Inside Capote’s Battle Royale, Starring Swans Diane Lane, Demi Moore, & Chloë Sevigny

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How do you define the enduring appeal of some of the most storied women of the 20th century? Ryan Murphy has a thought. “They were like the original Real Housewives,” he says, not without a hint of admiration. “That’s something now that people are obsessed with.”

In fact, he’s banking on it. This winter the limited series he produced, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, will premiere on FX, bringing to the small screen what may still be the most chattered about society scandal of all time. It dramatizes what happened when Truman Capote, having spent years as an intimate of Park Avenue lionesses, wove their deepest, most mortifying secrets into “La Côte Basque, 1965,” a thinly veiled piece of fiction published in Esquire. For those of us who revel in this kind of history, it’s a delectable romp through midcentury Manhattan—all masked balls, Billy Baldwin–designed penthouses, and very bad behavior by people with ­platinum-plated names. For newcomers to the spectacle, it’s a timeless fable about the dangers of ambition, the trouble with money, and the cutthroat instincts of ladies who lunch.

Murphy, who made his name as one of TV’s most ambitious auteurs with such programs as Glee, American Horror Story, and Halston, released the first installment of Feud, which followed the bitter rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, in 2017. The idea of basing the second part on Capote’s infamous falling out with a crowd that included Babe Paley, Lee Radziwill, C.Z. Guest, and Slim Keith, among others, came after he and the writer Jon Robin Baitz both read Laurence Leamer’s 2021 book, Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. “It was a story about ambition, friendship, and writer’s block,” Murphy says. “It was a story about how you top yourself, and whether you even can. And it was, at its core, a story about relationships between men and women, specifically gay men and their girlfriends. A feud is never about hatred; a feud is about pain, always. For the show to work, there had to be a great split that was about heartache as opposed to hatred, and Babe and Truman were at the center of that.”

For a time Babe Paley and Truman Capote (played by Naomi Watts and Tom Hollander, respectively; the cast also includes Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny, Molly Ringwald, and the late Treat Williams) were practically inseparable. She was the famously gorgeous wife of CBS chief Bill Paley and a former fashion editor about whom Capote wrote, “Mrs. P had only one fault. She was perfect. Otherwise, she was perfect.” He was the Lilliputian author of the best-seller In Cold Blood, a man about town whom the New York Times once said was “particularly attractive to the gilded people.” The story goes that the two met when the film producer David O. Selznick asked the Paleys whether he could bring his friend Truman along for a ride on their plane. Assuming that Selznick meant the former president, they said yes; despite the misunderstanding a best friendship was born.

SWAN ARTISTS

To portray the players behind one of history’s most glamorous scandals, you can’t use just any actors.

Naomi Watts as Babe Paley

Oscar nominee Watts shares Paley’s delicate features and uses her dramatic chops to portray the elegance and vengeance the story requires. We wouldn’t cross her.

Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson

The wife of Johnny Carson was a Capote confidante after the New York crowd dropped him; he even died at her Bel Air home. Ringwald gives her a charming L.A. levity.

Tom Hollander as Truman Capote

BAFTA winner and Tony nominee Hollander steps seamlessly into Capote’s monogrammed loafers, making the character his own—when he’s good, bad, and awful.

Demi Moore as Ann Woodward

Woodward was an outspoken detractor of Capote, but perhaps it’s understandable: He did spread the rumor that she had shot her husband on purpose.

Diane Lane as Slim Keith

Keith, who was fictionalized in Capote's story as Lady Ina Coolbirth, was the fashionable former wife of Howard Hawks, Leland Heyward, and Baron Keith of Castleacre. She cut Capote off completely after “La Côte Basque, 1965.”

Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill

The former Ally McBeal captures the glamour and formidable intelligence of the late princess—but also perfectly portrays her taste for mirth and mischief.

Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest

Guest, played by Chloë Sevigny, was one of the only Capote confidantes who didn’t cut him off completely—perhaps because her own secrets weren't spilled.

Treat Williams as William Paley

The late Williams plays William S. Paley, Babe's complicated husband whose perch as the head of CBS gave him enormous power—but whose personal life became fodder for Capote.

Feud begins with that fateful meeting in 1955 but gets quickly to the betrayal. Capote, hard pressed to deliver his follow-up to In Cold Blood, a promised peek inside the lives of the elite to be called Answered Prayers, decided to print an excerpt from the novel (which is, to this day, unpublished and the subject of any number of wild rumors) to gin up excitement and keep his publisher from taking him to court. His characters, one of whom prophetically quips, “An uproar is exactly what I want,” gathered at the eponymous East 55th Street restaurant and fiendishly amused one another with stories that were reportedly pulled from real life, including one about Cleo Dillon (a ringer for Paley) and her husband’s gruesomely memorable dalliance with the wife of New York’s governor. Publishing the story was an indiscretion that would cost Capote his friendship with Paley—but she wasn’t the only one who dropped him.

