You could say that Feud: Capote vs the Swans has the most stellar female cast on television if it weren’t for the fact that in the last decade this has become a constant. Big little lies, The morning show or the first season of Feud serve as examples. But you can’t ignore this meeting of stars: Demi Moore, Calista Flockhart, Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny, eighties icon Molly Ringwald and Diane Lane as Truman Capote’s rich and influential best friends. And, as the trailer shows, they’ve all come to play.
The almighty Ryan Murphy, known for Glee, American horror story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace or Dahmer, is the man who has brought together the six stars that feature Tom Hollander as Capote after his corrosive work in The White Lotus. This time it has Jon Robin Baitz (Five Brothers) as screenwriter and Gus Van Sant (Elephant, Milk) in direction.
In Feud: Capote vs the Swans, the dynamic of the writer with the socialites whom he considered his friends and whom he betrayed with the typewriter is told. Watts, nominated for an Oscar for The Impossible, is Babe Paley, fashion editor and the second wife of the founder of the CBS channel. Lane (Unfaithful) is Slim Keith, a kind of influencer of the time for his fashion sense, and wife of film producer Howard Hawks, after theater producer Leland Hayward and baron Kenneth Keith in third marriage.
Sevigny (Big love) is another reference of the elegance of the elite, C.Z. Guest, after her career as an actress and after her as a columnist, writer and fashion designer. Flockhart (Ally McBeal) returns to the television spotlight as Lee Radziwill, interior designer and Jackie Kennedy’s younger sister. Ringwald, an icon of 1980s cinema as the muse of John Hughes, is Joanne Carson, Capote’s close friend who was with the writer on the day of his death.
Finally, Demi Moore (Ghost) is Ann Woodward, a showgirl of humble origins who entered New York high society after marrying William Woodward Jr, heir to the banking sector, and who became a legend in black history after the death of her husband. She claimed that she had killed him by accident, mistaking him for a thief, although the shadow of doubt always loomed over her as to whether she had planned the murder in cold blood.
And how did Capote betray them? With the book Prayers Attended where he planned to tell stories inspired by the lives and anecdotes that had been provided to him. He agreed on the novel with his editor in 1966 although, after the success of In Cold Blood, its consolidation among the social elite and its consequent excesses with drugs and alcohol, it was delayed in each of the renegotiated deliveries.
To dispel rumors about the decline of her literary career and raise expectations about the project, she sold the first four chapters to Esquire magazine, which published them between 1975 and 1976. It was at that time that the Swans (that’s what she called her friends) ) realized that I had written about them and without hiding it excessively. It is, therefore, a story about gossip, toxic relationships in high society, rivalries, betrayals and revenge.
Capote, for the record, never owned a copy of Answered Prayers, which was published as an unfinished work in 1986, two years after the author’s death. And when can we see this television adaptation of Capote’s dynamics? Disney has not yet announced the release date in Spain, although in the United States it will begin airing on January 31.
