Carol Burnett, who turns 91 next month, says she had no hesitation in joining Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Ricky Martin and others as a recurring star in the new dramedy Palm Royale. The series is streaming now at AppleTV+.
“All I had to do is hear who was going to be in it,” she told reporters gathered last month in Pasadena, Calif. “Kristen, Laura, Ricky, it’s just an incredible cast. I didn’t even have to read the script. I just wanted to work with these people and get to know them, and go out to dinner and have some fun.”
When she did read the script, she learned that her wealthy dowager character starts the series in a coma.
“I still got paid,” Burnett quipped. “So, I mean, it was a slam dunk.”
The series is set in 1969, which, to put things in perspective, was two years into the run of The Carol Burnett Show. It stars
and is executive produced by Kristen Wiig, born in the middle of Burnett’s iconic variety series 11-season run.
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Wiig, the former SNL and “Bridesmaids” star, plays Maxine, who is trying to climb the high society ladder as one of the cool housewives of South Florida.
The series also stars Allison Janney, Josh Lucas, Leslie Bibb, Amber Chardae Robinson, Mindy Cohn, Julia Duffy and Kaia Gerber. Besides Burnett, the other 90-yer-old in the cast is film star (and Laura Dern’s dad) Bruce Dern. Palm Royale marks the first time Laura Dern has worked with her father.
Burnett had praise for the production. I asked her at that same Television Critics Association press conference to compare it her first job in television — seventy years earlier. Burnett delivered a history lesson dating back to the mid-’50s, pre-dating her breakthrough association with Garry Moore on his stsr-making CBS variety shows of the ’50s and ’60s.
Those early TV stories and more are part of a feature I wroter about Burnett for Everything Zoomer. You can zoom straight to that story by following this very link.
