'Feud' Star Tom Hollander Opens Up About His Turn as Truman Capote and Playing Gay

Tom Hollander played one of a cabal of gay men who conspired to kill Jennifer Coolidge's character, Tanya, on "The White Lotus," and now he's playing Truman Capote on "Feud." The British actor opened up about his gay roles in a recent profile in Vanity Fair. (Story is behind a paywall.)

The actor told Vanity Fair he'd wanted to portray Capote two decades ago, and the magazine avers that he's the right man for the job despite not identifying as LGBTQ+. The article declared that "even without the stylish hat or sassy head tilt, without the voice that reaches oh so high, a Capote-esque twinkle still flickers in Hollander's eyes" – perhaps the only thing that the actor, as he actually appears, has in common with the "In Cold Blood" author, who appears in "Feud" with a balding head of pale hair, jowls, and a pot belly.

VF noted that Hollander "physically transforms" into Capote for his stint on the eight-episode second season of the Ryan Murphy-produced "Feud," which dramatizes the way the celebrated (and openly gay) American writer based a sensational novel on his high-society friends, and paid the price when they shunned him in revenge.

Still, there's an inner quality that makes people think he might be gay, and the actor acknowledged it in his remarks to the publication. "For some reason, who I am, who I am as a person allows me to present as gay," Hollander mused in the course of the interview. "Yeah, sometimes I do present as gay," he went on to add.

Hollander said that he's received various offers to play gay characters, telling VF, "apparently when I play these characters, it's believable. And that's, in a way, where my job begins and ends."

Hollander expanded on that thought, saying, "As an actor, you have to be able to imagine something and do it with seriousness and take it seriously... and then you imaginatively put yourself into those shoes."

He continued: "I mean, it's true of playing any part. You are rarely playing yourself. You are always pretending to be something that you are not."

Hollander was frank about the fact that he has "not lived the life that gay men used to have to live.... I have not had to live in the shadows and been under the threat of going to jail for expressing my sexuality."

That said, however, "My own sexuality is sufficiently liberal to have encompassed many different experiences, which are not anyone's business," Hollander went on to say – a quote not entirely dissimilar to what another British thesp, Tom Hardy, had to say when he was asked in 2010 whether he'd ever had same-sex experiences: "Of course I have," Hardy memorably exclaimed. "I'm an actor, for fuck's sake. I've played with everything and everyone."

Hollander did say that, even if it's in an actor's wheelhouse to portray people unlike himself, "There are issues about representation. There are types of actors that have not been given sufficient chances to play great parts."

"All of these things are in the process of being revised and improved and changed, and that's all absolutely right," the "Bohemian Rhapsody" actor went on to say. "At the same time as that movement is happening, what shouldn't be sacrificed is the sort of basic fundamental principle of actors being able to play things that they are not necessarily, because then that's not art."

"Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" follows the anthology series' first season, "Bette and Joan," after a seven-year hiatus. Written by playwright Jon Robin Baitz and with six of the seven episodes directed by Gus Van Sant, the prestige project boasts top-notch production design and a cast that brings together some of Hollywood's most glamorous actors to portray a coterie of midcentury New York socialites, including Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, Diane Lane as Slim Keith, Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, and Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwell – the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Demi Moore and Molly Ringwald also star, as does longtime Ryan Murphy collaborator Jessica Lange.

The series debuts on FX and FXX on January 31, with new episodes airing weekly. Episodes will also stream on Hulu the day after they appear on the cable channels.

Watch the trailer below.