It’s jam-packed with messy drama, so just how scripted is Members Only: Palm Beach?!
It can't all be real, surely?!
Palm Beach is basically a mood board of pastel mansions, private clubs, and the kind of social rules that feel made-up until someone gets blacklisted for breaking them.
Netflix’s Members Only: Palm Beach drops you right into that glossy chaos, following five women as they juggle friendships, power plays, and the constant fear of looking “new money” in the wrong room.
But because the show is so perfectly messy, people are already side-eyeing the big question… are we watching real Palm Beach society… or reality TV doing what reality TV does best?
Members Only: Palm Beach is pretty wild
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Netflix bills the series as a soapy reality show set in Palm Beach County’s “exclusive enclaves,” built around status, access, and the kind of brunch where one wrong comment becomes a three-episode storyline.
The main cast is made up of Taja Abitbol, Hilary Musser, Rosalyn Yellin, Ro-mina Ustayev, and Maria Cozamanis, each with her own lane.
The vibe is very “Real Housewives-adjacent,” right down to hierarchy talk and shade that hits harder because everyone’s dressed for a gala.
Even Mar-a-Lago gets referenced as a social power symbol, though the show itself wasn’t allowed to film inside due to privacy rules, according to reporting around production access, per Newsweek.
And here’s the twist that has locals clutching pearls. A big chunk of filming appears to have happened outside the Town of Palm Beach.
Town & Country reports that most filming permits were for locations across Palm Beach County rather than the island itself, which is part of why some residents feel like the show is “Palm Beach-ish” more than Palm Beach proper.
Is the Netflix show scripted?
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Let’s define “scripted,” because reality TV is rarely fully scripted like a drama… but it’s also not just five women organically wandering into perfectly lit confrontations.
There’s no reason to believe that the cast is handed dialogue to memorise.
In fact, in a reel shared by The Palm Beach Post, the show is described as “not scripted” and “not made up,” leaning hard into the “these women really know each other” angle.
However, when it comes to whether the show is produced… That’s another question.
Producers likely choose who films with whom, encourage conversations that need to happen on camera, and build storylines in the edit, especially in shows structured around social events, where everyone’s together. And confessionals? Those are filmed after the fact, to help the audience track the feud math.
According to Taja Abitbol, none of what pans out is fake: “…this is reality TV. It’s not scripted, it’s not made-up.”
She reportedly told USA Today: “We know each other and we do have conflicts and a sisterhood… It’s real life…The producers didn’t have to do anything to get us going because we already had storylines together, it’s not made-up. They’re all real storylines that really happened during the (social) season.”
So no, it’s not “scripted” like a Netflix drama. But is it assembled for maximum mess? Absolutely, and honestly, that’s why we’re all watching!
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