Anything Happens I Love You) to political documentaries. Some wins feel big and triumphant like landing the rights to their first book. But they say the deepest wins are often the small ones: watching Carol Burnett reunite on-screen with Vicki Lawrence, or seeing their crew support one another during the Los Angeles wildfires.
Dern also points to another kind of growth: learning to say no.
“For women in positions of power, setting boundaries isn’t something we’re used to,” she says. “Sometimes the win is being honest enough to let things go.”
If season one set the stage, season two tears open the curtain. It’s bolder, stranger, more heartfelt—and, according to Dern, filled with moments viewers won’t see coming.
“It’s so fun everywhere you turn,” she says. “All these characters surprise us. And that’s what makes this season such a joy.”
