How the Wild, Over-the-Top ‘Palm Royale’ Havana Party Came to Life

Every episode of Palm Royale (streaming weekly on Wednesdays on Apple TV+) is a visual feast, serving up technicolor cocktails, sumptuous interiors, and gowns in exuberant colors and fabrics you may not have known existed. For a series set in the tony enclave of Palm Beach in 1969, that alone could have been plenty of eye candy for viewers to enjoy. In planning the fourth episode, “Maxine Rolls The Dice”, showrunner Abe Sylvia and choreographer Brooke Lipton instead thought, “what if we did more and went bigger?” The maximalist result is a giddily over-the-top 15-minute set piece at a fundraiser gala featuring 14 showgirls, a host of background dancers, and multiple partner switches during a party-wide extended rhumba. Oh, and the scene provides plenty of forward momentum for the increasingly complicated plot machinations that main character Maxine Dellacorte (Kristen Wiig) finds herself both responding to and occasionally generating, herself.

The fourth episode is the series midpoint; Maxine’s crash course in the country club politics of Palm Beach’s seemingly ultra-wealthy doyennes is paying off in some ways and showing her just how much she doesn’t know in others. As the women jockey for status to be the queenliest of social queen bees, she has maneuvered them into supporting her application for membership at the stringently exclusive Palm Royale. Now, Maxine finds herself in yet another pickle: finally the conservator of her husband’s rich, comatose aunt Norma (Carol Burnett), but hemorrhaging the funds necessary to attend a series of mandatory, scammy fundraising galas as she prepares to host the biggest party of the year with Evelyn Rollins (Allison Janney). Zipping gamely and ineptly around the dancefloor, shifting conversational gears through multiple partner changes, whispered threats, and shared confidences is a perfect visual metaphor for Maxine’s risky juggling act.

Every moment of the Havana Nights-themed party is packed to the rafters with movement or richly textured color, and we’re usually treated to both. Maxine’s technicolor floral headdress just might topple her into the swimming pool as she half-rumbas, half-scurries across the bridge in the center of the ballroom! But wait, over a dozen sequin, satin, and feather-bedecked showgirls are bursting into the room as the band cranks up the volume and the tempo! Who can even focus on those glamorous ladies when Robert (Ricky Martin) and his effortlessly swiveling hips are seducing a fuschia-clad Raquel (Claudia Ferri) into relinquishing a ruby necklace they both know belongs to Norma! Even quieter moments, such as Evelyn serving up scathing quips worthy of Dorothy Parker as she coolly surveys the ballroom from a corner balcony, never threaten the scene’s momentum, thanks to the dozens of—actually, make that 200—background dancers shimmying and twirling for all they’re worth.

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