The Big Picture

Feud: Capote vs. The Swans focuses on a lesser-known period of Truman Capote’s life, resulting in a heartbreaking story. The performances, especially by Tom Hollander and Naomi Watts, are the key to the series’ success. While there are standout episodes, the series overall struggles to come together as a cohesive season.

The life of Truman Capote has long been fodder for Hollywood to adapt and re-adapt, even decades after the writer’s passing in 1984. You wouldn’t be alone, however, if you were only aware of a certain range of Capote’s years — the period during which he researched and eventually wrote his bestselling crime novel In Cold Blood. Previous big-screen portrayals of Capote, one of which won the late Philip Seymour Hoffman an Academy Award, only seemed to focus on the particular time in his life when he was at his cultural and societal zenith before it all came crashing down. Meanwhile, the latest season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud anthology series fast-forwards to that latter period, when Capote fell from grace after a chapter from his unfinished novel Answered Prayers was published in Esquire magazine. Once held in the confidence of many of New York City’s most popular socialites for years, women whom Capote dubbed his “swans,” his decision to write a barely fictionalized depiction of their biggest scandals torpedoed not only his social standing, but, seemingly, his capacity to write another successful book, and his career would never recover before his death. Feud: Capote vs. The Swans tries to delve into the question of what really happened — with mixed results — but offers several standout episodes from writer Jon Robin Baitz and director Gus Van Sant, who largely assume creative duties this time around in a promising turn for the anthology overall.

Feud An anthology series centering on famous feuds, including Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and Truman Capote and the New York elite. Release Date March 5, 2017 Creator Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen, Michael Zam Main Genre Biography Seasons 2 Studio FX

The Story of ‘Feud: Capote: vs. The Swans’ Is a Car Crash in Slow Motion
Image via FX

When Feud: Capote vs. The Swans begins, Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) has never been more in demand. Riding high on the success of In Cold Blood, he floats through New York high society with little issue, seemingly immune to the occasional homophobic barb less-than-subtly tossed in his direction when he has the ear of everyone at every fancy dinner table. While his inner circle of “swans” seems entirely dependent on him as a confidant, it’s hard not to pick up on the fact that Capote is using their meetings as a way to absorb everything they’re telling him, a covert sponge already working on soaking up all the dirty details of their intimate lives. Chief among the rest of the group is magazine editor Barbara “Babe” Paley (Naomi Watts), who, when given the choice of calling up anyone for a shoulder to cry on, leans on Capote time and time again. For a while, their friendship does seem truthfully reciprocal — the real Capote was famously quoted as remarking that Paley’s only fault was that she was “perfect; otherwise, she was perfect” — which is what makes Capote’s decision to mine her secrets in particular so bewildering, and the ultimate fracturing of their relationship so devastating as it plays out throughout the season.

Granted, Capote doesn’t hold nearly the same level of affection for most of the other “swans” — his relationship with actress and horsewoman C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny) seems more conditional on whether he happens to be in her good graces on that given week, while only a thin layer of tolerance keeps his friendship with socialite Slim Keith (Diane Lane) more cordial. The more the series delves into Capote’s dynamics with these other women, the clearer it becomes that the strength of this circle was already hanging by a gossamer-thin thread. If that preview of Answered Prayers had never been published, it would likely have been something else that would have irreparably torn the group apart. Most of the secrets Capote wrote about — albeit with poorly disguised aliases in place of real names — were already notoriously open within society, whispered behind closed doors and thinly alluded to at parties. In one later scene, Slim even calls up a journalist to write a hit piece about an upcoming party Capote is hosting in an effort to discourage everyone from attending. The stark difference is that when Capote chose to immortalize these women’s sins in print, he did so under his own name. Simultaneously, this season of Feud almost wants us to question whether society was already looking for an opportunity to cast him out — and once they had it, his exile was swift and irrefutable.

‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans’ Is Held Together by Strong Performances

