The second installment in Ryan Murphy’s FEUD anthology, FX's FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans is an eight-episode limited series based on the bestselling book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer.
Acclaimed writer Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) surrounded himself with a coterie of society’s most elite women – rich, glamorous socialites who defined a bygone era of high society New York – whom he nicknamed “the swans.” Beautiful and distinguished, the group included grande dame Barbara “Babe” Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny) and Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart). Enchanted and captivated by these doyennes, Capote ingratiated himself into their lives, befriending them and becoming their confidante, only to ultimately betray them by writing a thinly veiled fictionalization of their lives, exposing their most intimate secrets. When an excerpt from the book, Answered Prayers, Capote’s planned magnum opus, was published in Esquire, it effectively destroyed his relationship with his swans, banished him from the high society he so loved and sent him into a spiral of self-destruction from which he would ultimately never recover.
The series also stars Demi Moore as Ann “Bang-Bang” Woodward, Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson, Treat Williams as Bill Paley, Joe Mantello as Jack Dunphy and Russell Tovey as John O’Shea.
Written for television by Jon Robin Baitz, FX's FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans was directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler and Jennifer Lynch. The show is executive produced by Ryan Murphy, Alexis Martin Woodall, Baitz, Van Sant, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Naomi Watts, Eric Kovtun and Scott Robertson. It is produced by 20th Television.
