Who Were Real Life the Swans Who Conspired to Destroy Truman Capote?

This season's "Feud" looks at what happened when Truman Capote shaded his high society female friends in published portions of an unfinished novel. They were known as The Swans. But who were they? Here's a guide.

Truman Capote's famously unfinished – and famously scandalous – novel "Answered Prayers," a roman à clef of New York's high society, would, had it ever been completed, have included quite a few characters outside of the quartet of society women the FX series "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" depicts.

Perhaps for the sake of clarity, the eight-episode season (adapted from Laurence Leamer's "Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era") zeroes in on four of New York's midcentury social movers and shakers, with a couple of others in secondary roles. Things start off with a bang as Bill Paley, chairman of the CBS network, finds himself subjected to (literally) bloody revenge by Happy Rockefeller, the wife of then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, with whom Paley is shown having an affair. This humiliation is part of the revelations that Esquire publishes, in thinly-disguised "fiction," in "La Côte Basque," a chapter excerpted from Capote's novel, supposedly in-progress, "Answered Prayers."

"La Côte Basque" prompts a rupture between Capote (Tom Hollander) and his coterie of high-society women friends, who justifiably feel betrayed by someone they regarded as a confidante. Much of the season revolves around the shattering aftermath. Bent on revenge, Capote's onetime inner circle of "swans" vow to exile him from society and (literally) shun him to death. (Glamor, we're told, was Capote's oxygen; exclusion was tantamount to suffocation.)

Tom Hollander's performance as Capote outshines previous portrayals (even by the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toby Jones) as "Capote vs. the Swans" delves into the writer's mother issues and how they connected him to – and helped alienate him from – the glamorous American royalty he so cherished, but so unsparingly wrote about.

But who were these "swans?"

Babe Paley

As the series tells it, none of these high-society swans were closer to him, and no lost friendship hit him harder, than that of Babe Paley.

Barbara Cushing "Babe" Paley, portrayed by Naomi Watts, is the first among not-quite-equals in this pantheon. She was the wife of Bill Paley (Treat Williams), the afore-mentioned head of the CBS network. Babe was a woman situated within America's upper echelons from her birth on July 5, 1915, in Boston. Hers was such a prominent family that one of her two sisters married an Astor, and the other wed a Roosevelt.

"One of the world's great beauties, whose meticulous grooming and attention to detail was a source of both admiration and envy among her peers, Mrs. Paley was a perennial on the list of the world's best‐dressed women," The New York Times recalled after her death on July 6, 1978, from cancer. "She was named to fashion's Hall of Fame in 1958," the Times added. She was also a style editor at Vogue magazine in the 1930s.

Sick with cancer when the infamous "La Côte Basque" chapter of "Answered Prayers" is published in Esquire in 1975 (the title referenced the ladies' favorite NYC lunch spot), Babe, as seen in the TV series, burns with fury at the depth of the betrayal. But she also mourns Capote's absence from her life – and, eventually, starts to soften toward him as her battle with cancer nears its end. "Only real love can wound you the way he did," Babe says in one episode – a line Watts delivers with a depth of pain and insight that allows the words to summarize the season as a whole.

Slim Keith

Angry as Babe was, Nancy "Slim" Keith (Diane Lane) is portrayed as even more enraged and much less forgiving at how "La Côte Basque" spilled the tea (and did so in a way that made the novel's supposedly fictional characters clearly anything but). It's Slim who foresees that Capote will try to earn his way back into their good graces, and it's she who declares what the response will be from all of them: "We stand united, and we destroy him."

As much a fashion icon as Babe Paley – The Times noted after her death in 1990 that, "In 1946, 150 fashion editors and stylists named [her] the best-dressed woman of the year. The runner-up was the Duchess of Windsor" – Keith graced the cover of Harper's Bazaar numerous times. She must have had a flair for the dramatic: Having found her way while still a teenager to Hollywood from her native Salinas, California, where she was born in 1916, she contemplated a career in opera and caught the eyes of some leading men of the day (Cary Grant among them). Her three husbands included film director Howard Hawks, as well as Broadway producer Leland Hayward (who brought classic musicals like "The Sound of Music" and "South Pacific" to the stage).

The name Slim is remembered by, though, came from her third husband, a British baron named Kenneth Keith. Lane portrays Slim as a mixture of hard-nosed, calculating, and iron-willed, living up to the name of the figure she inspired in "Answered Prayers" – a character called, none too flatteringly, Lady Coolbirth. It's fitting, though: Asked in a flashback episode of "Capote vs. The Swans" if she imagines that she might be the guest of honor at Capote's 1968 "Black and White Ball," Slim smiles with supreme self-satisfaction and purrs, "It is about what I have done here, isn't it? ...We made New York the capital of the world, the center of everything. And who is at the center of that center?"

C.Z. Guest

Chloë Sevigny's character has a personal life that rivals that of any other swan for messiness, but she also possesses an innate capacity for levelheadedness that lets her keep things in perspective. While as angry at Capote as anyone else – "You were too jaded to even change some of the names to protect the guilty," she chides him – C.Z. also sees that Capote is struggling with substance abuse issues and, though she never cites it directly, deep emotional damage. Alone among the four central female characters, C.Z. stands up to Slim's declaration that Capote is to be forever banished from society: "I think it's cruel," she responds, "and deliberately small." Unafraid of Slim's wrath, C.Z. continues to lunch with Capote in the old familiar places and gets away with it.

