Interview: Composer Jeff Toyne Talks "Palm Royale"
Apple TV+ is taking viewers back to the 1960s with their newest series, Palm Royale. Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) is new to the opulent world of West Palm Beach, Florida. Desperate to find a place where she belongs, Maxine sets her sights on the illustrious Palm Royale club where the city’s high society spends their time. Maxine, unlike the patrons of the club, is not rich and finds herself isolated, but she will stop at nothing to take the place she believes she deserves. Along with Wiig, Palm Royale boasts an all-star cast with Ricky Martin, Laura Dern, Josh Lucas, Allison Janney, Kaia Gerber, and the inimitable Carol Burnett.
To musically guide viewers through this topsy-turvy world is composer Jeff Toyne. He sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to discuss the musical inspirations, getting in the 60s mindset, and how he captured the show’s delicate balance of physical comedy and serious drama.
(This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)
© Kaori Suzuki
Beyond the Cinerama Dome: To kick it off, I always like to know how you started playing music and if film was also a long time lifelong passion of yours.
Jeff Toyne: Once I started studying music at the university level, I kept moving west and south. I started off in northern Ontario and went to school in southern Ontario, then moved to the west coast of Canada. Then I went down the West Coast to Los Angeles and studied at USC. When I was studying , the music that I was writing as a student composer had a lot in common with film music. Wagner called his operas total artworks. I always thought that films were the modern day equivalent of that; a total artwork where where all people from multiple disciplines are coming together to collaborate for a single vision and for a for a wide audience. I was interested in film in that way.
Was there a film score like in your childhood that you remember that really stuck out to you?
No, I didn't have a lightning bolt when I saw Star Wars or something like that. I do love films, television, and music. Being able to do the both of those as a vocation is as a little bit like, you know, somebody likes chocolate and peanut butter working at the Reese's factory. It's a joy to to work in this field.
You've worked with Abe Silva before, right? How did you get involved with Palm Royale?
Abe was the one who reached out. We go back all the way to school days where he was a student filmmaker at UCLA. He's the one that contacted me about Palm Royale and he has me at hello. He's really, really great to work with and we have a fun collaboration, so I was excited to see what he was doing next.
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After you he had you at hello, what else made you excited about the project?
There's, you know, there's lots of things to be excited about this project. It has an unbelievable cast and and also the nature of the show has some fun challenges for music. It's a it's a period piece and it's a comedy drama. Everything about it was fraught with musical inspiration and challenge. It was going to be really fun to work on the show. Abe was happy to have me bring my experience with orchestra and you don't often get to work in the jazz idiom in film or TV. Jazz can sometimes be a four letter word. Because it was a period piece, we were able to embrace that. Aesthetically it was very exciting and then Abe is such an amazing writer that the twists and turns that these characters go through...you fight to keep up with that musically. It was just going to be a rollercoaster ride.
So what were some of the challenges? I read some of your inspiration was Silm Aarons photography. How you get from the point of the still image inspiration to the auditory expression of it?
I think one of the reasons that that Abe gave that as an idea is because he didn't want to be too prescriptive. He wanted to leave room for my interpretation and also leave room for even a misinterpretation that can be a happy accident. He didn't want to nail me down too early or too specifically at the expense of maybe some great idea that was a little tangential. The setting geographically and the time epoch, it's a very fertile well to draw from. I don't think that would taste very good to draw from a fertile well but there's lots of source material. I like to do deep dives when I'm getting going. Abe likes music in his shows a lot. He likes songs a lot. The score is going to work hand-in-glove with the songs that the music supervisor George Drakoulias was placing.
Do you find it overwhelming when you have all of the history of the sixties to go through or is that just like kid on Christmas morning for you?
Well, this was a specific slice. It's not really the rock and roll side of the 1960s or the revolutionary or psychedelic side. Sometimes the music from the fifties was actually more apropos because these characters are older ladies. We were kind of thinking more about the music that they were hearing and the music of their world. Jimi Hendrix didn't make an appearance in any of the studies that I was doing. It was more specific to the characters. That led us to more easy listening. There was also a Cuban side because of where in Florida the show takes place. There's plenty to draw from in the sixties, but we didn't have to be inclusive.
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I was going to ask about the Cuban elements. I grew up playing percussion, so anytime I hear any auxiliary things, I love it. What was the how did you blend these two seemingly different worlds into your score?
It didn't seem like disparate worlds to me. There was plenty of Latin jazz. There was plenty of Latin albums at the time where there would be like the pop album and the Latin version of that music. Latin inspired music was super popular at the time. I could point to lots of examples from the era where either Latin, jazz, or even an orchestral element were blended together. I wasn't breaking any new ground. As far as I was concerned, it was a really natural style to work in.
I read that you wanted to mirror the classic way of film scoring. What exactly does that mean to you and how is that process different from how you would compose a different film or TV show?
There's a couple of ways to think of this as a slightly old fashioned score. For one, we recorded live musicians; live orchestra and live big band players. We're working in an idiom that has a sound that people would recognize when we're doing it right. We were very thematic and melodic. When I think about the score in kind of like an old fashioned way, though, we had strong, strong melodies. Each character has a theme and other ideas have themes and they have melodies.
My last question for you is, as you kind of hinted that earlier, the series is a bit of like a mix of drama plus physical comedy. So how did that kind of playful seriousness, duality come into your score?
That's a good question. Kristen Wiig is just amazing in the show and Carol Burnett can do more with a twitch of her eyelid than almost anybody else could do with their whole body. I think one of the ways that I find successful to approach comedy is to actually be very serious about the characters' points of view or their intention and to be with them in the moment, as opposed to being omniscient and commenting on the characters as we view them. An easy example is if the character thinks that they're the best spy in the world, then musically we're in their head. We could play a very, very serious James Bond theme even if they're completely goofing it up. I go with the character's perspective. I don't like the score to say, you're hearing music and this is supposed to be funny and the music is telling you that it's funny. I'm more with the characters and their intentions or their feelings in the moment. Even though they're in funny situations, it's usually really serious for them. I wasn't doing music that sounded funny on its own. I think if you hear the soundtrack, it doesn't really sound like a quirky, goofy comedy sound. I think the comedy comes from these characters having really funny reactions to very serious situations for their in their minds.
Palm Royale is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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