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![Tom Hollander sitting in a chair nearby a fireplace as his character Truman Capote in "Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans." Tom Hollander sitting in a chair nearby a fireplace as his character Truman Capote in "Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans."](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/television/info-2024/feud-capote-vs-the-swans/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/container_image/articlecontentfragment/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/television/2024/01/1140-tom-hollander-feud-capote-vs-the-swans.jpg)
Ryan Murphy’s limited series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, with most episodes directed by Good Will Hunting's Gus Van Sant, 71, tells the scandalous story of writer Truman Capote’s betrayal of the high-society ladies he called his “swans.” The cast is stellar: Naomi Watts, 55, Diane Lane, 59, Molly Ringwald, 55, Calista Flockhart, 59, Demi Moore, 61, Chloë Sevigny, 49, and in his last role, the late Treat Williams.
Here’s what you need to know to enjoy one of the most star-studded, bitchy epics on TV in years, with some inside insights from its executive producer, Jon Robin Baitz, 62, who used to see Capote’s friends around New York in the ’80s and hung out with a couple of them:
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![Tom Hollander as Truman Capote in "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans." Tom Hollander as Truman Capote in "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans."](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/television/info-2024/feud-capote-vs-the-swans/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/body_one_cf_one/par2/articlecontentfragme/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/television/2024/01/1140-tom-hollander-feud-capote-vs-the-swans-2.jpg)
It’s about a great writer’s calamitous fall
As Capote, Tom Hollander, 56, fresh off the triumphant miniseries The White Lotus: Sicily, equals Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance in 2005’s Capote. His 1965 true-crime hit In Cold Blood made Capote the toast of Manhattan and Hollywood, and everyone who was anyone attended his famous 1966 Black and White Ball (recreated in the show). But after he shocked his swans by spilling their most embarrassing secrets in Esquire magazine in 1975, most of them cut him off, and he spiraled fatally into drugs and drink.
Baitz says Hollander captured each stage of the writer’s decline with precision. “Between takes Tom was on his phone watching footage of Truman from the particular period he was working on,” Baitz says. “He knew where Truman was at each particular moment, how drunk he was in each scene.”
![Naomi Watts as Babe Paley in "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans." Naomi Watts as Babe Paley in "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans."](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/television/info-2024/feud-capote-vs-the-swans/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/body_one_cf_one/par5/articlecontentfragme/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/television/2024/01/1140-naomi-watts-feud-capote-vs-the-swans.jpg)
The top swan was Babe Paley
Naomi Watts plays Capote’s favorite swan, Babe Paley, the imperially slim, infinitely stylish wife of CBS chief Bill Paley (Treat Williams). As Feud tells it, Bill humiliated Babe by bedding Nelson Rockefeller’s wife Happy (“The governor’s wildebeest wife, that fat-ankled harridan!” as Feud’s Capote calls her, to comfort Babe). Watts captures Babe’s insecurity and beautiful hauteur, her bond with Capote, and the poignancy of losing him as she faced terminal cancer. “She was one of the most-photographed women in America,” Baitz says. “He made her glitter and she made him shine. They were two wounded children together. They ameliorated each other’s loneliness.”
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