BOOZE AND FEATHERS WITH A SIDE OF MURDER

Season two of Palm Royale promises lots more fabulous costumes, incredible sets and laughs

- BY H. ALAN SCOTT

SOCIAL CLIMBING The new season is all about transformations for Evelyn (Allison Janney) in Palm Royale.

HOW DID ONE GET TO THE TOP OF PALM BEACH HIGH SOCIETY in the late 1960s and early 1970s? With a lot of booze, feathers and a little...murder? That's the mystery we were left with at the end of season one of the Apple TV+ comedy series Palm Royale, starring Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney, Carol Burnett and Ricky Martin, among many other big names. With season two upon us, the big question is, can they top the campy suspense of season one?

“She’s struggling to keep her place in society just like Maxine [played by Wiig] is, but she doesn’t want to admit that,” Janney tells Newsweek about her character Evelyn, a previously high-powered socialite on the scene who suffered a dramatic fall from grace to the very bottom with Maxine. “She has to transform herself, which is what this season is all about—transformations and new beginnings, new power structures.”

Last season we left Maxine having a meltdown at the Beach Ball, where she’d discovered her husband had been cheating on her. She also survived a murder plot by Norma, played by Burnett. “I think if there is any twinkle in the show, it is because Carol is on it,” Wiig said of Burnett. Burnett is back and better than ever this season, complete with over-the-top outfits you'd expect and that expressive face that has been able to get a laugh with the simplest tug of an ear for the better part of the past 50 years. With Norma, we now know that, just like Maxine from last season, she's a fraud and not who she passed herself off to be, especially to Martin's Robert, her caretaker. As for Robert, we left him as the victim of a shooting, a bystander to a thwarted assassination attempt of President Richard Nixon.