Feud is finally returning, and FX has dropped a first look at the long-awaited, star-studded second season of Ryan Murphy‘s anthology series.
The first season of Feud, Bette and Joan, aired back in March 2017, starring Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon as rival Hollywood icons Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, respectively.
Now, nearly seven years later, arrives the highly anticipated season two, Capote vs. the Swans, an eight-episode limited series set in the 1970s and based on Laurence Leamer’s best-selling book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era that focuses on writer Truman Capote and the elite New York women he surrounded himself with, nicknamed “the swans.”
The who’s-who cast includes Naomi Watts, also an executive producer, as Babe Paley; Tom Hollander as Truman Capote; Diane Lane as Slim Keith; Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest; Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill; Demi Moore as Ann “Bang-Bang” Woodward; and Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson.
And the trailer (below) reveals Feud season one star Lange returning (in an undisclosed role), marking one of several cast reunions with Murphy (Watts from The Watcher, Sevigny from American Horror Story, Ringwald from Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer and Lange, of course, also from AHS).
Feud: Capote vs. the Swans premieres with two episodes Jan. 31 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and streams the next day on Hulu.
The logline reads: “Acclaimed writer Truman Capote (Hollander) surrounded himself with a coterie of society’s most elite women — rich, glamorous socialites who defined a bygone era of high society New York — whom he nicknamed ‘the swans.’ Beautiful and distinguished, the group included grande dame Barbara ‘Babe’ Paley (Watts), Slim Keith (Lane), C.Z. Guest (Sevigny) and Lee Radziwill (Flockhart). Enchanted and captivated by these doyennes, Capote ingratiated himself into their lives, befriending them and becoming their confidante, only to ultimately betray them by writing a thinly veiled fictionalization of their lives, exposing their most intimate secrets. When an excerpt from the book, Answered Prayers, Capote’s planned magnum opus, was published in Esquire, it effectively destroyed his relationship with his swans, banished him from the high society he so loved and sent him into a spiral of self-destruction from which he would ultimately never recover.”
The cast also includes Treat Williams, who died in June 2023, in his final role as Bill Paley, with Joe Mantello as Jack Dunphy and Russell Tovey as John O’Shea.
Initially, the second season was to have chronicled the dissolution of the marriage between England’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana, but that idea was later scrapped. Murphy moving his overall deal from 20th Television to Netflix in 2018 also put the anthology on the back burner.
Written for television by Jon Robin Baitz, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans was directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler and Jennifer Lynch. The 20th Television series is executive produced by Murphy, Alexis Martin Woodall, Baitz, Van Sant, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Watts, Eric Kovtun and Scott Robertson.
‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Trailer Unites Ryan Murphy Favorites for Long-Awaited Second Season
