Dinah Donohue, on the surface, has an enviable life. She has money, status, and plenty of space from her husband, Perry. Oh, how we covet the lives of those we see from a distance. We think that if we get our hands on the things that Dinah has, we will be just as happy and content. The closer we get, however, the more we realize that people like Dinah are trying desperately to hold everything together. Palm Royale‘s Leslie Bibb knows the value of walking that tightrope between a character’s perfections and that inescapable need for more.
Set in Palm Beach, Florida, everything about Abe Sylvia’s series screams wealth, color, and class. From the production design, the costume design, and even the musical score, Palm Royale never misses the mark in relishing the absurdity or revealing what hides beneath the surface. Like with all of her characters, Bibb loves finding the tension within a character in how they are trying to keep everything all together.
“I love that the absurdity of us on that boat, for instance,” Bibb says, as we talk about spikes of silly and absurd in the script. “I am with this ninety-year-old man and trying to do a song and dance to save my ass. And then Kristen Wiig breaks into that whale song. To me, it’s absurd, but we go back to this manicured façade. Underneath it, though, there is a brutal truth with how the world works, who is going to win, who has to win, because it’s life and death stakes. Brooke McQueen has life and death stakes. Carley Bobby has life and death stakes. That’s what we do as human beings. It can be absurd that you’re freaking out over something, but it’s not this clean-cut box. I get turned on by characters that are slightly askew and then bringing them back to Earth, and I like to think of it like a person wiggling on a diving board. I like thinking of when that person is going to jump.”
Dinah is having an affair with Eddie, her tennis pro from the club, and he sacrifices everything to be with her while she won’t let herself go. Think about how tragic it is to have a gorgeous, loving man (a tennis pro, people!) willing to live his life with you, but you are scared at the notion of what people might say. Dinah sets her sights on a ninety-year-old man to secure her finances when Eddie shows up to proclaim his love for her. When he says that she needs to choose a life with him or money, she gently says, “Shove off,” before walking away from him. Imagine giving that up.
“Or you don’t trust that you will be okay,” Bibb says. “I have always been fascinated to how Dinah got to this point. What did she grow up with? What was her parents’ dynamic? After my father passed away, I remember my mom telling me that I always need to make sure there is money in the bank, because you never know when the other shoe is going to drop. She didn’t say it in a finger-wagging way, but because it happened to her. My mom had to pivot and make it work, and that has never left me. It made me appreciate working, but thinking about that made me wonder what Dinah’s experience was. I think a lot of women had that–the tragedy that everything back then was Pleasantville. Beaver Cleaver. You should be happy to be a stay-at-home mom.
“I also loved that Dinah didn’t have kids. Back then, having children was currency for a woman. By taking that out of the equation was something that I found very powerful in a time that was important for women to have that define them. When I was doing the research on the pill, I found so many weird ads. ‘The red is for when the woman gets fat’ or ‘The green is for the woman just complains about being home with the kids.’ They talk about women like cattle, and the ads were that overt. It breaks my heart to think of the women who didn’t have any other option. Dinah didn’t want to be trapped or regret anything. She couldn’t choose love, because love’s not enough.”
The people we think have it all stand on shaky ground, and she must make every decision with a game plan in mind. Everything that Dinah does goes through a range of questioning in her head as Dinah plays every interaction in her mind, as if she is floating above herself watching the scene play out. Bibb knows that Dinah is fragile, but she knows hiding that exhaustion is not an option.
“I think it’s a conscious decision to not have kids” Bibb says. “It’s a vanity choice, and as much as she presents herself as having so much self-worth, she’s terribly insecure. She covers with this bravado, and underneath it, you could crack her in two. Allison’s character takes my one true love, it’s unbearable. Dinah is walking a very tight line, and, at any point, she presents confidence. I imagine that her favorite time of day is when Perry leaves for work and Eddie can come over. Maybe she feels like she can be seen, because he doesn’t know how the world works, and he doesn’t see it that way. It always feels like an exhausting world to be in. You’re always playing chess with Bobby Fischer, and nobody plays checkers.”
Dinah has to fear a more idealistic Maxine coming up the ranks in Dinah’s wake. At the beginning of the season, she wins volunteer of the year, but then everything begins to wobble under her feet. The closer Maxine gets to infiltrating the walls of the Palm Royale, the more it kills Dinah. She tells Maxine, ‘I don’t know if you’re a country bumpkin or if you’re the most ruthless woman in Palm Beach.’ It’s a line played for a laugh, but it might be one of the most honest things Dinah says all season.
“It’s very All About Eve,” she says. “Getting somewhere in society feels like earning something. In a way, they aren’t dissimilar, Dinah and Maxine. They are both looking to be fulfilled by having social currency. Maxine believes so deeply in love, but Dinah doesn’t. When Maxine comes on the scene, it’s literally the ingenue coming up.”
In September, Ryan Murphy’s Popular will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary. For a lot of us who love Bibb, her Brooke McQueen was the one. If we could learn about the inner life of Brooke, we could tell ourselves that the Queen Bee isn’t so bad–maybe she could even be our friend. Brooke and Dinah share a lot of qualities in terms of trying to save face for those who expect much from us, and Bibb loves how protective audiences are to one of her first major roles.
“Popular was a show that was very dear to me,” Bibb says. “The people who watched it, got it, but the powers at be didn’t get it. I was back in Los Angeles not long ago, and I had dinner with Carly [Pope] who played Sam. There was a moment when Carly was living with her now husband in New York, and we lived in a park across from each other. She’s like my sister, and we would walk around together. People have this amazing reaction to it. You make something, and it can be so meaningful to people. I hope Ryan Murphy knows that. That show is such a slice of heaven. Wouldn’t it be amazing to revisit Brooke McQueen and Sam McPherson as forty-year-olds? There’s a Kate & Ally version of Popular out there somewhere.”
Palm Royale is streaming now on Apple TV+.
