Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph Just Want You to Like Them
The New York Times
Good friends and “Saturday Night Live” alumnae, the actresses are each headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status.
Sometimes Maya Rudolph will watch a movie and marvel at how miserable an actor looks. “They’re covered in fake blood and broken glass, and they’re crying the whole time,” she said. “I don’t know how people do that for work! That looks so hard and stressful.”
“And how do you get all of that glass off your skin?” her friend and former colleague Kristen Wiig said.
“Listen,” Rudolph said, “glass seems tough.”
This was on an afternoon in late March, and Wiig and Rudolph, who specialize in lighter, glass-free fare, were perched high over New York in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel with a zillion-dollar view — rooftops, rivers, the Statue of Liberty in the distance. They were dressed in natural fabrics and neutrals, a far and elegant cry from the demented spandex and polyester they so often wore during their years on “Saturday Night Live.”
Acquaintances since their early days in the comedy scene (they met at a bridal shower hosted by Melissa McCarthy), they were both members of the famed comedy troupe the Groundlings before they found their separate ways up the 30 Rock elevator to “S.N.L.” And they have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers ever since: as co-stars in “Bridesmaids” (Wiig was also a writer of the movie); popping back into “S.N.L.” together; jointly presenting an Oscar. Now they are both leading Apple TV+ shows, each a comedy of wealth and status.
In “Palm Royale,” which premiered on March 20, Wiig stars as Maxine, a frenzied social climber in 1960s Palm Beach. In “Loot,” which returns for its second season on Wednesday, Rudolph plays Molly, a divorcée with a multibillion dollar settlement.
