Feud: Capote vs. The Swans

Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is the second season of the American anthology television series Feud created by Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen, and Michael Zam for FX. Directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler, and Jennifer Lynch, it is written by Jon Robin Baitz. The eight-episode season is based on the book Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era written by Laurence Leamer. Its first two episodes premiered on January 31, 2024, with episodes available on Hulu the day after broadcast on FX.

Premise
Acclaimed writer Truman Capote ruins his friendships with the Swans, a socialite group of New York City high society, by writing a thinly veiled fictionalized account of their scandalous and hedonistic lives in his (ultimately unfinished) novel, Answered Prayers. When Esquire publishes the chapter "La Côte Basque 1965", after the restaurant of the same name frequented by the Swans and Capote himself, several vow to ruin his life in revenge.

Main

 * Naomi Watts as Babe Paley
 * Diane Lane as Slim Keith
 * Chloë Sevigny as C. Z. Guest
 * Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill
 * Demi Moore as Ann Woodward
 * Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson
 * Treat Williams as Bill Paley
 * Joe Mantello as Jack Dunphy
 * Russell Tovey as John O'Shea
 * Tom Hollander as Truman Capote

Recurring

 * Jessica Lange as Lillie Mae Faulk, Capote's mother
 * Ella Beatty as Kerry O'Shea
 * Roya Shanks as Louisa Firth
 * Jamie Askew as Jennifer Jones
 * Scott Zimmerman as David Selznick

Guest

 * Rebecca Creskoff as Happy Rockefeller
 * David Healy as Nelson Rockefeller
 * Daniel Adaro as Chris O'Shea
 * Tom Stratford as Bill Blass
 * Marin Ireland as Katharine Graham
 * Alison Wright as Pamela Harriman
 * Pawel Szajda as Albert Maysles
 * Yuval David as David Maysles
 * Chris Chalk as James Baldwin
 * Charlotte Cronin as Cornelia Guest
 * Jeffrey Grover as Richard Avedon
 * Dennis Staroselsky as Stanley Siegel
 * Jessica DiGiovani as Kate Paley
 * Dan Cordle as Joe Capote

Development
FX renewed the Feud series for a second season in February 2017, with Ryan Murphy and Jon Robin Baitz attached as writers, with an initial focus on the relationship between Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales.

By April 2022, the focus had shifted onto Truman Capote and his tempestuous relationship with New York high society with Gus Van Sant on board to direct and Naomi Watts attached to star.

Baitz adapted the bestselling book Capote's Women by Laurence Leamer for the series. Executive producers on the series include Murphy, Alexis Martin Woodall, Baitz, Van Sant, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Watts, Eric Kovtun, and Scott Robertson.

It was the last project of Treat Williams before his death in 2023.

Casting
In August 2022, Tom Hollander was cast as Truman Capote with the cast also including Diane Lane and Calista Flockhart. In September 2022, Demi Moore joined the cast.

Filming
Filming began in New York in the autumn of 2022.

Release
The first two episodes of the season premiered on January 31, 2024, with episodes available on Hulu the following day. Internationally, the series will be available on Disney+ through Star and on Star+ in Latin America.

Audience viewership
In February 2024, Ryan Murphy Productions announced Feud: Capote vs. The Swans was the number one television series on Hulu upon its release. According to the streaming aggregator Reelgood, it was the eighth most streamed television series in the United States during the week of February 4, the third during the week of February 14, and the ninth during the week of February 21, 2024. According to the streaming aggregator JustWatch, it was the sixth most streamed television series in the United States during the week of February 5–11, 2024.

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans holds an approval rating of 77% based on 64 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While this Feud might lack the abundance of incident that made its predecessor such a nasty delight, Capote vs. the Swans ' luxe milieu and dynamite ensemble will keep spectators entertained." On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

David Bianculli of NPR praised the season and concluded that "Capote vs. the Swans deserves our attention. It's a good drama, a compelling story with a powerhouse cast — and in this new installment of Feud, they all do some very powerful work." For IGN, Emma Fraser gave Feud: Capote vs. The Swans a grade of 8 out of 10, praised the performances of the actors, especially Hollander's, complimented the costumes and the production design, and called the show a "delicious cautionary tale of writing." In commending the show's handling of the "complex, enduring, often co-dependent bond between straight women and gay men", Alison Herman describes in Variety that the "series is ultimately a sincere and moving study of a dynamic that’s rarely explored with such empathy and depth, a novelty that makes its flaws more forgivable as the price of ambition."

Other critics were less effusive about the season, particularly for its inadequate depth in plot and character development. Jackson McHenry wrote in his review for Vulture that "Capote vs. the Swans gives us plenty of the surface of Capote, of the public bons mots, but it has trouble getting inside his creative self." He elaborated that the show "delivers on the cattiness and the glamor and the factoids, like that Capote served everyone spaghetti and chicken hash alongside the champagne" in lieu of "a deeper insight into why Capote’s guest list was so revolutionary or how ’60s society was shifting as it happened." In Salon, Melanie McFarland noted that the female characters in Baitz's script lacked depth and observed that he "extensively invests in writing to one layer of these women’s interiority without convincing us that there's more to them than their vindictiveness, prejudice or selfishness." She also examined the comparisons drawn by FX and the show to The Real Housewives franchise, a perception she deems "a disservice" to the cast, and juxtaposed the show's portrayals of the women with those from the franchise: "Bravo's housewives may be as shallow as Capote’s, but Cohen is a master at casting problematic people into addictive spectacles. Conversely, Baitz and that cast stuff so much effort into their characters as to make them stiff objects instead of granting them the flexibility to be wickedly real."