With Laura Dern’s role in Apple TV+’s new comedy series Palm Royale, she gets to add a new first to her storied career. Palm Royale is based on the book Mr. & Mrs. American Pie by Juliet McDaniel, which tells the story of a former beauty queen looking to win the Mrs. American Pie pageant, awarded to the nation’s best wife and mother, just after her husband left her. Palm Royale makes many changes to the book, with the main character Maxine looking to break into Palm Beach high society when her wealthy aunt-in-law slips into a coma.
Dern joins the Palm Royale cast as Linda, who used to be part of Palm Beach’s elite before leaving that life behind to join the feminist movement in the late 1960s. Palm Royale isn’t Dern’s first miniseries, having won an Emmy Award for her performance as Renata Klein in Big Little Lies. With Big Little Lies season 3 reportedly on the way, viewers can enjoy Palm Royale in the meantime, which also boasts a strong ensemble and powerful female characters, including Dern’s Linda.
Laura Dern was born on February 10, 1967 to a pair of famous actors, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. The couple first met doing an off-Broadway production of Orpheus Descending and married in 1960. Tragically, their first daughter, Diane Elizabeth, who was born shortly after their wedding, died in a drowning accident at just 18 months old. In Honey, Baby, Mine, a book co-authored by the famous mother and daughter duo, Ladd referred to Laura as her “miracle child.”
Though Ladd and Dern divorced when Laura was just two years old, both her parents remained in her life. At the same time, their careers took off, with Ladd appearing in Chinatown and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974, the latter earning her her first Academy Award nomination. In 1969, Bruce Dern was featured in the movieThey Shoot Horses Don’t They, and in 1979, he received his first Oscar nomination for Coming Home. Laura Dern is the only member of her talented family to win an Oscar, and she took time in her speech to thank her parents.
Laura Dern made her film debut in her mother’s 1973 film White Lightning in an uncredited role. She followed it up with another uncredited role in 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore before being cast in her first credited part in the 1980 coming-of-age film Foxes. Since her debut, Dern has acted in nine films with her mother, Diane Ladd, including Wild at Heart and Citizen Ruth. Ladd also appeared in Dern’s television series Enlightened.
In 1992, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd became the first mother and daughter to receive Oscar nominations for the same film, Rambling Rose, for which Ladd was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Dern for Best Actress. Though they didn’t play a mother and daughter in the Martha Coolidge-directed film, they’ve taken on those roles numerous times. Together, Dern and Ladd are one of the most prominent mother-daughter actress duos, and looking at their filmography, it’s easy to see why.
For all the films Laura Dern has made with her mother, she’d never acted with her father, Bruce Dern, until 2024’s Palm Royale. This doesn’t mean they haven’t had the opportunity to act together before. In an interview with Metro, Bruce Dern shared that he was once asked to do a project with Laura, but his character would have had to sexually assault hers, so he turned it down. Fortunately, they have a much better relationship in Palm Royale, in which he plays her father.
In Palm Royale, Bruce Dern plays Skeet, Linda’s dad, who is in hospice care. Though Linda doesn’t approve of his marriage to Evelyn Rollins (Allison Janney), she does her best to make sure it doesn’t affect her relationship with her beloved father. In 2010, Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern, and Laura Dern became the first family to receive stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame together. Now, 14 years later, Palm Royale finally allowed the father and daughter to share the screen.
Source: Metro
Where To See Palm Royale