“It did shake the world,” says R. Couri Hay, who knew Capote and some of his Swans, of “La Côte Basque.” “Truman’s story showed you the innermost secrets of a group of people who were idolized. It wasn’t reality TV, it was reality. Ann Woodward killed herself after the story came out. How much more real can you get?”

He goes on, “After it was published, there was no question that certain doors were slammed shut to Truman. Part of it was the fear that he’d actually publish that final book and their lives would be served up to the entire world after they’d gossiped with him for years.”

“La Côte Basque” didn’t betray just Paley. Capote’s story also burned bridges with Slim Keith, the well and often married socialite; Lee Radziwill, an actual American princess and Jackie Kennedy’s sister; and Ann Woodward, the widow of banking heir Billy Woodward, whom she shot and killed one night in Oyster Bay (after dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) when she allegedly mistook him for a prowler. All of the women—who were collectively known as Capote’s “Swans”—were deceived and defamed, and what Feud gets at so deliciously isn’t just how they were wronged but how, when it happened, they closed ranks, linked arms, and set about exacting their revenge.

“I had a general awareness of Truman betraying these close friends who really were his entrée into this world that he so desperately wanted,” says Demi Moore, who plays Woodward. (The interviews and photo shoots in this story were conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike.) “But I didn’t know the details. I was more aware of and intrigued by the idea that he is the inspiration for Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. I have a daughter named Scout, so obviously that book has real importance to me.”

Still, not being a Capote obsessive didn’t keep Moore away from the project. “Ryan and I met years ago, way before he was doing what he’s doing,” she says. “And off and on we’ve tried to do something together. This time the message he left was, ‘Tell her to get on the phone with me and don’t talk herself out of it.’ And so I thought, When we get on the phone, whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

(Murphy says, “Demi is somebody I’ve had 10 meetings with over 20 years, begging her to play parts. She always comes into the room, and you tell her what the part is, and she’s like, ‘I don’t think I’m right for that.’ So this time around I was like, ‘I’ll tell you what it is, and you’re not allowed to say anything but yes.’ ”)

Sitting in the Plaza Hotel, where this story was photographed and where Capote threw his legendary Black and White Ball, Moore explains what gives the series modern appeal. “I appreciate that it’s a period piece set in an intriguing world,” she says. “There’s also the question of loyalty and integrity. The wonderful thing Ryan does is he brings forward a deeper resonance wrapped in an entertaining package. I personally don’t love the idea of vengeance, but I think that there’s much more to this: heartache, loss, and valuing what you have.”

Chloë Sevigny, who plays C.Z. Guest—notably, one of the only friends Capote didn’t betray in the story—puts it a bit more bluntly. “It’s about this dying world that an older generation is still holding on to, and what that means to them,” she says. Not that all its trappings have gone extinct. “I’m from Darien, Connecticut,” Sevigny says. “I still send handwritten thank-you notes in the days of text and emails. I think there’s a certain elegance to these ladies that, as I am aging, I want to inhabit more.”

The series doesn’t skimp on portraying that refinement. When Murphy and his team couldn’t find the paisley fabric that hung on Paley’s walls, they recreated it. The exterior of the onscreen Côte Basque? It’s Daniel. And the Swans' gowns for Feud’s own Black and White Ball—which features Pall Mall cigarettes on the tables, just as at the real event—were designed by Zac Posen. (The costumes across the series were designed by producer and costume designer Lou Eyrich.) “There was a lot of attention paid to history,” says Gus Van Sant, who directed the series. “The biggest moment is the Black and White Ball. It was the most stressful, because we wanted to make sure we got everything, but it was beautiful, too.”

When he landed the gig, Posen says, “I went into a deep historical dive: materials, feathers, sequin finishes. It was an honor to create couture costumes for some of the most talented, iconic women in entertainment, playing some of the most important ladies in social history at an event that changed history. The experience on set was life-altering. At one point I said to Gus and Ryan that I felt I was on a Zeffirelli set. The opulence was in the air.”

Of course, not all of the research came from secondary sources. “I remember being at this party in, I don’t know, 1979, and it was, like, Diana Vreeland, Diane von Furstenberg, Warhol, Liza Minnelli and her boyfriend, Baryshnikov, and all these people,” says Diane Lane, who plays Slim Keith. “Treat Williams was there—God, I loved Treat—and he had just done Hair, so he was the hot dude of the moment. We talked about that party, and he said, ‘I remember you showing up, and I was like, What’s this 15-year-old girl doing here?’ I was like, ‘Well, how do you think I felt?’ It was almost Edwardian. I would just sit there and be quiet, listen, look around, and try to keep track of who is who.”

