FX
Maybe it’s because there’s not enough Naomi Watts, or maybe it’s because the series is floundering as it reaches its final two installments. But any way you slice it, by Episode 6, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans is spinning in its wheels. Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) is trying to write his book without the support of the swans, and the swans are protesting his mere existence. Will anything new happen in this series, or will it continue to drown?
We’re in 1978 now, three years after where we were in last week’s episode, set right after Truman’s bombshell exposé came out in Esquire. All of the swans except C. Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny) are ignoring Truman. Truman meets C. Z. in Manhattan to buy gardening hats, but they learn that the local haberdashery is shutting its doors in a few weeks. New York is changing, pushing old socialites like C. Z. and Truman to the sidelines.
Before Truman departs to purchase pearls from Tiffany’s for his young protegé, Kate (Ella Beatty)—who is the daughter of his ex, John O’Shea—he asks C. Z. about Babe (Watts) and her cancer. Babe is surviving, says C. Z. Truman giggles. Babe, he says, has “a heart so cold even cancer couldn’t touch it.” Truman leaves, but not before C. Z. can snark at him for finding a new swan younger than his older women. Younger women are always the enemies of aging ladies like C. Z.