Amid the menagerie of women Truman Capote surrounded himself with, Joanne Carson was perhaps the oddest. Not because she seemed a tad out of step with the elegant swans around the In Cold Blood author but because she valued Truman only for his talent.
In Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, writer Jon Robin Baitz has leaned, perhaps too heavily, on the notion that the second wife of the famed Tonight Show host Johnny Carson was rather off-kilter. We saw the eclectic (and violent) Thanksgiving dinner she hosted a few weeks back, how wounded she was when Capote cruelly pointed out Johnny’s philandering during the famed Masquerade Ball, and in the penultimate episode, “Beautiful Babe,†we saw the futile attempts Joanne makes to save Truman in his final hours: diving headfirst into her pool when she finds him floating in the water, nursing him back to life, and then, seeing he’s perhaps too far gone, calling and hanging up on 911, unsure whether any outside help would do Truman (or her) any good. Those agonizing moments are key to reassessing Joanne in the world of Feud, something Molly Ringwald relished — as an actress and as a writer and translator who has long been inspired by Capote’s work.
What was it like shooting that pool scene?
It was very challenging because I had to jump in with all my clothes on. I was wearing heels; I was wearing this hair that was not my own. And then trying to drag Tom Hollander out of the pool … I can only imagine what it was like in real life. At a certain point, I was like, I just don’t know how I’m gonna do that. And Tom has to pretend like he’s completely dead, or at least completely unconscious. It was really not very easy.
And then there’s the 911 call Joanne makes but doesn’t follow through on. We see her staring out into space after pouring Truman a drink. Can you walk me through how you understood what’s happening in her mind and what sort of calculations she’s making at that moment?
She calls 911. They answer and say, “What is your emergency?†In her mind, she’s seeing the whole thing: seeing them come, seeing them revive him. She’s seeing it all happen again and again and again. And she realizes he’s just too far gone. That it doesn’t matter. Joanne thinks he just really doesn’t want to be there anymore. So she makes the decision to let him go, basically. Not kill — she doesn’t want to kill him. But she just has to let him go. So that’s what I played.
It’s a hard thing to play.
Yeah, it is. And she’s really conflicted about it. There’s that sequence where she gets him the drink and the ice completely melts, so you realize this has been going on for a while. She’s staring outside at the hummingbirds. She’s waiting and thinking that if she waits long enough, it’ll just kind of happen. It was really, really heartbreaking.
It’s such a wounding moment.
It was powerful to be able to see the whole thing. Everybody’s taking shots at Joanne and saying, “Oh, she hasn’t been the same since she’s divorced!†“Oh, she’s so wacky!†“Oh, she’s kooky!†Blah, blah blah. You see her have this very heartbreaking clarity. That whole sequence, it’s like she’s thinking and thinking, and at the end, when she says, “That was it. It was just him and me,†she doesn’t sound like kooky Joanne at all. She sounds completely down to earth.
There’s a gravitas to that moment. It made me wish the show would have followed their story because there’s the whole controversy about what happened, about the ashes, about Answered Prayers …
I know, in the show, she says it was just one thing written over and over and over again. I’m one of those people who feel like Answered Prayers might show up in a box somewhere. I don’t know if I just want to believe that. I do think it might show up years from now.
How much did you know about Capote and his swans before taking on this role?
I knew a lot, actually. My first play ever when I was 3 and a half years old was called The Grass Harp. It was community theater based on the story by Truman Capote. So I knew him before I knew Dr. Seuss. As I got older and I started reading his books, he became one of my favorite writers. I had already read “La Côte Basque†and books about the women, so I was really excited that this was actually going to be made, let alone that I was going to be in it!
How much did you know about Joanne ahead of Feud?
I didn’t know as much because she wasn’t an official “swan.†She would refer to herself as an “ugly duckling,†which, of course, she wasn’t. She was actually quite beautiful. And she doesn’t look anything like me! She’s very, I think, very beautiful. It was hard to find stuff about her. Johnny Carson’s third wife was named Joanna Carson, so that gummed up my research a bit. But I did end up finding one interview so I could hear the way she spoke. She was from California and I’m from California, so I felt like I was okay with the accent. I know a couple of people who knew her and said she was incredibly kind and very nurturing. In terms of her relationship with Truman, I think that part was accurate; toward the end, they were outcasts together. Joanne had divorced Johnny, which threw her into questionable social territory. And then Truman did what he did with the other women, so they were together in that. But at the end of the day, I was really playing an interpretation. I was serving that story.
I love that you use the word nurturing because it’s not a word we’re encouraged to associate with the rest of the swans.
Not at all. Joanne really was Truman’s friend. I think she absolutely loved him and believed in his genius more than anyone else. She understood him as an artist and wanted to do whatever she could to facilitate that. I was just watching the Kurt Vonnegut documentary last night. It was really interesting to see his first wife, Jane, and how much she believed in his writing and felt like he should be doing that above anything else. She encouraged him to quit his job with GE and said, “You’re a genius! You’re a genius!†Sometimes, writers really need that person. In Truman’s case, unfortunately, he was already so in the throes of addiction that it didn’t matter what she did. He was too far gone. But she tried.
You do get the sense that, after her divorce, Joanne found her calling in seeing Truman as a kind of partner.
The show doesn’t focus too much on that. It’s based on the connection between Babe and Truman. But Joanne and Truman did everything together. When I see pictures of them, they have matching fedoras. She had his ashes for years after. She had written a book and he edited it for her — like, rewrote sentences. They were there for each other in a way you don’t exactly see in the show.
I can’t let you go without talking about how much I love your translation of Philippe Besson’s novel Lie With Me.
It makes me so happy to hear that. That really means a lot. I really worked hard to get it right.
Has your work as a writer and translator seeped into your work as an actress?
Translating is basically writing within very strict parameters. It really does make you think about the importance of words. It makes you understand that endeavor. I probably understand that better than any of the so-called swans. I don’t think they really thought about Truman’s writing and what it really meant to him. They liked his celebrity, and they liked his bons mots, but they didn’t think about him as an artist. And Joanne did.
I really, truly admired Truman Capote. His writing and also parts of his personality. He could be very cruel, but the fact that he was out at a time when just about nobody was. There’s that famous story of Norman Mailer going into the Irish bar with him and thinking that he, Mailer, was going to be pummeled. And Truman just walked in with his fur, with his hat, with his attitude, and nobody went near him. Just because he had that crazy confidence.
This interview has been edited and condensed.