If there’s one thread that connects Murphy’s projects, it’s that idea of keeping track. (Okay, that and the fact that he has his own flock of Swans, actresses like Sevigny, Sarah Paulson, and Jessica Lange, who appear in many of his shows.) He isn’t just creating work about the dustups of the rich and famous, he’s telling stories that are essential to understanding a world he adores and informing new generations about the people and ideas that were influential to him. It’s a history lesson about things you actually want to know.

“Feud has to be about something systemic in the culture,” Murphy says. “If you look at the first season, it wasn’t just about Crawford and Davis, it was about the movie star system going away and not taking care of the legends who were supplanted when a new Hollywood came up in the late 1960s. When I was a child watching talk shows with my grandmother, Truman Capote was on every single one. He was famous for being a talk show personality, and I remember watching him and thinking, Oh, there’s something about me that’s like him. I would circle his name in my TV Guide because it would announce when he was on. Then, as I got older, I became entranced with the Babe Paley aesthetic. I was obsessed with her in terms of how she entertained, how she dressed, the pain of her life, the artifice of her life… So, to have those two people at the center of it was great.”

Sevigny recalls her first day on set, filming a scene meant to take place at Guest’s Long Island spread. “I remember that day: Ryan came to set, and I was doing a walk-and-talk with Diane and a horse,” she says. “He was just like, ‘Oh, horses! Diane Lane and Chloë Sevigny! Slim Keith and C.Z. Guest!’ You can feel his genuine love for all the characters and the stories he’s telling every single time. He is so detail-oriented. Every single thing is approved by him, and you feel him cradling it. I know he feels this is the highlight of his career.”

The details of Feud, however, aren’t just on its surface. “Ryan and I had exhaustively intimate conversations about what friendship is, what happens as you get older, and how there’s a gulf that can open up between you and the people you love as you change,” says Baitz, who wrote the series. “The other thing we obsessed about were those moments when a culture splits, and this story exists at this point where a world of elegance, ritual, and class is being supplanted by a fervor of youth: disco, Studio 54, drugs, and all. What had been interesting and glamorous was no longer, and we both felt the poignancy of that.”

For Moore, the tug-of-war between truth and rumor will also be recognizable to today’s audience. “I think if there’s anything [to take from the series,] it’s really knowing the power of our words. They can ruin someone’s life,” she says. “It’s no different from what our tabloids today exist on, with no regard for the human being and what words might do to them. Have we gotten to where the truth doesn’t matter?”

Capote’s final novel, Answered Prayers, was said to be named for a quote attributed (possibly apocryphally) to Saint Teresa of Avila: “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” It’s impossible to watch Feud and not muse on that sentiment. What happens when people who have gotten everything they want—fame, fortune, power, and prominence—have to live with the consequences? It’s a conundrum Capote and his Swans grappled with, and it’s one we still struggle with today.

“The hardest thing in life to do is to end it well,” Murphy says. “If you look at Truman and the women in our piece, they didn’t. C.Z. Guest did, but everyone else was either ostracized, alienated, alone, drunk, or drug-addicted amid all the things they prayed for and wanted desperately. When I was a kid we’d get the Indianapolis Star, and every day I’d cut out Liz Smith’s articles about Babe and Truman, and I wanted to be like them. The thing that I have taken away from having worked on this show is, Yeah, not so much. I pray that I’m not like them. That was the wake-up call, if you really look at all these things that we want and idolize and covet. Everybody struggles. Everyone.”

Photographs by Ruven Afanador
Styled by Bernat Buscato

In the top image: On Diane Lane: Ralph Lauren Collection jacket ($2,490), vest ($1,290), and pants ($1,290); Sarah Flint pumps ($550); Tiffany & Co. Schlumberger necklace and brooch. On Demi Moore: Nina Ricci by Harris Reed top, skirt, hat, and flower choker; Verdura ring ($11,500); Cartier bracelet (on dog, $235,940). On Chloë Sevigny: Valentino coat ($70,000), shirt ($1,800), and skort ($1,700); Valentino Garavani tie ($420); Dolce & Gabbana sandals ($795); Verdura earrings ($12,500) Tailoring by Lars Nord; Set Design by Charlotte Malmlof

Diane Lane: Hair by Stefano Greco for Mr. Smith Hair at Art Department. Makeup by Lisa Houghton for Chanel Beauty at Walter Schupfer Management. Production by Area1202. Shot on location at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Chloë Sevigny: Hair by Kabuto Okuzawa for Oribe. Makeup by Gita Bass for Chanel at the Wall Group. Nails by Kayo Higuchi for Chanel Beauty. Production by Area1202. Shot on location at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Demi Moore: Hair by Danielle Priano for SexyHair. Makeup by Hung Vanngo at the Wall Group. Nails by Kayo Higuchi for Chanel Beauty. Production by Area1202. Shot on location at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

This story appears in the October 2023 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW

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