Laura Dern and Carol Burnett on the Inspiration Behind That Emotional Palm Royale Twist

Even as their ideologically opposed characters spar, Laura Dern and Carol Burnett’s decades-long friendship is evident on Palm Royale. But Dern is extra appreciative following the loss of her mother, Oscar-nominated actor Diane Ladd, who died in November at age 89. “It’s too big to speak to, frankly, because I’m so in the middle of it,” Dern tells Vanity Fair of her unfolding grief, “but knowing Carol and having her in my life means more to me than she can know. Carol being…I like to now call her a friend, but truthfully, a hero and a mentor and a maternal figure to me is just everything I could dream of, particularly at this time. And we shared such a beautiful, recent, very special time with my mom. So I hold that very close as well.”

As for Burnett, who recalls that same memory with similar affection, “I’ve been forcing her to adopt me for a really long time now,” Dern quips. Right on cue, the 92-year-old chimes in, “Well you don’t have to force. As the characters, we really bonded, and in real life, we’ve bonded too.”

Dern grew up watching The Carol Burnett Show with her grandmother actor Mary Lanier, and at age 13 met Burnett during a school assembly. “My daughter, Carrie, was doing drugs as a teenager, and she got sober. Carrie would go to schools and talk to students, not preaching, but just telling what she went through and so forth,” Burnett recalls. “I went and spoke with the parents. That’s when I met the beautiful, wonderful Diane Ladd. And that was my first connection with Laura. You were a baby. Who knew that it would come to this?”

Carol Burnett and Laura Dern in the penultimate episode of Palm Royale season two.Erica Parise

So began a decades-long friendship that entered a new phase when they were both cast in Palm Royale, which premiered in March 2024. Set in 1969 Palm Beach, the Apple TV series follows Kristen Wiig’s Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, a spry social climber eager to infiltrate high society. Dern, an executive producer on the series, who also plays feminist activist Linda Shaw, had one person in mind for the role of Norma Dellacorte, the flask-toting matriarch who rules the area’s social scene. “I had a mission to get as close to Carol as possible,” Dern says, “and if I had to produce a show to make it happen, I was going to do it.”

The first season earned Burnett an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress—and a group of new female industry friends, including her costars Allison Janney and Leslie Bibb. “What’s wonderful is, at my age now, I’ve got new young girlfriends,” Burnett laughs. “But with Laura, it’s really a deep love. I do feel that it’s kind of like a mother-daughter thing. Not even kind of like. It is a mother-daughter thing, and I’m grateful for it.”

Carol Burnett and Laura Dern pose at Burnett’s hand and footprint ceremony at TCL Chinese Theatre on June 20, 2024.Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images

It was fitting, then, that the penultimate episode of Palm Royale season two reveals that Burnett’s character is actually the birth mother of Dern’s character, and her real name is Agnes. Years ago, the real Norma Dellacorte died and Agnes, her boarding school roommate, assumed her identity for a better life. Upon realizing that she was pregnant with a married man’s baby, Agnes allowed her daughter—born Penelope, then renamed Linda—to be adopted by birth father Skeet (played in season one by Dern’s real-life Oscar-nominated dad, Bruce) and his wife, Evelyn (Janney).

“Being here in this room where I first became someone else, I can be myself again,” Norma tells Linda, explaining that she sacrificed her daughter so that her life wouldn’t be marred by the scandal of being born out of wedlock. “Losing you was the greatest pain of my entire life. I love you,” Norma tells Linda, who is happy to be found.

The show’s season two finale, premiering January 14, extends the long-awaited mother-daughter reunion. “The last moment of Carol at the end of our season is just one of the most breathtaking things, as an actor, I’ve ever witnessed,” Dern says, “looking in those eyes and seeing her love of her daughter in that seemingly simple but profound look. You realize this is a woman who did everything for her daughter.”

Carrie Hamilton and Carol Burnett in 1983.Images Press/Getty Images

Diane Ladd and Laura Dern in 1994.Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images

I ask Burnett where that moment may have originated. “Well, in a way, just from my memory about my relationship with Carrie, and how much I loved her and what she meant to me,” she says of her late daughter Carrie Hamilton, who died in 2002 at age 38 from pneumonia as a complication of lung and brain cancer. “Deep down, I might’ve been thinking about that. It finally came full circle, and I could love her and she could love me. It was easy to play.”

A third season of Palm Royale, which would presumably delve deeper into 1970s Palm Beach, has not been renewed as of press time. But what are the actors’ thoughts on the modern-day community, now the setting of a new Netflix reality series and the gated locale where Donald Trump rang in the New Year? “Let’s leave it to Shakespeare,” says Dern: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If we follow the money train, where there is wealth and influence, there are sometimes remarkable people doing extraordinary things, but most of the time when we’re following power and influence, there’s a lot of corruption throughout the world.”

That thought reminds Burnett of something the grandmother who raised her, born in 1885 Arkansas, said: “‘You marry somebody with money, then you’re going to be okay.’ I wanted to go to UCLA to study journalism and theater. She said, ‘Go to Woodbury College, be a secretary, and nab the boss.’ In other words, she did not think that I could take care of myself, because that was not the way she was raised. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was Betty Crocker time, and you had to be in the kitchen and have babies and cook. Even now, it’s a lot better, but it could get better.”

In that way, the female-fronted, proudly feminist Palm Royale is the kind of show Burnett never could’ve imagined one day making. During that very same era, when she wanted to start The Carol Burnett Show back in 1967, the vice president of CBS told the plucky comedian that musical-comedy variety shows were “a man’s game,” reserved for the likes of Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason. “‘It ain’t for you gals,’ is what he said,” Burnett recalls. “But I had it in my contract that they had to put me on the air. They didn’t want to. And now it’s so wonderful. So many women are producers—Laura, Kristen, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, all of them. It’s so much better.”

Listening in rapture, Dern tells me, “Yeah, thanks to Carol.”