Naomi Watts in “Gypsy” © 2017 Netflix
Those: Deadline
Five years after Ryan Murphy’s 18 Emmys-nominated miniseries “Feud: Bette and Joan” a second season of the anthological series takes shape (again). Under the title “Feud: Capote’s Women” The new season will deal with how Truman Capote’s short story “La Côte Basque 1965”, published in 1975 as the first chapter of his unfinished novel “Answered Prayers”, marked the decline of Capote’s social status in New York’s high society.
After the massive success of his factual novel In Cold Blood, Capote rose to prominence in the inner circles of New York’s elite and celebrities. He was friends with the wealthiest, most beautiful and most stylish women in high society and referred to them as his “swans”. But with “La Côte Basque 1965” he stabbed them in the back, in that the characters of the story were only very superficially disguised real personalities from his life and he exposed their darkest secrets and scandals such as infidelity and murder. The story destroyed Capote’s friendships and reputation, his “swans” turned away from him, and the one-time shining star of high society has become a leper overnight. This reaction plunged Capote into a crisis and led to an increase in drugs. and alcohol abuse.
Laurence Leamer’s book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era provided the inspiration for the series. “Feud: Capote’s Women” will begin in the 1970s and continue until Capote’s death in 1984. The worldwide cast of Capote, for which Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar, is on, but the first role in the miniseries has already been cast. Naomi Watts (King Kong) will play Babe Paley, one of Capote’s swans and the wife of CBS boss Bill Paley. In Murphys Netflix-Miniseries “Halston” Regina Schneider played Babe Paley.
Murphy’s involvement in “Feud: Capote’s Women” will (presumably due to his exclusive contract with Netflix) very limited. While he remains executive producer, Jon Robin Baitz (Stonewall), however, will write all eight episodes and take the showrunner post. Academy Award-nominated director Gus Van Sant (Milk) will direct all episodes of the season. He is co-producing the miniseries with Watts.
Filming for the series is expected to begin in New York this fall. There was already shortly after the success of “Bette and Joan” a try for a second “Feud”-Season that first “Feud: Charles and Diana” should mean later “Feud: Buckingham Palace” was renamed. Matthew Goode (Watchmen) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) was set to star Prince Charles and his wife Diana, but plans for a Charles/Diana season were shelved in August 2018. Murphy himself doubted whether “Feud” would go further, but Baitz apparently found a story worth telling.
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