Born Lucy Douglas Cochrane in Boston on February 19, 1920, Guest was a denizen of the same social stratum as Babe and Slim; like Slim, she married into a lineage of British nobility, with her husband, Winston Guest, being the grandson of a baron. Ernest Hemingway was in her social circle, as he was in Slim's. Guest was an equestrian, author, actress – and, late in life, a fashion designer. She was also a beauty, painted by artists as diverse as Diego Rivera, Salvador Dali, and even Andy Warhol. Her portrayal in "Feud" shows her as possessing just as much personal wattage and glamor as Babe and Slim, but also streak of modernity. The fitting sobriquet C.Z. came from the childhood nickname Sissy and, with its midcentury zing, challenges then-standard gender notions, fitting the personality Sevigny depicts.

Lee Radziwill

The least developed of the show's four main female characters is Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart), and yet it's Radziwill who delivers the line – in memory of Babe Paley – "She was the one who made this whole thing work.... She made us show up." The observation is more than a memorial to Babe; it's an incisive comment that anticipates how, without Babe, the swans are destined to drift apart. It's also Radziwill who, once things have passed a point of sense, decency, or good taste, presses Slim to ease up on her punitive stance against Capote... and it's Radziwill who (no spoilers!) calls Slim out on her own shocking behavior.

Sister to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill was born into New York society on March 3, 1933, as Caroline Lee Bouvier. She had a short-lived career as a stage actor, but her real contribution to entertainment was inadvertent: She commissioned a documentary on her famous family that eventually led to a movie focused on two relatives, Aunt Edit Ewing Bouvier Beale and cousin Edith Bouvier Beale, better known as Big Edie and Little Edie... the "stars" of the Maysles Brothers' 1975 documentary "Grey Gardens." Radziwill's second husband was a Polish nobleman, and it was through her marriage to him that she at one time styled herself a princess. After her death in February, 2019, The New York Times recalled that she was "an international socialite and fashion icon who for years was on lists of the world's best-dressed women."

Indeed, even late in life Radziwill was cited as one of the world's best dressed women.

Ann Woodward

Kept in the wings for much or the season yet playing a crucial part in the plot as well as the depiction of Capote's emotional issues, the character Ann Woodward (Demi Moore) is a magnetic, enigmatic, and tragic figure. In the show, Capote poisons society against Woodward by spreading gossip to the effect that she murdered her husband, William Woodward Jr., by shooting him with a rifle and then claiming that she mistook him for a housebreaker; "Answered Prayers" made similar insinuations. In a pair of powerful scenes – one tense with rage, the other a heartbreaking dream sequence – Woodward recalls to Capote that he told her she reminded him of his mother (played by Jessica Lange). Both scenes are revelatory, with Capote retorting in the former that his mother was, like Woodward, a "criminal" and a "rotten mother," and the latter scene communicating the depth of Capote's loss when his mother committed suicide.

Only included as an "honorary swan" in the series (and at one point dismissed by Hollander's Capote as a "peahen"), the historical Ann Woodward started life much more modestly than the other swans. Born to working class parents in Kansas on Dec. 12, 1915 as Evangeline Lucille Crowell, Ann sought a career in show business and became a radio actor. She also worked as a model and showgirl; it was in the latter occupation that she first met Woodward's father, William Woodward Sr., though she ended up marrying the son. As suggested in the show, Woodward was exiled by society after her husband's shooting death – despite the tragedy having been ruled accidental. Perhaps not coincidentally, she had not initially been welcomed by the high-end set in the first place. Woodward died on Oct. 10, 1975, after swallowing cyanide. In the series, Slim blames Ann's suicide squarely on the imminent publication of "La Côte Basque," in Esquire magazine, though it's unclear what role Capote's writings played in her suicide, if any.

Joanne Carson

Relegated almost to bit player status, Joanne Carson, played by Molly Ringwald, is nonetheless listed alongside the other swans on the show's poster and in post-final scene titles detailing the swans' ultimate fates. In the show, Joanne hosts Capote and an abusive boyfriend named Tom O'Shea (Russell Tovey) at her home in California when even C.Z., under pressure from Slim, refuses to include him in a celebration of what Capote declares is his favorite holiday. Later on, Capote nearly drowns in Joanne's pool. It's in Joanne's care that Capote, his body failing after years of drug and alcohol abuse, spends the final days of his life. (Capote died in 1984.)

The second wife of talk show host Johnny Carson, Joanne – née Copeland – was married to Carson for nine years, from 1963 - 1972. Their marriage began early in Carson's decades-long reign on "The Tonight Show"; Joanne herself had a talk show, "Joanne Carson's V.I.P.'s." Capote reportedly had his own "writing room" in Joanne's Los Angeles home. In the show, Joanne is mocked for having an inferior sense of home décor and fashion, but in the end she was closer to the famed write than any of the others: She was buried in a plot next to Capote's grave after her death in 2015 at the age of 83.

Babe Paley and Naomi Watts (who plays her) on "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans"

Slim Keith and Diane Lane (who plays her) on "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans"

C.Z.Guest and Chloë Sevigny (who plays her) on "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans"

Lee Radziwill and Calista Flockhart (who plays her) on "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans"

Ann Woodward and Demi Moore who plays her) on "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans"

Joanne Carson and Molly Ringwald who plays her) on "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans"