Palm Royale’s Ricky Martin and Kristen Wiig on queer safe spaces and their platonic love

Across town from Grasshopper cocktails and Pucci-inspired fashion at the upscale country club in the new Apple TV+ series Palm Royale, a group of outsiders finds friendship and common ground at a feminist bookstore. “Our Bodies, Our Shelves” is more than an apt pun for the late ’60s when the series is set.

“Our Bodies, Our Shelves” is the hub where feminists, hippies, and queer people find solace. And it’s where Kristen Wiig’s Maxine, a dreamer attempting to crack the upper echelon of Palm Beach society, befriends Laura Dern’s Linda, an anti-war and reproductive freedom activist. It’s also the space where Ricky Martin’s Robert — a Korean War veteran who bartends at the Palm Royale country club and has formed a special bond with Carol Burnett’s temporarily debilitated socialite Norma Dellacorte — finds contact information for gay men like him clandestinely written in the books on the shelves.

Though Maxine is married to Douglas Dellacorte, an airline pilot and an heir to Norma’s estate, and Robert engages in a few trysts, the show’s central love story is the platonic friendship between Maxine and Robert as outsiders.

“The simplest connection they have is that they are hiding who they really are. They kind of know who the other one is and spend just exhausting hours trying to be something they’re not. … Even when they’re bickering, there’s some relief and there’s some exhale,’ Wiig tells Advocate Channel. “The women in the club are obviously very unkind to Maxine. ... The word that keeps coming to my mind is safe. And I feel like Robert was Maxine’s safe place.”

“She doesn’t feel it anywhere else. She just feels completely exposed, completely insecure. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t like who she is. And that I think they have [that] in common. It’s a beautiful love story between the two of them.”

Kristen Wiig as Maxine in Palm Royale Apple TV+

It’s no surprise that Palm Royale deftly juxtaposes humor and camp (Allison Janney’s Evelyn in Caftans delivering vicious one-liners is camp gold alone) with commentary around real issues of the era like queer people being forced into the closet, civil and women’s rights, and the anxiety of the Vietnam War. The series’ gay creator Abe Sylvia (George & Tammy) and the writers worked to build authentic spaces for all of their characters.

“Marginalized people have always had to seek out their own communities. So we wanted to create a real counterpoint to that country club. It’s like, okay, this is where these rarified women go to feel safe, and this is where feminists and gay men and people of color can go to feel safe and find love. And so to have those two worlds coexisting, and always sort of pinging off of each other was really important,” Sylvia says.

He adds that they worked diligently to subvert tropes about women in society and to “dimensionalize” them.

“We didn't want to have another show about rich women fighting with one another, we were all full up on that,” Silvia says. “And so that was sort of our guiding principle as we built out the world. Ricky's character is a big part of that as well. It’s like, What, what was a gay man going through in 1969, where it was illegal to be him? There are all kinds of Roberts in Palm Beach, gay men who find safety in the bosom of the older woman, the rich woman who’s living alone, and they create these little friendships, and they feel safe.”

Laura Dern as Linda and Ricky Martin as Robert in Palm RoyaleApple TV+

For Martin, an icon in music who paved the way for so many others when he came out, playing Robert was personal.

“Still, unfortunately, a lot of men and women out there, they can’t be themselves, they can’t, can't express themselves, they can be comfortable in their own skin. For me, one of the most important things about this project [is] that I can speak on behalf of so many people. Even though it was in the 60s…” Martin says. “I was really looking forward to being Robert the guy that was in the military. And be [open] about the softness when he's surrounded by these very powerful women. For me, it was fantastic to be able to do that every day walking on set and refresh my memory exactly of where I know I don't want to be [closeted]. It was like going to therapy every day. It was beautiful.”

Watch the full interview with Martin and Wiig below. Palm Royale is streaming on Apple TV+ now.

Watch the full interview with creator Abe Sylvia and executive producer Katie O’Connell Marsh below.