Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Palm Royale, Season 2, Episode 5.Now that Palm Royale has officially hit its halfway point of Season 2, Episode 5’s “Maxine Is Ready to Single Mingle” pushes the Apple TV soap-opera comedy into its most explosive stretch yet. After a brief imprisonment, Laura Dern’s Linda escapes to Cuba and sparks a political firestorm back home, while Maxine (Kristen Wiig) and Evelyn (Allison Janney) find themselves trying to come up with $3 million. But in the show’s most shocking twist yet, Douglas’ (Josh Lucas) sudden kidnapping pulls the entire Delacourte empire into crisis.
With power shifting rapidly, alliances wobbling, and survival looking like a full-contact sport, things are really taking a turn in Palm Beach. In an exclusive interview with Collider, Dern and her executive producing partner, Jayme Lemons, break down how Linda’s exile reframes her arc this far into the season, with Dern describing her character as being “on this journey of revolution” while watching from the outside.
But as Linda’s story gains unexpected emotional weight with Lemons teasing how she is “finding [love] maybe in a unique and somewhat surprising place,” Episode 5 also introduces Patti LuPone as Marjorie Merriweather Post. Speaking to Collider about her midseason debut as a woman who enters the story with a quiet authority that immediately disrupts the town’s power balance, LuPone hints at how Marjorie “needs to maintain control.”
It’s a perfect fit for an episode where the women of Palm Royale aren’t just fighting for position, but they’re rewriting the rules entirely as the back half of the season begins.
‘Palm Royale’ Season 2’s Midseason Twist Hits Linda the Hardest, According to Laura Dern and Jayme Lemons
Image via Apple TV
As Palm Royale Season 2 hits its chaotic midpoint, Dern and Lemons explain how Episode 5 turns Linda’s exile in Cuba into a revolutionary reset.
COLLIDER: Laura, by Episode 5, Linda’s escaped to Cuba, and so she’s free, but she also has been sort of exiled. How do you see that as the evolution of her feminism? Is it more that she’s found liberation, or is it just a new kind of cage for her?
LAURA DERN: Gorgeous question. Thank you so much, and so good to talk to you again. As I’ve said, Linda really is kind of the Greek chorus in this story. As we’ve seen, and certainly in America, looking at the bubble of a community being this country club in Palm Beach, and all that they think is of value, they’re sort of immune or not willing to look even at what’s happening around them. Linda is sort of the reference for the revolution on the outside of that world, because she chose to leave it. So, from [Episodes] 1 to 5, definitely, she is on this journey of revolution, of using her voice to make anything matter, to pay for the sins of the father, which we learned about in Season 1. But also, as this ultra feminist, she also is still defining her joy by saying, “I met someone,” which I think is really funny. There’s always a duality in each of these male and female characters in the show. She goes on lots of adventures before ultimately, maybe, she’ll find deep, true love.
I cannot wait to see that. Jayme, everything through Episode 5 does feel like Linda is burning that old world down, but from a producer’s point of view, what can you tease about how she rebuilds herself after that, especially going forward and for the rest of the season?
JAYME LEMONS: I think Laura just made a good point, that her arc is about an attempt to find true love and maybe some missteps along the way that lead her to it, and her ultimately finding it, maybe in a unique and somewhat surprising place that probably takes her by surprise as much as it does the audience. So I think getting to go along for that ride pulls apart some layers of Linda that we haven’t seen until now, and that’s a new way to see a perspective on Linda that maybe we didn’t get to see in the first season.
Patti LuPone Says Marjorie Merriweather Post Will “Double Down” Before She Ever Goes Under
LuPone digs into why she jumped at playing Marjorie Merriweather Post, a quietly ruthless heiress who treats wealth like a moral code and needs to “maintain control.”
COLLIDER: Of course, you come in Episode 5, and you really own the place. What spoke to you about this series as a story, and also about Marjorie as a woman who doesn’t really have to shout to rule?
PATTI LUPONE: I watched the first season and fell in love with the show and wanted to be on it, and luckily, I got my wish. Abe [Sylvia] told me if there was something that he thought I would want to play, or was good enough to play, he would tell me, and it was Marjorie Merriweather Post. Then the way he wrote her is pretty great because I’ve played real women before, but the writers stay true to who these women were. This is such a departure from Miss Post, who was born into wealth, married wealth, and built Mar-A-Lago. I’m sure she was a sedate, discreet, cultured woman, and my Marjorie is a little bit of Fagin from Oliver. Just a little bit. I hope I’m not giving anything away. She has a side hustle.
Marjorie does treat wealth almost like a moral compass, and I feel like it also defines her sense of order and virtue. So, as the season progresses and Palm Beach’s power balance sort of shifts after that party, what challenges that belief for her most, do you think?
LUPONE: I think she needs to maintain control. And I think if there is a challenge, it will be how she’s maintaining control of the fortune and her desire for that last little piece, which we won’t give away. I think it’s about maintaining control. I think that’ll be her challenge.
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Their dynamic has become the highlight and the backbone of the series.
By midseason, though, every woman in Palm Royale is fighting to survive in their own way as the world around Marjorie, the one that she built, begins to collapse. With all these different characters, what does endurance mean to her? Is it compromise, reinvention, or does she just double down?
LUPONE: Double down. She doubles down. Oh, no, it’s not collapsing yet. She doubles down. But if it ever did collapse or was in potential collapse, she would double down. And I think in the double down, she’d reinvent herself. But she would never go under. Not this Marjorie Merriweather Post.
She’s very smart, and I love the arc so far for her. Maxine, Kristen Wiig’s character, has a drink — the Grasshopper, so I’m wondering, what is the one perfect drink for Marjorie Merriweather Post?
LUPONE: Well, I said the blood of her victims before. [Laughs] Or a lovely cup of tea. A lovely cup of camomile tea to calm everything down.
Palm Royale streams every Wednesday on Apple TV.
Release Date
March 19, 2024
Network
Apple TV+
Writers
Abe Sylvia
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Carol Burnett
Norma Dellacorte
