When not reminiscing about the paradise lost with his “La Côte Basque 1965†excerpt in Esquire, Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) spends much of the first half of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans in an alcoholic fugue state. That is, until one James Baldwin (played by Perry Mason’s Chris Chalk) snaps him out of his funk to evaluate what it is Truman was trying to accomplish with Answered Prayers in the first place. In “The Secret Inner Lives of Swans,†the dramatized tête-à -tête between the two literary giants (who often criticized each other’s work in real life) offered Feud a chance to more ruthlessly depict the lives of Babe Paley, Slim Keith, and the rest of Capote’s flock. Their vanity, bawdy humor, and outright disdain for humility and compassion — “All my Swans are terrible mothers,†Truman intones as we watch a drunken Babe barely make it through a children’s birthday party, collapsing pathetically in her bathtub — are laid bare with a craven cruelty Feud had mostly avoided, as if the FX series hoped to offer a gilded version of the lives Capote most wished to embalm in his writing. Until Baldwin shakes him out of his stupor. As Chalk puts it: “James is a powerhouse, and Capote must be faced with a powerhouse.â€
How much did you know about Capote and his Swans before the show?
Very little. I was friends with Philip Seymour Hoffman because I was a member of LAByrinth Theater Company, so the only thing I knew was that brief soirée when Phil did Capote. I had no idea, truly. Forgive my North Carolina education. I had to learn a lot as an older man during this project.
How about Baldwin? I imagine there’s a very different answer to that.
Well, now we’re talking, baby! First of all, I think any young Black dude who has any sense of life, of his Blackness in America, knows of James Baldwin. So just coming up, though he was never heavily lauded in my younger education — again, North Carolina education has its own prejudices! — we still read some of his books. As I got older, I inhaled his work, because I resonate with anyone who is looking for healing as a society, especially in as many communities as he worked in, but my community in particular.
“Inhaled†is so apt: As soon as you read a bit of Baldwin, you want to read it all!
I think we owe it to him, because he devoured the world as well. And he spit it back out through his brilliant little brain. Even this time around I was like, Holy shit, there are so many videos and short films! He created with so much volume and intention. He just wanted to be heard. He wanted people to wake up from being goofy — “goofy†is not a great technical word, but that’s my word for a kind of general stupidity.
There is so much Baldwin out there to enjoy and watch. At what point do you take all of that in and decide on a way to make the performance sing?
The moment I was given this role, I was already like, Okay, I’ve got to do my version. But there’s infinite research! I never stopped researching. I’ll research up until we call “action.†Because there’s always an opportunity for a little tidbit of humanity and emotions, something that could decorate and tell a deeper truth.
He does have a very specific cadence in the way he speaks.
James is one of these people who lived in the present moment: They are their most authentic selves most of the time. But his brother speaks nearly the same way, so there’s his history of being a preacher’s son and being this great little writer, this great intellectual. And then the transatlantic, fake accent this era created — this all affected him. But when he listens, he listens with his whole soul. When he speaks, he speaks with as much of his heart as possible. There’s no word, no breath, wasted. That’s a fun person to play. It’s unrealistic in 2024 that someone would speak this way, but you know, that’s the beauty of going backward. These people really lived in their personalities.
Did you talk with writer Jon Robin Baitz about the need to bring in Baldwin to tell Truman’s story? Why is it important for the audience to see these two men interact?
I never did talk to Jon about that. But I’ll tell you why I think it’s important, despite what Jon thinks — you can ask him later. One: It’s a show full of white people. So let’s bring some color to the show. Seriously, with all due respect, the show’s fantastic and I love the show, but, like, that’s going to catch a person’s eye. Two: Who else can stand against Capote’s ego? Imagine if you bring in Gore Vidal — that’s his competitor! It feels as if Capote has just enough respect for James, just enough admiration, that he’s willing to listen to this noncompetitor. James is a powerhouse, and Capote must be faced with a powerhouse.
And, to your point, he brings race into the conversation.
This episode is like, Okay, but these are a bunch of white people! Let’s just pay attention to what we’re doing here. Which is a wink at the audience, in my opinion. That’s how I saw it, reading it. As a conscious human being who is very much into Blackness, I was like, Oh, what a great tool. How great to introduce an important person of the era, to have a gay rival of a different race, who Truman can’t quite be venomous to, you know? Like, how could you be mad at Jimmy?
Talk to me about bringing Baldwin to bear on Tom Hollander’s deliciously campy, bitchy Truman Capote.
He is such a little bitch, isn’t he?
He is, yes!
Tom is just the best. We had a wonderful time getting to know each other in the short amount of time we could — which is not always the case in television; especially me as a guest star, I’m in and out. But we had so much room to play because we had done the work: We talked about the vulnerabilities of playing these massive human beings. We talked about what anxiety that causes, and it was those vulnerabilities that allowed us to trust each other no matter what.
The entire façade of the Swans disappears in this episode; it’s almost like we’re getting the version of Answered Prayers Baldwin could’ve written — or the kind he’d hoped Truman would write.
He’s like, “This is your job. Wake up, my friend, you’ve been deluded. You swallowed too much of the blue pillâ€Â — or the red pill, whichever pill in that awful analogy. The only person who can get into this space and write this story is Truman. And wouldn’t it be amazing to expose this privileged, white American, capitalist world?
I wrestled with this question writing my recap: In the fiction of Feud, was this a real meeting between Jimmy and Truman, or was this a drunken fantasy dreamed up by Capote?
You know, I can’t consider if I’m a real person or not. That would be too spooky. I’ve got to play it as a real guy. Then you get to interpret it however you want to interpret it as a watcher. This is not the first time I’ve heard this sort of sentiment. It’s fun that an episode has been written that asks that question. But it’s better for me not to have an opinion. If I start to think of it as playing it as his imagination, does it become some sort of fetishism? It’s better for me to just play him as written, as a real human.
You have probably one of my favorite lines in the series, when Baldwin describes Capote as “the toughest little faggot in town.â€
He’s so tough, isn’t he?
What does it feel like to deliver a line like that in 2024? Which is meant as a cutting compliment, an empowering one at that!
What does it feel like? That’s a funny thing to ask. Well, what a guy to say it! Who else could say it in 2024 besides James Baldwin? You know what I mean? They put it in the right character’s hands. Personally, I wouldn’t say this line. No. Are you kidding me? That’d be crazy. But as far as text written, it was, as you said, a delicious little line that is also meant to be sweet. And it encompasses their world. That’s who they are in this world. If he was saying it to a Black person, he would have said the N-word. Because that’s who they are in the world of the Swans: They are their adjectives. They’re not their humanity.
We talked about Philip Seymour Hoffman, who so brilliantly played Capote, as did Toby Jones in Infamous and now Tom Hollander in this. But we haven’t gotten as many depictions of Baldwin — though there’s an upcoming biopic with Billy Porter attached. Why do you think it’s taken this long to finally see the writer get the small- and big-screen treatment?
I have no idea. Everything happens in waves, you know? Maybe because he’s TikTok famous — and that’s not even a joke! But whatever the reason is, it’s important. And thank goodness we have people who will play him with such grace and compassion and generosity. I imagine Billy will put his foot in his version as well. Because we all honor this guy and love this guy. If I’m speculating, I think it’s because people are willing to hear the story of a gay Black man who was smarter than everybody else during his time and who we didn’t embrace as much as we should have. He’s a pretty genius man. And, unfortunately, a lot of his words still need to be heard. And absorbed. And action taken with them in mind.
This interview has been edited and condensed.