Truman Capote’s Ultimate Weapon – The Atlantic
Early in FX’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, the titular author (played by Tom Hollander) bursts into the palatial apartment of a high-society doyenne. “Tell me everything, from the beginning,” Truman Capote proclaims. A tearful Babe Paley (Naomi Watts) shares that her husband, the CBS impresario Bill Paley, has committed a grave indignity. Not only did he bring one of his flagrant affairs into their home, but his menstruating lover also left behind obvious evidence of her presence on the bedsheets. Capote lends Babe an ear and a shoulder to weep on, ultimately advising her not to get a divorce. The two have a laugh and Capote hands her a Valium to wash down with scotch. This scene sets up the central tension of Feud: Capote’s friendship with, and layer betrayal of, Babe and other wealthy women he’d become close with. Published in Esquire in 1975, Capote’s novel excerpt “La Côte Basque, 1965” divulged a trove of secrets that he’d been told by these women—the so-called Swans. The article fractured polite society and permanently ostracized …
