Feud: Capote vs. The Swans: You Ever See Somebody Ruin Their Own Life?

Has anyone ever been worse at reading the room than late-stage Truman Capote?

Welcome to our first recap of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans! I hope you’re wearing your finest chunky gold earrings and nicest scarves and you’re ready to gossip. As a cautionary note, before we get into it: this episode did contain some homophobic slurs, and someone dies by suicide.

First, in case you missed it, I wrote a Who’s Who in Feud piece that might be helpful if, at any point, you were a bit confused about the various players in this program.¹ Second: I don’t know about you — and I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts! — but I felt the first two episodes, which aired on FX on Wednesday night and streamed on Hulu Thursday, were excellent. Perhaps a bit long — this show loves a montage — but beautifully (and expensively) shot and very well-acted². The sets, hair and makeup, costumes and jewelry, and wallpaper and decor are fantastic; I think you could watch this on mute and enjoy it. You’ve got endless beautiful vintage cars and bags and sunglasses. Cigarette holders are deployed. China and crystal and art are all top notch. You can see the money FX spent on this and it was worth it. Also, I’m in the process of revamping my entire wardrobe right now and everything about this made me want to invest in more silk blouses and maybe some hot rollers.

Speaking critically, the pilot’s reliance on actual literal images of swans swimming about not once, but twice, might have been a little heavy-handed, and there was a moment where we found ourselves in a flashback inside a flashback inside a flashback — which was well-done enough, but still felt as if the writers hadn’t totally realized they were doing to need to go that deep through the looking glass. We were inching toward Feud: Capote vs. the Swans: Inception.

But the pilot’s main job is to set both the scene and wheels in motion, and this one had a satisfying amount of action, showing us the real-life events Capote chose to VERY LIGHTLY fictionalize in his short story “La Côte Basque 1965,” thereby enraging everyone who took him into their confidence. We open in 1984, which is — not coincidentally — the year Capote died, as he stands around and smokes and, as mentioned, literally looks at swans, and then we almost immediately flash back. This entire series is, essentially one long flashback. It was occasionally difficult for me to figure out when we were, and if you had that same problem, it helps to know that Capote published “La Côte Basque 1965” in Esquire in November of 1975, and that Babe Paley died in 1978. So our primary plot is stuck right there in the mid-70s.

But we start off in 1968 and learn the story that Capote lifted from Babe Paley’s life and called it fiction; I personally wouldn’t forgive him for publishing this, because it’s awful, and frankly, if I were Bill Paley (or the Rockefellers!), I would have ruminated on having him killed. Basically: Bill was cheating on Babe with Happy Rockefeller, the wife of Nelson Rockefeller, then the governor of New York. When Babe tells this story to Truman in her perfectly recreated famous living room at the St. Regis, he calls Happy all kinds of nasty things, including a “fat-ankled harridan,” and she agrees that Happy wears “too much sandalwood for a woman with her face,” which is an amazing burn — if meaner than I think Babe is ultimately shown to be.

Apologies for my janky screenshots. These fabric walls are AMAZING.

I will, however, note that Happy Rockefeller has AMAZING mural wallpaper, even if she does make the life choice to talk Bill into “one last fuck for the road” by telling him that she “wants to taste [him] in [her] mouth one last time.” Calm down, Happy! But Happy, actually angry that Bill has put a stop to their affair and not really particularly hungry for his taste, goes over there and sleeps with him while she’s got her period, leaving menstrual blood all over the Paley marital bed, their mattress, the sheets, the rug, and an ottoman, knowing that Babe is about to return from a trip to Paris (where she was sad and lonely at the Givenchy show) well before Bill can replace everything. This is truly insane revenge. Inspired, but insane. (“And you being in menopause,” Capote murmurs.) This is also not on Happy Rockefeller’s Wikipedia page, presumably because in real life, the woman in this incident wasn’t presumed to be Happy Rockefeller at all, but rather Marie Harriman. I wonder why they changed that, and if the Rockefellers spent today being like, “Excuse me?!?!?” Fun fact 1: Marie Harriman’s stepdaughter married Babe Paley’s first husband. Fun fact 2: The youngest daughter from Happy Rockefeller’s first marriage is allegedly actually the child of Nelson Rockefeller, her second husband.

Anyway, Babe has had it and wants to finally divorce Bill, but Capote talks her out of it, telling her she’s “not a sexual creature anymore” — how does he know!? This is rude — and reminding her that Bill is rich rich and she should make him pay. Like, literally: She should make him buy her some extremely expensive art that she wants. (This is advice that we later learn she took, because that art pops up on the walls later.) Truman then gives her a Valium, makes her wash it down with scotch, and cuddles with her while she tries to nap (which shouldn’t be too hard given that combo). He tells her that, really, only her pride is wounded — which I think is untrue, but I also think Capote is very bad at understanding women, a theory which borne out by everything else he does in these two hours. Babe stiff-upper-lips an agreement and murmurs that the only person who could ever really hurt her is Capote. “And that would never happen in a million years,” he says. Which is already a lie; Capote rolled his eyes hugely behind Babe’s back when he got to the house. She is hurt later because she felt he was privately contemptuous of her the entire time, and she is right. And while we’re here: Naomi Watts is so pretty in this part and also really, really good. Fragile, but tough, and just a very good crier. It’s a very adept performance so far.

We then flashback within this flashback, which is itself inside the larger flashback of the show, to 1955, to learn how the Paleys met Truman Capote in the first place. As you know, Bill Paley was a real bigwig mover and shaker at CBS — he is in fact the founder of CBS — and he and David O. Selznick and wives³ are going on a little jaunt to Montego Bay. Selznick wants to bring “Truman.” Bill furrows his brow and asks if he’s fun. “Fun? Are you kidding? Truman? The most fun there is. Wait until you hear him tell stories,” Selnick says. “Harry Truman is fun?” Bill wonders aloud, after they’ve hung up, and, reader, I laughed.

Anyway, Truman is fun, in the manner of a clever writer who knows he’s basically singing for his supper. He tells naughty stories at dinner (complete with swears, Nazis, the word “cock”), flirts shamelessly with everyone and basically acts the role of bon vivant whose goal is to titillate and entertain. One of the other guests — she’s “Louisa Firth,” who does not seem to be a real person — notes archly that she’d never trust a writer. “Why not?” Truman asks. “I mean, I agree. But why not?” Louisa presciently notes that “the storytellers have the last word, don’t you? And I would never let a storyteller have the last word.” Louisa then starts yapping about the atomic bomb, which, fair enough, but kind of a bummer when you’re on vacation at an AMAZING looking villa in Jamaica,⁴ so Bill swoops in and notes that writers do know an awful lot…

This is our opener for the next extremely terrible tale Capote lifts from real life for his short story: “Well, you don’t know this,” he begins. “There’s a murderer walking free. And you all know her. And I’m gonna tell her story. Socialite, B-level. She married up. He was going to divorce her. She blew him away.” Babe correctly guesses this is Ann Woodward. (I mean, whether or not she did murder her husband is up for debate but this is certainly who he’s talking about.⁵) Truman elaborates, telling the whole story as he believes it, which we see in black and white, so (as promised) we’re now in a flashback inside a flashback inside a flashback.