Carol Burnett and Palm Royale Creator React to Show's Explosive Season Finale at Official Emmy FYC Event

Apple TV+'s 'Palm Royale' aired its dramatic season 1 finale on May 8

Brendan Le is an Editorial Intern at PEOPLE with three years of experience working as an editor and writer.

Warning: Palm Royale spoilers ahead!

Carol Burnett and Palm Royale creator Abe Sylvia are sharing their thoughts on the 1960s thriller's explosive season 1 finale.

Burnett, 91, and Sylvia attended the show's Official Emmy For Your Consideration event on Saturday, May 11, at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, alongside stars Kristen Wiig, Ricky Martin, Leslie Bibb, Bruce Dern, Laura Dern, Kaia Gerber and Amber Chardae Robinson.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE on the event's red carpet, Burnett and the showrunner spoke about the series finale, in which Martin's character, Robert, solves the mystery of Burnett's mysterious Norma — who murdered her own roommate and stole her identity many years ago and has been living as her ever since.

"I thought it was great," Burnett says of the big twist. "And I talked to Abe Sylvia, who's writing it and everything. Now there's a whole new mystery about who she really is."

"So if there's a second season, I guess I'll find out," she adds.

Although Norma spends most of the series dazed and confused in bed recovering from a diabetic episode, Burnett says that it didn't require much convincing for her to take on the role."It was kind of funny because you get up at five o'clock in the morning, go to the set, you get all made up, put on a nightgown and go right back to bed," she jokes, replying "Hello!" when PEOPLE asked if it was a "dream job."

"I was really thrilled when she started to come out of it, but she still didn't have, couldn't talk," Burnett continues of her character. "And so I asked Abe and the directors, 'What do you want me to do here?' and they said, 'Just do gibberish.' So I just made up all this stuff and I loved doing it."

"It was a lot of fun to try to make people understand what she's saying, but she can't make it. Not yet," she adds. "And then of course it is fun when she finally does come out of it and she's able to talk. She doesn't want everybody to know. It's a secret."

Sylvia, meanwhile spoke -

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about creating Burnett's character from scratch, considering that she doesn't appear in the book that the series is loosely based upon, Juliet McDaniel's Mr. and Mrs. American Pie.

"The twist isn't in the book. In fact, Norma's not even a character in the book," Sylvia tells PEOPLE. "The book is wonderful and a beautiful jumping-off point for the series, but there was a lot of stuff added in that."Although Burnett didn't know about Norma's twist until the show was already halfway through with filming, the showrunner says that the veteran actress was so excited for the finale."She loved it. She loved it, and she loved that we named her alter ego Agnes, because when Carol first came to Hollywood, off of her success on Broadway, the first thing that she was pitched was a sitcom called Here's Agnes," he says, recalling Burnett's storied career in Hollywood. "And if she had done Here's Agnes, there never would have been a Carol Burnett Show. And she said, 'God, wouldn't that have been awful? Here's Agnes, Here's Agnes.' And she told us this story.""It's intentional that we called her Agnes. Just a little Easter egg for people who really know their Carol Burnett history, and she thought that was hilarious," he adds.

Also in the May 8 finale to the dramedy’s first season, protagonist Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons (Wiig) and Evelyn (Allison Janney) host the annual Beach Ball, attended by President Nixon. The night ends with secret identities revealed, affairs uncovered and an assassination attempt on the president that leads to a wayward bullet striking another character.

The Apple TV+ series stars Wiig as Maxine, an outsider looking to fit into Palm Beach’s high society resort club when she and her husband Douglas (Josh Lucas) move back to his hometown.

Per the official plot synopsis, the 10-episode miniseries asks "the same question that still baffles us today: ‘How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice to get what someone else has?' "

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Palm Royale is available to stream in full on Apple TV+.

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