‘Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans’ Cast Compared to Real-Life Socialites

The second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud anthology series — titled Capote Vs. The Swans — tells the story of writer Truman Capote’s friendship and eventual falling-out with New York City’s most elite group of women, whom he nicknamed The Swans.

Screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz based his show on the book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer, which was released in October 2021.

The Swans consist of Barbara “Babe” Paley (Naomi Watts), Nancy “Slim” Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny) and Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart).

“It was like performance art that she put forward into the world,” Watts told Entertainment Weekly in January 2024 about her role as Paley. “Everything she thought about was planned — how she plans a dinner party and who was there. Who’s sitting next to each other? Where does the fork go? What are the fabrics of the napkins? Do the candles smell right? All of these things that created such a huge amount of planning, but nothing was left for herself so often.”

Watts, like her costars, underwent a major transformation before taking on the role.

“She was never filmed in the press. I didn’t have any recordings of her, audio or visual,” Watts added. “So, I had to really invent all that based on what was available.”

Keep scrolling to see how Watts and her costars’’ portrayals hold up when compared to the real socialites who inspired Feud: Capote vs. The Swans: