In the first season of Feud, viewers got to see the histrionic battle between movie stars Joan Crawford and Bette Davis on the set of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? In Ryan Murphy’s hand, the story was a crackling story of a war between two oversized personalities, each desperate to hold on to relevance in an increasingly modern world. After the success of the first season, it was announced that the second season would look at the conflict between Prince Charles and Princess Diana. That show never happened (Netflix’s The Crown told the story instead), and seven years later, the second series premiered, focusing on the story of Truman Capote and his celebrated Swans.
Capote, the great American writer of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s became a garrulous gadabout who ingratiated himself to a coterie of New York high society matrons he dubbed his Swans because of their beautiful elegance. Capote’s friendships with these women gave the author a much-desired entry into high society, a craving he inherited from his ambitious, if neglectful mother. Though Murphy was all over the Bette Davis vs. Joan Crawford season, for this slate of episodes, Gus Van Sant and Jon Robin Baitz take over most of the creative duties, with Van Sant directing six of the eight episodes, and Baitz wrote all of the episodes, adapting Laurence Leamer’s best-selling book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. From that tome, Baitz moulded a high-drama campfest that feels especially relevant with Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise. It’s too much of a stretch to compare Capote and Housewives impresario Andy Cohen, but it’s tempting to draw those similarities, especially in scenes in which Capote luxuriates in the bitchy repartee of his Swans.
So, even though Van Sant and Baitz have a compelling story to tell, the pacing is off and too much is given in the first episode. Essentially, the whole story takes place in the first episode, and the following seven deal with the fall out, which feels repetitive and far less interesting. Essentially, Van Sant has created a fantastic TV-movie and a fine-to-dull series to follow.
In Capote vs. The Swans, we see Capote (Tom Hollander) lunch with a group of fabulous, wealthy women: Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny), Lee Radziwell (Calista Flockhart), and his most beloved Swan, Babe Paley (Naomi Watts). These women are the leaders of their society and revel in Capote’s sharp wit. There seems to be genuine love and affection – especially with Paley – but a lot of their interactions rely on the collective bitchiness that is flung over tasteful lunches at La Côte Basque. We are also introduced to Capote’s capability for cruelty with his fractured relationship with the tragic Ann Woodward (Demi Moore), a society lady who was involved in the shooting of her husband, which Capote described as a murder, causing the widow to be cast out of society as a murderess. None of the other Swans feel too much empathy for Woodward until Capote directs his poison pen at them, with a thinly veiled short story published in Esquire that laid bare all of the secrets of his friends, including the infidelities of various husbands as well as wives. The reaction is swift and blunt: under Keith’s leadership, the women close ranks and freeze Capote out of society. This ostracization leads to a precipitous fall into alcoholism and ruin for Capote.
The main issue with this series is that the script does little to examine Capote’s motivation for betraying his close friends. Baitz doesn’t get at the heart of why the writer decided to do his best friends – and we also don’t really see why his friends held this grudge for so long. Because the source of all this drama is elusive to the viewer, it’s difficult to understand just why any of this is happening. Yes, what Capote did was despicable, but really is it bad enough to stop speaking to him for nearly a decade? It all starts to feel a bit high school, and no one comes off well.
After the fantastic first episode, we get to a run of television that has moments of brilliance but studded in a mass of mediocrity. Van Sant does a great job in capturing an Edith Wharton-esque New York of the 1960s to the early 1980s, in which social standing is held to a critically high regard. The scenes in the restaurant are gorgeously filmed and make for inviting viewing. Even when the action starts to drag in parts, he does manage to have moments of great inspiration. Baitz’s scripts are wildly inconsistent – at times his writing is very funny and diverting and there are also moments of smart social critique (especially when the show examines in the largely unearned privilege these ladies enjoy).
The actors involved seem to be having a ball, especially the mercurial Swans. Leading the pack is Lane, who is a vampy hoot as Slim Keith, a socialite and fashion icon who is credited with discovering Lauren Bacall. Lane plays largely against type, giving a villainous portrayal of a smart, yet ruthless, woman, and she’s gifted with some great, sassy one-liners. Flockhart also is fun as Lee Radziwell, a woman destined to be overshadowed by her more famous sister, Jackie Onassis. Sevigny is slightly less flashy in a role that is the most sympathetic of The Swans. And Watts does a beautiful job of portraying the brittle beauty of Babe Paley.
Of course, everyone will wonder how did Tom Hollander do as Truman Capote. It’s a monumental role, given Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning portrayal in the 2005 film Capote as well as Toby Jones’ well-received turn in 2006’s Infamous. Hollander has a tricky job playing a real person who became famous as an eccentric personality and media figure. Despite his literary cred, at the end of his life, Capote became a professional celebrity, showing up on talk shows to tell mean, gossipy stories about famous people. He had a much-imitated sibilant delivery, an airy whine of a voice, which added a ghoulish comedy to the cutting things he’d say. Hollander nails the impersonation and manages to dig deeper to create something meaningful even if the script sometimes abandons him. He’s very good and is quite captivating. No one will forget Hoffman or Jones, but Hollander’s work stands proudly alongside those two exemplary performances.
As a piece of queer television, Capote vs. The Swans is odd, especially as it’s airing in 2024 when queerness is in such a precarious place in national (and international politics). It depicts a strange time in American history when homosexuality was at once closeted and acknowledged. Much of the action takes place in a post-Stonewall America and queer politics occupy a strange place in the show. Capote was never an activist so the show shouldn’t try to shoehorn social justice in the programme, but Baitz and Van Sant try with decidedly mixed results. In the show’s queasiest episode, Capote is paired with James Baldwin (Chris Chalk, making the best of questionable material) as the two discuss their positions as queer creatives in America in the 1970s. Both men became legends, though Baldwin’s experience as a Black man meant he did what many Black artists did, leave America for France. Baldwin being Capote’s cheerleader is a headscratcher and tips dangerously close to the Magical Black Sage trope, but Baitz pulls a switcheroo at the end of the episode that just barely redeems the proceedings.
Still, Capote vs. The Swans is utterly watchable because when it works, it’s a sharp and biting good time. The cast understands the assignment and play the roles with zeal and relish, finding comedy even when Van Sant and Baitz try to mine something deeper.
A Seat in the Aisle 
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