“They didn’t really think he was one of them,” actor Tom Hollander said about the threads that unravel for his character in FX’s Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans. Hot off the success of his appearance as Quentin in Season 2 of The White Lotus, Hollander fills the shoes of Truman Capote, the iconic writer of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, who figuratively makes his bed and lays in it when he publishes gossip from his friend group of New York City’s most elite women, whom he nicknamed swans. “He didn’t believe that he was one of them either,” Hollander continued. “He knew that he was, at some level, a tourist in their world, and at some level, they thought he was lucky to be there.”
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Tom Hollander’s star-studded lineup of costars joined him at a recent press conference for the show, which also included its creative team. “There was a great desire for connection with one another,” shared Demi Moore about the exclusive bubble the swans lived in. Demi plays Ann Woodward, the first of the swans to confront Truman Capote after falling victim to his pen in the premiere episode. “Their life had certain limitations. I think that they were incredibly expansive in how they were living their lives.”
The Swans are comprised of a group of women who helped give birth to the term “Ladies who lunch,” and if there was a leader of the group, it was undoubtedly Slim Keith, portrayed by Diane Lane. “I got the wonderful cheat of having access to her memoir, so I have an extra amount of compassion for the amount of anger that she is accountable for in this story,” Lane explained. Slim was Truman’s entry into the Swans' circle, and she was also instrumental in his rise to success, which is part of why his betrayal was so egregious to her. “She did seem to have a sixth sense about not trusting him with too much of her secrets, so when she was chosen to be the person quoted about other people’s indiscretions in the infamous Answered Prayers article in Esquire, as though she were the one betraying the ladies who lunch and everyone else, she was really baffled.”
In addition to playing Babe Paley, Naomi Watts serves as an executive producer. “I think they were trapped in the wrong time, but that’s how society was operating,” Watts said of the swans. Babe, in particular, had been a magazine editor before becoming primarily known as the wife of the founder of CBS. “They were uncredited for the work and the amount of time they put into making their husbands’ businesses go well, but we showed it.” Married to a busy man with a wandering eye, Babe found an unexpected confidant in Truman Capote. “She fell into this relationship as if it was the deepest romance she’d ever had, minus the sex, but I think that allowed her to go deeper. And so when the betrayal occurs, she just comes undone, and they all do because they entrusted him.”
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When the world Truman Capote built began to fall apart, one of the few women in his life available to help pick up the pieces is Joanne Carson, wife of legendary talk show host Johnny Carson, played by Molly Ringwald. “She was really like his last friend,” Ringwald explained, adding that Joanne wasn’t considered a Swan. “It was such a betrayal because they adored him so much. And I think even though they knew he was a writer, they were going to be immune to that, to what writers do, which is use material in their lives and fictionalize it. It was pretty self-destructive what he did.” Joanne wasn’t spared from being used as a source of inspiration for Answered Prayers, but unlike the Swans, she remained Capote’s friend. “She was in love with his genius… I feel like there was maybe a little bit of anger on his part from being a little bit of a court jester.”
There’s definite anger on Truman Capote’s part, and in the premiere, when Ann Woodward publicly confronts him about the first article that clearly targeted her. The heated exchange includes the homophobic F-slur, which had a personal impact for executive producer Ryan Murphy. “And as a gay person who that word has been used about since I was three years old, I really understand the wound of it and the pain of it and how it really can turn your life upside down,” Murphy justified. “It’s a word none of us like, none of us use, and we had a lot of conversation about it, but it was so important to him. It was the thing that he claims that she did and also that Lee [Radziwill] did to him that broke his heart and broke his soul because he thought that was such a betrayal.”
“In the time period that we’re depicting, there is an emerging gay culture,” added Gus Van Sant, who directs and executive produces the series. He shared an anecdote about having an art teacher who was out of the closet in 1961 in a town that wasn’t progressive, but that Truman Capote’s decision to be public about his sexuality wasn’t the norm. “Truman was out by virtue of his art and his novels, the dates of his novels coming out. He predated many people, along with Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams. They were very exposed compared to the general culture, but it’s a fascinating sort of character within gay history. I’d often thought there’s this great story of him going with Norman Mailer to a working man’s bar, and Norman thinking they were going to get attacked, and Truman just pulled it off perfectly because of his energy and his peace of mind as an open gay man. We didn’t get to that scene, but he’s sort of a representation of queer culture through the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s and ’80s.”
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“I think he was the greatest writer of his generation,” Tom Hollander concluded, explaining why the Swans were so eager to welcome him into their inner circle. “For a bunch of people that were very rich and fancy houses but kind of, at some level, disempowered by their marriages, to have the greatest writer of his generation in their salons, he was an accouterment. He was a dazzling accouterment on their dinner table. And maybe he would celebrate them. So maybe at some level, their vanity was flattered by having him around and him understanding them and listening to them in a way that their husbands weren’t, didn’t have time for. He was filling a great gap in their emotional lives, and he was brilliant. He was an incredibly entertaining, perceptive, clever, interesting, singular man.”
The first two episodes of Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans premieres tonight at 10/9c on FX, and begin streaming tomorrow on Hulu.