The year is 1969 and Palm Beach is in full swing for the season. Socialites, royalty, and pretenders alike flock to the exclusive country club tennis courts and Worth Avenue shops, as young women climb the ranks of high society and their older counterparts strive to remain relevant. A dog-eat-dog community secluded from the realities of the world, the characters in Palm Royale are plucked straight from Slim Aarons photographs and onto our screens. Though the war rages on in Vietnam and the Women’s liberation movement gains momentum, here in sunny Florida, it is Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) who finds herself in battle. As she steals, cons, and cheats her way into high society from her lowly Tennessee roots, Maxine mooches off of her husband’s comatose aunt and Palm Beach’s reigning queen, Norma Dellacorte (Carol Burnett). She throws herself into a world of the Shiny Sheet newspaper, fundraising events, and real estate efforts in a comedic and thought-provoking exploration on equality, wealth, status, personal identity, and the relationship between the privileged and politics.

“My first introduction to [the series] was through Laura Dern calling me,” Wiig tells me from the other side of the Zoom screen. “It was ‘yes’ from the start. The way she described it and what they wanted to say with it, I thought was really important.”

Dern, who acts as an executive producer on the series alongside starring in it, portrays the character of Linda Shaw — a foil to Wiig’s Maxine who works at a bookstore championing (and funding) the “collective consciousness of the global sisterhood.” Though in an opposite position to the show’s protagonist, the two women find themselves forming a bond over shared uncertainty, ambition, and loneliness.

“When I got the call, all they had to do was tell me who was going to be in it,” Burnett follows up from the seat next to Wiig. “I said, ‘I don’t even have to read the script. I’m in.’” The all-star cast, which aside from Wiig, Dern, and Burnett includes Ricky Martin, Josh Lucas, Leslie Bibb, Amber Charade Robinson, Allison Janney, and Kaia Gerber, is certainly an impressive and diverse lineup of talent, with backgrounds ranging from comedy to drama and beyond. It is this dynamic, perhaps, that lends itself to create such a nuanced and multidimensional story.

When we first meet Norma (Burnett), she’s lying in bed at an assisted living facility, unable to speak. “Acting without words? I’ve never done it, but it’s really very easy because you don’t have to do anything except lie there and close your eyes and still get paid.” Burnett laughs before Wiig cuts her off.

“Even then, watching it, you can feel Carol’s energy in the character. And it’s not as easy as you think to just lay there with your eyes closed!”

“I even nodded off a few times.”

These scenes, Wiig shares, were some of her favourites to film. “I loved the very beginning. We first started doing scenes together when [Burnett] was in bed. And in between scenes, I would just lay on the bed with her and we would talk.”

Though their characters feel out of touch with reality, living in a bubble with their own set of codes and colour schemes, Wiig looked to the core of Maxine’s struggles to gain empathy and relate to her story. “I think everyone can relate to wanting something that you don’t have. Maxine takes it to a level that I personally haven’t gone to, but I think that’s human nature to desire things and to be a part of something that you’re not a part of. I think the show sheds light on, well, why does this person want this? Because it’s not just about someone trying to be friends with these fancy people. It’s, well, what is she missing? Why does she feel like she needs this?”

“Yeah, and I think my character, Norma, who was ruling the roost as far as all of these society people, she was ahead of everything,” Burnett adds. “And so she certainly wants to keep it. She wants to keep that power. I guess once you get to that level, certain people don’t want to give it up. Kind of like what’s going on in politics today.”

With a political backdrop that feels as contemporary as period specific, Palm Royale shows a balance between two worlds that still exist today — the majority’s reality of the late 1960s and how it looks within the goggles of Palm Beach’s high society. According to Wiig, this contrast was essential to creating a comedic yet meaningful narrative: “Showing these two sides was really intentional. Seeing the women at the bookstore and what they’re fighting for, real life, put up against what these women are doing and thinking about and talking about in this country club atmosphere, not even acknowledging that there’s a war going on, it created humour. It created a juxtaposition of what was important to who at the time. Sometimes there’s comedy in this and sometimes there’s something deep over here. But we just tried to balance it and comment on certain things that are very important in a way that sometimes is lighter.”

“Well, that’s life,” Burnett chimes in. “Our whole lives are a mixture, I think, of comedy and drama.”