In Ryan Murphy’s ‘Feud’ on FX, Truman Capote goes to war with high-society ‘Swans’
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s hit FX anthology series, “Feud,” dramatizes a scandal that rocked New York high society in the 1970s involving author Truman Capote.
In 1975, Truman Capote struggled with a case of writer’s block. Having risen to fame a decade earlier for writing the literary classics “In Cold Blood” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the acclaimed writer, who was remarkably open about his homosexuality, had managed to surround himself with a coterie of rich, glamorous New York socialites whom he nicknamed his “Swans.” Capote ingratiated himself into these doyennes’ lives and became one of their closest confidants — only to expose their most intimate secrets in “La Côte Basque, 1965,” an excerpt published in Esquire from his (ultimately unfinished) magnum opus, “Answered Prayers.”
The retaliation was swift. Capote’s high-society ladies closed ranks, banishing the novelist from the glitz and glamor of high society that he loved so much. The dramatic fallout sent Capote into a drug-fueled spiral of self-destruction from which he would ultimately never recover. He died Aug. 25, 1984, a month before his 60th birthday, in the Los Angeles home of his longtime friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of the late-night television host Johnny Carson.
Truman Capote in 1968.Mirrorpix via Getty ImagesNearly 50 years later, that scandal takes center stage once again in Ryan Murphy’s “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” an eight-part series that premieres Wednesday on FX and streams the next day on Hulu. Written by Jon Robin Baitz and mostly directed by Gus Van Sant, the juicy second season of “Feud” dramatizes Capote’s greatest betrayal against the backdrop of a bygone era of New York City. The first season, which premiered in 2017, explored the bitter rivalry between Hollywood royalty Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
“The White Lotus” star Tom Hollander plays Capote, and a bevy of actresses who rose to prominence in the 1990s and early aughts play his Swans: Naomi Watts stars as Babe Paley, a Vogue fashion editor and wife of CBS chief Bill Paley; Diane Lane as Slim Keith; Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest; Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis; and Demi Moore as Ann Woodward. (Joanne Carson, though not a Swan, is played by Molly Ringwald.)
“He knew that he was a tourist in their world, and at some level they thought he was lucky to be there,” Hollander said of Capote’s imposter syndrome among the Swans during a Jan. 22 press conference. “So when they felt he turned, they were vicious: ‘From you? You were the adornment in our house. You are not our equal.’ I think, at some level, he probably knew that, which is why he writes ‘Côte Basque’ in the way that he does, because at some level he’s enraged at his own position.”
Rating: 5