How do I create a nested dictionary under a key that is yet to exist?

I have an empty array.

I want to assign a value like this: array[key][subkey] = 'value'

This produces a KeyError as array[key] does not exist yet.

What do I do? I tried the following...

array['key'] = None
array['key']['subkey'] = 'value'

TypeError: 'NoneType' object does not support item assignment

I tried:

array['key'] = []
array['key']['subkey'] = 'value'

TypeError: list indices must be integers, not str

I tried:

array['key'] = ['subkey']
array['key']['subkey'] = 'value'

TypeError: list indices must be integers, not str

So what do I do?