Many of you may remember the appearance of a strange man who spoke in an obscure Southern manner on Johnny Carson's long-running talk show that aired on NBC during the 1970s.
Author Truman Capote seemed mysterious and accessible simultaneously when few famous people had that social malleability. He excelled at ingratiating himself with people he wanted to impress, and Carson was always game for his rolling and riotous takes on culture and fame.
Now, FX has the second installment of Ryan Murphy's Feud, a followup to the 2017 anthology series that casts superbly recreating some bonafide infamous star-level conflicts. Feud: Bette and Joan was a masterful sendup of the vitriol that bubbled under the celluloid veneer between Hollywood stars Bette Davis, a New Englander, take-no-prisoners scrappy broad, and Joan Crawford, a feisty Texan who made it big. Now, after a seven-year wait, we get more grand dames in the second installment of Feud.
In Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, we see the ladies who lunch, though likely never ate any of it, as these social X-rays were dubbed "the original Real Housewives" by the network. But their gloss and gleam were all a ruse to the fact these women were powerhouses caught between eras where they were influencers but found publicity to be the height of bad taste and excelled at a high-level servitude role of power behind the throne of their powerful husbands.
Coming into their power ten years later, they likely would have helmed corporations or run a network at the height of their reign, as Babe Paley's husband Bill did for CBS.
Based on the book Capote's Women, by Laurence Leamer, this eight-part series airing both on FX. and Hulu tells of Truman Capote's inner circle of women, like Babe Paley came from old money (She was one of the fabulous Cushing sisters-Boston elites) who made La Cote Basque their stomping grounds to wield terror into any mere mortal femme fatale who tried to ascend in their societal circles.
Gus Van Sant directed most episodes, with others directed by Jennifer Lynch and Max Winkler. The cast is the gold standard: Tom Hollander (the most 'evil of gays' in The White Lotus) plays Capote to perfection as Naomi Watts plays Babe Paley, the wife of CBS chairman Bill Paley. Calista Flockhart transcends as Lee (Bouvier) Radziwill. Diane Lane cuts a fine figure as Slim Keith, Chloë Sevigny shines as C.Z. Guest, Demi Moore haunts the fated Ann Woodward, and Molly Ringwald captures the sunny California vibe as Joanna Carson. The late Treat Williams stars in his final role as Bill Paley.
Last week, Idaho Today got a chance to speak to the cast and Ryan Murphy at a press conference:
Idaho Today, April Neale: This question is for anyone, particularly Ryan. I felt when I watched this that the biggest tragedy in all this was timing that these women were so brilliant and so capable that they could've been the Bill Paleys, they could've run CBS, they could've done so much, but the timing was against them and society, and the same for Truman, in some aspects. And then, as I did a little research, I was shocked at how young Babe Paley was when she died and how young Ann Woodward and even Truman were. And I'd love to hear from anyone about how they interpreted the tragedy of timing with this particular story.
Ryan Murphy: That's actually something Robbie and I talked a lot about when we were first thinking of doing it, and I think the tragedy of that generation, which I would include my mother in, is a generation of women caught between The Dick Van Dyke Show and the Pill, who were, I think, very frustrated a lot of times with the misogyny of the society.
I think all of those women in our show were so brilliant in their personal lives and so intelligent that I think ten years-post, they all
would've had successful businesses or brands. You can see that they were all so smart, particularly in the world of manners and society and beauty, and I think they all would've had skincare lines and house care lines. They would've done a Kardashian thing, which is a very brilliant business way of looking at selling an aspirational lifestyle.
But some of them did have that—I mean, if you look at Slim [Keith], the tragedy of that is she was behind particularly, and so was Babe [Paley], so many incredible business deals that she helped put together professionally that she was not given credit for—both of them. So I think the frustration and the sadness was baked into that time.
That's one of the reasons [I think] they turned to Truman: they were all in marriages or with men who constantly put them in their place and told them they weren't enough. And Truman was the one who said to them, "You're actually smarter than your husbands. You control everything. All of these lives are because of what you're doing."
And there's a baked-in sadness in that, that so many women of that generation, I think, that we wanted to write to. And there's nothing more depressing than lost potential, which [I think] they all had.
Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans airs on January 31, 2024: WATCH THE TWO EPISODE PREMIERE TOMORROW | 10 PM FX—Stream on Hulu