TV storytelling

There are shows that ask actors to disappear into realism. There are shows that ask them to sharpen everything, make it bigger, brighter, stranger. And then there is Palm Royale, a series that somehow demands both at once.

Set in 1969 and built around the glittering, cutthroat world of Palm Beach high society, Palm Royale has always lived in a fascinating tonal space. It is funny, but never weightless. It is glamorous, but never hollow. It is absurd, but never so absurd that the emotions stop mattering. That balancing act is a huge part of what makes the show work, and it is also what makes it such an interesting series to talk to actors about.

Because this is not a world anyone can play halfway.

Everyone in Palm Royale has to fully commit. To the period, to the emotion, to the tension underneath the elegance, to the social theater of every interaction. The clothes are fabulous, the hair is immaculate, the sets are stunning, but none of that means anything unless the people inside that world believe in it completely.

That was the feeling I kept coming back to after speaking with Mindy Cohn and Amber Chardae Robinson, and then with Kaia Gerber and Josh Lucas. Their answers were all different, but they kept circling the same core ideas: nerves, trust, observation, tone, and the strange freedom that comes from letting go enough to truly play.

A World Where Performance Is Everywhere

At the center of Palm Royale is Maxine, played by Kristen Wiig, an outsider trying to break into the most exclusive social world in Palm Beach. That premise alone gives the show a natural charge. It is about class and reinvention, about image and power, about who gets welcomed in and who gets left standing at the door. But what makes the series more interesting is that everyone in it is performing something.

Some characters are performing wealth. Some are performing confidence. Some are performing stability, charm, romance, respectability, innocence. Even when they are standing in beautiful rooms under chandeliers, they are often scrambling internally to hold onto whatever version of themselves the world requires from them.

That is part of why the show works so well as both comedy and drama. Underneath the polish, everyone is managing panic, desire, insecurity, loneliness, or ambition.

And because season two already has that world established, it gets to go even deeper into the emotional absurdity of it all. The satire gets sharper, but the people do too.

Mindy Cohn on Why the Work Still Feels the Same

When I asked Mindy Cohn how the industry feels different now compared to when she started acting, I loved that she immediately separated the business from the actual experience of doing the work.

Her point was simple but kind of profound: whatever changes around the industry, stepping onto a set still feels the same. That part, the actor stepping into the space and getting ready to play, still feels like home.

That answer really stuck with me because it cut through all the usual noise around how much entertainment has changed. Of course it has changed. The platforms are different. The volume of projects is different. The pace is different. The way people consume stories is different. But her answer reminded me that the actual pulse of acting is still tied to something much older and simpler. You show up. You feel the nerves. You get ready. You do the scene.

She also spoke about this era as an exciting one because there are more kinds of voices and more kinds of projects out there. That breadth matters. And for someone who has worked across so many different eras of television, it was interesting to hear that sense of possibility rather than fatigue.

It also felt fitting for a show like Palm Royale, because it really is the kind of series that only works in an environment willing to make room for something this specific. It is period comedy-drama, social satire, emotional farce, and ensemble piece all at once. It is glossy and odd and deeply committed to its own rhythm.

That kind of thing needs people who still love the work.

Amber Chardae Robinson on Learning by Watching

When I asked Amber and Mindy what it was like working around such an accomplished ensemble, Amber gave one of the most revealing answers of the day.

She talked about what she absorbs by simply watching people like Laura Dern and Kristen Wiig work. Not in some abstract, starstruck way, but in the practical sense of learning how they carry themselves, how they use their power, and how they create an atmosphere around them.

One of the things she pointed to was the generosity of that environment. She described a moment with Laura where she was encouraged to ask for another take if she needed one. It sounds small, but it really is not. For someone still finding their footing, that kind of encouragement can completely shift how you understand your own right to take up space.

That stood out to me because it says a lot about what kind of set this must have been. On a show this ornate and high-performing, it would be easy for newer actors to feel like they should stay quiet and simply keep up. But Amber described a culture where great actors were not just impressive to watch, they were also teaching by example.

She also spoke about literally forgetting she was acting while watching Allison Janney burst into a scene. That image is so perfect for Palm Royale. It is a show of entrances, of force, of personalities that arrive like weather. And if you are lucky enough to be in the room for that, of course it can feel like a master class.

Everyone Still Gets Nervous

Mindy took that same question in a slightly different direction, and honestly, it may have been my favorite part of the entire conversation.

She talked about nerves.

Not just first-day nerves, but second-day nerves, two-month nerves, that constant flicker of anxiety that can still show up no matter how experienced you are. And what she found comforting was learning that the actors she admired most feel it too.

That felt deeply human, and it also felt very connected to Palm Royale itself.

Because this is a show about performance in every possible sense. Social performance. Romantic performance. Performance as survival. Performance as reinvention. And to hear someone as seasoned as Mindy say that nerves are still part of the process was a reminder that confidence and fear are often sitting right next to each other.

Her framing of it was smart too. Nervousness does not always have to be read as something negative. Sometimes it is simply excitement. Sometimes it is energy. Sometimes it is proof that you care.