Those who have watched previous incarnations of Truman Capote on-screen will no doubt be looking for some very distinct characteristics in Capote vs. The Swans. The aforementioned Oscar-winning performance by Hoffman, as well as Toby Jones’ version of the writer in 2006’s Infamous, are admittedly tough acts to follow. Yet Hollander almost has the more daunting task of bringing a version of Capote to life unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. This is a Truman Capote who not only doesn’t realize he’s standing on a precipice and one wrong step away from plunging into insignificance, but also a man whose downfall comes in excruciating piecemeal. His ostracizing at the hands of his “swans” begins with subtle shunning and eventually culminates in blatant rejection, but even in the background, Capote is well on his way to setting up his own collapse. His drug and alcohol abuse reportedly skyrocketed around this time, and he was most infamously known for going on talk shows in his later years and giving interviews visibly intoxicated, several of which landed him in the legal hot seat with writer and professional rival Gore Vidal. Despite repeated warnings — from his doctors and long-suffering partner Jack Dunphy (Joe Mantello) — as well as his time in and out of various rehab clinics and his on-again, off-again toxic relationship with Jack O’Shea (Russell Tovey), Capote is depicted in Feud with an unwillingness to abandon his most damaging vices. Hollander has to inhabit a man at his highest but also beneath his very lowest, and it’s a testament to his capabilities as a performer that this version of Capote remains as utterly tragic as it needs to be, without once slipping into caricature or impression.

Although Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is technically an ensemble piece, the story could be distilled down into an arguable two-hander for Hollander and Watts. Their chemistry anchors the show to the point that episodes lacking in scenes between them start to suffer as a result. Whether you already know that Paley and Capote’s friendship was never truly repaired before their respective deaths or not — Paley passed away from lung cancer six years before Capote — that advance information doesn’t diminish the strength that the actors bring to their roles, both individually and as two halves forming a whole. When Watts is given the space to lean into the tragedy of Babe’s final years, starting with the discovery of her diagnosis and culminating in a serene acceptance of her mortality, those moments prove to be some of the season’s most poignant. Meanwhile, it may be difficult to discern what Capote’s real feelings are about the rest of the “swans” severing ties, but the show doesn’t fail to emphasize, over and over again, that he mourns the loss of Babe’s friendship right up until the end. Perhaps he never considered the possibility that airing her dirty laundry — including her coping with the evidence of her husband Bill’s (Treat Williams) many affairs — would lead to this outcome. Whatever the case, Capote and Babe’s split hangs over the entirety of the show, making it less of a table-flipping spectacle in the vein of The Real Housewives and more of a melancholy coda.

‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans’ Doesn’t Come Together in Its Entirety
Image via FX

Capote vs. The Swans struggles to form a cohesive whole, even though several standout episodes make for engrossing viewing in the hands of Van Sant and Baitz. The season’s third installment, “Masquerade 1966,” is set around Capote’s iconic Black and White Ball, which was advertised back then as the social event of the season, and Van Sant leans into that aesthetic by way of shooting the episode documentary-style, in black-and-white. It’s one of the first real signals we witness regarding Capote’s scheming, as we’re given a backstage pass to observe his mercilessness regarding the party’s ruthlessly cultivated guestlist. Later on, he leads just about all the “swans” to believe that they’ve each received the distinction of being the event’s honored guest — and in one notable scene, he makes a show of shutting out the Maysles brothers’ documentary crew from a private conversation, only to covertly crack the door open so that the camera can still have a window into what’s divulged. However, the series’ most powerful episode is also its penultimate; “Beautiful Babe,” written by Baitz and directed by Jennifer Lynch, is a stunning awards-level showcase for both Watts and Hollander, emphasizing the culmination of more than one life with unflinching simplicity.

Yet, despite these powerful standalones, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans never comes together as solidly as it could. Some of the women feel distinctly less defined than others; Calista Flockhart’s Lee Radziwill is mostly relegated to sitting at restaurant tables, while Demi Moore’s Ann Woodward, who arguably has one of the most tragic legacies of the entire group, is handed one significant scene before her exit from the story. Beyond that, the series isn’t all that subtle with its strong reliance on swan imagery — to the point that when Capote literally sits down at the table and carves into a cooked bird for a solo feast, it’s more akin to a blow on the back of the head than a graceful metaphor. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t brilliance amid the heavy-handedness, and some scenes will linger in memory thanks to solid performances set within the backdrop of a rarely depicted timeframe. Feud: Capote vs. The Swans isn’t the dramatic revenge tale that anyone may be expecting; it’s a more realistic, and ultimately more heartbreaking, story of public ruination.

Feud Feud: Capote vs. The Swans focuses less on over-the-top drama and spectacle and more on the melancholy of Truman Capote’s final years. ProsThe show depicts a lesser-known period of Truman Capote’s life to heartbreaking effect. The series succeeds thanks to its performances, particularly those of Tom Hollander and Naomi Watts. ConsThe series has several standout episodes but doesn’t coalesce into a strong season.

Feud: Capote vs. The Swans premieres with its first two episodes January 31 on FX, with episodes available to stream the next day on Hulu in the U.S.

Watch on Hulu