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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Maxine Hears a Confession,” the Jan. 7 episode of “Palm Royale,” now streaming on Apple TV.
Through two seasons, and 18 episodes of “Palm Royale,” the single lie that brought years of cheating, stealing, marriages of convenience and in-fighting was finally revealed — Norma (Carol Burnett) isn’t really Norma. And she’s not so evil after all.
The episode begins with Vicki Lawrence’s Lotte taking Evelyn (Allison Janney) through a secret passage in the Swiss hotel, where she comes face-to-face with Norma. “Special delivery,” Lotte singsongs their arrival. Evelyn is stunned to see Norma, dressed to the nines, sitting at the end of a very long dining room table. “Leave us, Mama,” Norma says. Yes, mama! Evelyn goes all-in, trashing her, and assuring her that Maxine (Kristen Wiig) is downstairs, waiting pounce on her “with a butterfly net.” But Norma, warm and charming, is confident that Evelyn won’t reveal her secret, saying she returned to Switzerland to put her affairs in order, to seek absolution.
Norma later is stunned to find Linda/Penelope (Laura Dern) in the church. “I thought I’d lost you forever,” Norma says tenderly, fighting back tears. “I’ve been lying so long. Being here, in this room, where I first became someone else, I can be myself again.” She comes clean, saying she is not Norma, but rather Agnea: and she is Linda’s mother. She explains that back in the day, the shame of having a child in society out of wedlock would have destroyed them all, and she couldn’t let that happen — not when there was another way out. “Losing you was the greatest pain of my entire life,” she says mournfully. And now she wants to make it up to her.
Since the show’s premiere in March 2024, Burnett’s Norma has been set up as a money- and status-hungry snob, willing to do just about anything to have others do her bidding and maintain her opulent lifestyle amongst the highest of high society. The legendary Burnett, who is primarily known for her comedic chops, has played it straight. With this plot and character twist, the harsh, joyless, miscreant Norma becomes the repentant, damaged Agnes.
“I love the fact that she’s redeemable in the end,” Burnett says in a joint Zoom interview with Vicki Lawrence. “I think it’s because she was able to tell [Penelope] the truth. And once she felt that, and that [Penelope] accepted it, her whole demeanor relaxed and changed. It was fun to have that revealed, that she’s not the villain that everybody thinks she is. But,” she adds, “I love playing villains. They’re much more fun than nice people.”
For fans of the classic TV series “The Carol Burnett Show,” you might have spotted some tidbits about her “Palm Royale” character that you might have assumed were Easter eggs referencing a famous character she played decades ago — Nora Desmond, a parody of Norma Desmond from “Sunset Boulevard.” But those homages were a mere coincidence.
The name Norma was already written into the script, but the origin of the name Agnes is another story. “What’s funny is that when I got my show [in 1967], the CBS vice president didn’t want me to have an hour-long comedy variety show. ‘It’s a man’s game, and it’s not for women.’ And he said, ‘We’ve got this great sitcom that we’d love you to do, called, ‘Here’s Agnes.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be Agnes every week. I want to have a comedy variety show.’ [“Palm Royale” creator] Abe [Sylvia] remembered that. And that’s why he gave her that name.”
And that turban that Nora Desmond wore that became her signature look that Norma/Agnes wears in “Palm Royale”? Yep, just a happy coincidence.
“Actually, the turban thing came by accident,” Burnett says. “The first season, there was a scene where they went back 20 years. So we would have to be 20 years younger, which would mean I would have to have a new wig made because it was supposed to look different from the present day. They were up to their necks in hairdos and things like that, so I said to the wig maker, ‘Don’t make me a new wig. Just stick a turban on my head.’ It was so great because, I’d go in in the morning, and I’d be ready to go and everybody else would be having their wigs pasted on.”
But “Palm Royale”’s most significant nod to the classic variety show is the cameo by Lawrence — Burnett’s longtime costar and friend — who plays the eccentric Lotte.
“I knew we were gonna do a second season, and I was getting ready to call Abe and say, ‘Is there anything maybe for Vicki?” Burnett recalls. “And before I could do that, he called me and said, ‘You know, I’m thinking of Vicki for this role. What do you think?’ I said, ‘Oh my God, I was gonna call you.’ He had the idea before I got to it. Every scene that Vicki is in, she steals — I mean, in a great way. It is just wonderful. And the makeup that they used for Vicki was hysterical. I couldn’t stop laughing when you showed up on the set.”
Lotte’s accent? Lawrence shares that a well-known sex therapist from the past is to be thanked for that. “[Abe] came into the trailer to see how my makeup looked. And I said, ‘How do you see her, uh, other than just old?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know. Some sort of a fun European accent.’ So, you know who my role model was? It was Dr. Ruth. I got on YouTube and looked up Dr. Ruth Westheimer.”
Lawrence, who won an Emmy for her work on “The Carol Burnett Show” in 1976, continues: “I will say, I learned from someone who just always makes it happen, and that’s a good time. You know what I learned from you, Carol?” she asks Burnett. “The most important thing that I learned is that it all comes down from the top. And you’re supposed to be having fun and more about how the business and show business should run. It should be a good time.”
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