‘Feud: Bette and Joan’: Ryan Murphy on How Marcia Clark Influenced FX’s New Hollywood Saga
With a title like Feud: Bette and Joan, and a subject like the making of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? — the 1962 camp classic starring off-screen rivals Bette Davis and Joan Crawford — Ryan Murphy’s latest FX series calls to mind one word: Catfight. But that’s the last thing Murphy was interested in giving viewers. “It’s a show about Hollywood, of course, but I think it’s also about the female condition today,” Murphy tells Yahoo TV. “The issues that those two women faced in the early ’60s — ageism, sexism, misogyny — are still happening today.” And with Oscar winners Susan Sarandon (as Davis) and Jessica Lange (as Crawford) in the leads, Murphy wasn’t about to do something “broad and campy and bitchy.”
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Murphy started working on Feud just after wrapping The People V. OJ Simpson, the Emmy-winning series about the Simpson murder trial that also explored the sexism and double standards faced by lead prosecutor Marcia Clark. “For me, Feud was sort of a continuation of the Marcia story,” he says. “Sadly, jumping back to 1962 — we realized Bette and Joan and Marcia, what they faced on a daily basis was really not that different.”
Feud: Bette and Joan will premiere Sunday, March 5 at 10 p.m. on FX.
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