Is Bridesmaids star Kristen Wiig done with comedy?
The SNL star has now entered her dramatic era, playing a Florida schemer desperate for acceptance by the country club set. ‘If this were a movie, she would win an Oscar.’
There are team players and then there’s Kristen Wiig.
Would you want the Hollywood actress in one of those cringe-worthy “trust exercises” during a corporate retreat? Probably not. She’d wear those tiny baby Dooneese hands (from her Saturday Night Live days) just for kicks.
Would you want her to be the one organising the final presentation?
Absolutely.
There is no doubt 50-year-old Wiig – the actor who broke through playing Rose Byrne’s foil in the smash-hit, cult-classic film Bridesmaids – shines in an ensemble situation.
With her acting talent, timing, natural knack for improv (there’s a reason her awards show presentations with Will Ferrell are more popular than the actual nominees), this comic chameleon is main character energy.
It’s a zeal that shines – rather than outshines others – when she’s working in a team environment.
Her latest project, Palm Royale, proves the point. But for one of the great comic actors of her generation, this series is no laughing matter. Well, not really anyway.
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Households, all alike in indignity, in fair Palm Beach, where we lay our scene.
This coiffured and couture-laden crew are barely holding it together and remaining civil as we follow the tales of these day-drunk housewives who use philanthropy to create ills rather than cure them.
You can practically smell the Elnett hairspray and taste the harsh liquor from the first scene.
Imagine Mad Men, with more pills, and Big Little Lies, without the iPhones.
Wiig plays a social-climbing hustler trying to gain access to an exclusive country club in Florida – the titular Palm Royale – amid a society of air kisses, social upheaval and a hierarchy whose men are there to be lampooned.
Sound familiar?
The only difference from the current political landscape in the USis this series is set in the heady days of 1969 (so fake tan wasn’t around). The coincidence of this the show being set in Florida and airing in 2024 – ahead of the next US presidential election and (potential) face-off sequel between Donald Trump and Joe Biden – is not lost on the show runners, a group that includes Wiig.
Gender relations, an abortion arc in the pilot and a tender, yet heartbreaking tale, about miscarriage are just a few of the contemporary touchstones.
Wiig plays Maxine, Palm Royale’s protagonist, a former beauty queen who married into money and is desperate to be accepted into the social set.
She stars alongside acting greats such as Alison Janney, comedy queen Carol Burnett and Laura Dern, who also serves as an executive producer, and who helped bring to life this adaptation of the 2018 novel Mr & Mrs American Pie by Juliet McDaniel.
Grammy-winner Ricky Martin and, depending on who you ask – the world’s next big supermodel or nepo baby, Kaia Gerber (daughter of Cindy Crawford) are all along for the ride with minor roles in this broad ensemble.
Working with Burnett – Wiig’s idol and the trailblazing woman of comedy – was a highlight for Wiig.
“It felt very surreal for me to go from watching (The Carol Burnett Show) before I even knew what I wanted to do with my life to being in a scene with her,” Wiig has said.
Burnett, who plays Maxine’s comatose aunt-in-law Norma, has been similarly gushing of her younger colleague: “I had trouble when we were shooting and I was in the coma and she’s doing all these monologues and slapping herself in the face to keep it together. I was biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, thinking, ‘I can’t spoil this take’ …”
But Burnett argues anyone who mistakes Wiig for simply a comic actress underestimates the depth of her talent: “I want to go on the record about something. This lady (Wiig) … in the final scene of the whole show – I don’t want to give it away, but she has a moment where, if this were a movie, she would win an Oscar. It’s a master class of acting.”
Wiig has treated the plaudits with characteristic humility.
“One thing I really tried to focus on, to keep with her throughout all the episodes, was just my character’s relentless positivity. Even if she’s saying something that’s either unkind or sad or whatever, she still says it with this bubbly sunshine energy,” Wiig says. “She almost has to, because, if there’s a crack in that, then I think her vulnerability and her pain and insecurity would come out. So I think there’s a lot of ‘Keep it together, Maxine’. And it looks exhausting, because she’s just going, going, going.”
Palm Royale, which has had mixed reviews overseas, is not a funny series, per se, but it uses Wiig’s natural comedy for a type of sympathetic drama.
Hers is a performance with more heart than anything we’ve seen ever from her on screen.
As if there were ever any question, Wiig can act. But don’t tell us she is moving away from comedy for good?
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Kristen Wiig was born in 1973 in Canandaigua in New York and dropped out of university to pursue an acting career without telling her parents Jon Wiig and Laurie Johnston. After moving to LA she joined the iconic improvisation troupe, the Groundlings, alongside the White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge and collaborator Maya Rudolph.
A return to the US east coast saw her in 2005 become a full-time cast member of Saturday Night Live. She quickly became one of the show’s most cast performers, appearing in more sketches than any other member during season 34. She went on to have a number of minor, but memorable film roles, notably in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up and Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut film. Her breakout came in 2011 when Bridesmaids – a film she co-wrote – blew up the box office in a similar way Barbie did in 2023.
She appeared in the ill-fated (and ill-received) all-female Ghostbusters reboot in 2016.
Despite being better known for her comedy where her as Hollywood star Maya Rudolph told Vogue, her “sense of humour can go to an almost bizarre level”, Wiig has dabbled in drama and even horror, appearing in 2017’s The Martian alongside Matt Damon, and The Mother! – an indie film where she kills the Jennifer Lawrence’s lead character.
Wiig is married to actor, writer and photographer Avi Rothman. The pair have four-year-old twins, Shiloh and Luna. She recently opened up about her journey to motherhood. The pair tried IVF for three years before turning to surrogacy.
“I remember when our doctor mentioned going other routes and I was just like, ‘Nope. Don’t ever bring that up again. I’m getting pregnant. I’m doing this’,” she said.
“I finally realised that I just needed help. And, thank God, we found the most amazing surrogate.”
Her character in the series has a similar storyline.
“It (IVF) was such a struggle. When you go through it, you meet other people who are going through it, and it’s almost like this secret little – the whispering conversation at a party. It feels like not a lot of people talk about it,” she said.
“It’s such a private thing, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s part of my story and part of how I got my amazing family.”
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So, why so serious?
Well, the truth is Wiig doesn’t seem to think she is funny. As she said on a recent episode of Conan O’Brien’s Need A Friend: “I’m not the person at a dinner party that will tell this big, elaborate, funny story. I’m kinda quiet. There have been people who were surprised … I think people sometimes are like, ‘she’s not that funny.”
Millions of viewers would beg to differ.
In fact, many comedy fans await with bated breath Wiig’s full-circle return next week to Studio 8H to her Saturday Night Live stomping ground to play host.
There isn’t a person, or fan of hers, or the sketch show, that isn’t excited for the episode to see what zany characters, like Dooneese which has become comedy canon, she reprises or thinks of next.
Especially Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and producer.
The SNL boss nails Wiig in his assessment, saying her appeal to audiences around the world comes from the palpable sense of joy she imbues in everything she does.
“When Kristen’s performing, you see she’s really happy doing it. The lightness is what I love the most,” Michaels says.
Even with Palm Royale’s “drama” categorisation, Wiig manages to take the tense and the tragic and turn it into a romp with heart, soul and a lot of knowing laughs.
Palm Royale is streaming now on Apple TV.