And on a set where so many moving parts are waiting for you, lights, camera, crew, fellow actors, all of it, there is pressure in that. The challenge is letting those first moments pass so you can stop worrying about how you are being perceived and return to play.

That idea, returning to play, feels like the key to this whole show.

Josh Lucas on Playing the Truth, Not the Joke

My conversation with Josh Lucas got right to one of the trickiest parts of Palm Royale: tone.

I asked him how he finds the right balance on a show that is at once glamorous, ridiculous, satirical, and emotionally sincere. His answer was exactly what I hoped it would be.

He said you cannot play the comedy. You cannot chase the satire. You have to fully commit to the truth of the character and the reality of the moment.

That is the whole thing.

In Josh’s case, that means understanding Douglas not as some wink at rich men of the era, but as a man who genuinely moves through the world with a level of entitlement and arrested development that creates chaos everywhere he goes. He does not think he is being funny. He is just making a mess. The humor comes from how sincerely he inhabits that.

That is such an important distinction, because a show like this would collapse if the actors started playing from the outside in. If everyone treated it like an elaborate joke, the emotional grounding would disappear. But if they fully inhabit the relationships, the time period, and the stakes, then the comedy becomes sharper because it emerges naturally out of behavior.

Josh also said something I thought was especially sharp: one of the biggest mistakes an actor can make is trying to be funny. And on a show like Palm Royale, that is exactly right. The funniest moments are often the ones where the characters are taking themselves most seriously.

Kaia Gerber on Unlearning Camera Awareness

Then Kaia Gerber came at performance from a completely different angle, and her answer was one of the most self-aware of the day.

I asked her about the biggest differences and similarities between modeling and acting. She said that one of the biggest habits she had to unlearn was the constant awareness of the camera. In modeling, you are trained to know exactly where it is, how you are framed, how the light is hitting you. In acting, that level of awareness can get in the way. You cannot be fully inside a scene if part of your brain is still checking whether you are in your light.

That is such a smart observation because it gets to the difference between presentation and immersion. Modeling often asks for control over the image. Acting asks you to surrender control enough to live inside the moment.

But what I really liked was how she connected the two forms in a more personal way. She said she has often felt uncomfortable in front of the camera as herself, and that even as a model she would invent little inner characters to make herself feel more confident. Acting just takes that instinct further. Instead of briefly imagining a version of yourself for a shoot, you build a full interior world and sustain it over time.

That felt like a real answer, not a polished one. And it also made perfect sense in the context of Palm Royale, where so many characters are building and maintaining versions of themselves in order to survive a social ecosystem built on image.

What Still Excites Them About Storytelling

Toward the end, I asked Josh and Kaia what excites them about where storytelling is headed right now.

Josh’s answer was about scale and communal experience. He had recently seen The Wizard of Oz at Sphere and was clearly energized by the idea that some future forms of storytelling may become bigger, more immersive, and more collective again. He talked about the difference between solitary streaming and shared audience experience, and how there may be room for storytelling to split into different lanes rather than simply collapse into one model.

What I liked about his answer was that it acknowledged how unstable the industry feels right now while still leaving room for optimism. There is a lot of uncertainty, and he did not deny that. But he also seemed genuinely curious about where new forms could emerge.

Kaia’s answer went in a more intimate direction. She brought up the anxiety around AI, but instead of just staying in fear, she argued that what still gives her hope is human specificity. The strange, deeply personal, emotionally messy ideas that only come from actual lived experience. Her point was not that technology is irrelevant, but that it cannot authentically generate the weirdness, trauma, empathy, and specificity that make certain stories feel truly alive.

That felt especially relevant to Palm Royale, which is such a human show in all its excess. It is too strange, too emotionally contradictory, too interested in insecurity and longing and social absurdity to feel machine-made. Its pleasures are human pleasures. Vanity, delusion, heartbreak, performance, desire, gossip, jealousy, reinvention. No algorithm could have lived that.

Why Palm Royale Worked

What makes Palm Royale memorable is not just that it looked beautiful, though it certainly did. It is not just the costuming, the production design, the hair, the makeup, or the cast list, though all of those things mattered. What made it work was that beneath all the style, the show understood something very real about performance.

It understood that people are almost always acting a little.

Acting richer than they are. More stable than they are. More desirable than they feel. Less hurt than they really are. More secure, more elegant, more in control.

And in a world like Palm Beach in 1969, that performance becomes almost total. It is not just social. It is existential.

That is why the actors had to commit so fully. Because if anyone broke the illusion, the whole thing would wobble. Instead, what came through from every conversation I had was that the people making this show understood that truth and treated it seriously. They brought nerves into the work, but not fear. Observation, but not imitation. Glamour, but not emptiness.

By the end of my interviews with Amber Chardae Robinson, Mindy Cohn, Kaia Gerber, and Josh Lucas, what stayed with me most was not just how much talent was in this ensemble. It was how much thought was behind the performances.

A show this heightened only works when everyone believes in the emotional reality underneath the madness.

Palm Royale did.

And that is why, even at its most chaotic, it never stopped feeling human.