Truman Capote wanted to title the book he was working on until his death, Answered Prayers — as in: “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones” — and the trailer for the miniseries Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans shows just how true that is. The series, which premieres on FX and Hulu at 10 p.m. on Jan. 31, will trace how Capote, played by Tom Hollander, became a social pariah by writing about his New York socialite friends in the few chapters of Answered Prayers that actually made it into the public.
The “swans” in the title include Babe Paley (actress Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny), Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart), Ann Woodward (Demi Moore), and Joanne Carson (Molly Ringwald). The trailer depicts the women’s appetites for “sex, money, and endless adventure,” as well as their catty attitudes. Then, of course, comes Capote to say, “Tell me everything,” and the women blithely oblige him.
When a chapter from the book comes out, the women are less than pleased. Paley exclaims, “What did I do to deserve your contempt,” while Keith cooly says, “He’ll be cut off from all high society, and that will kill him.” Capote, at one point in the trailer, simply says, “This is what a writer does.”
As with the previous season of Feud, which was about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, Ryan Murphy serves as one of the executive producers. Watts also is an executive producer on this season. Its directors include Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler, and Jennifer Lynch. IndieWire reports that Jon Robin Baitz, the season’s showrunner, adapted the script from Laurence Leamer’s book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era.
A version of Answered Prayers, which contained everything Capote had prepared for the novel, came out in the United States in 1987, three years after his death.
