Apple’s New TV Show Pits Palm Beach Society Against the Arrivistes
Kristen Wiig breaks through the upper crust in Palm Royale.
Allison Janney as Evelyn Rollins in Palm Royale.
Photographer: Erica Parise/Apple TV+Palm Beach, Florida, has had an improbable renaissance. Miami and West Palm Beach have each claimed the aspirational moniker Wall Street South while home values in the area have doubled in price. And of course, it now has the dubious distinction of being synonymous with Donald Trump and his private club, Mar-a-Lago.
Yet the heyday of Palm Beach was still more than half a century ago, when Slim Aarons was photographing Wendy Vanderbilt wearing Lilly Pulitzer. The glitz of that era is why Apple TV+’s lavish limited series Palm Royale is set in 1969. Today, most people aren’t exactly desperate to get into Palm Beach’s snooty Everglades Club; back then, it meant you’d arrived.