Feud: Capote vs. the Swans episode 5: More on James Baldwin
If there’s one thing that we can clearly say about Feud: Capote vs. the Swans through five episodes, it is simply this: The show takes risks. They are absolutely not afraid of that, and this is reflected with us seeing James Baldwin.
Through most of this past installment, we saw a conversation between Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) and the author / activist (played by Chris Chalk) that was notable on the show in that it seemed to assuage Truman of some of his guilt in regards to writing about the Swans. Historically, it is also notable in that the entire chat seems to have been a concoction. There is no evidence that this meetup ever happened — though to be fair, you can easily interpret within the episode that the entire interaction was dreamed up by Truman himself.
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So what did Chalk have to say about trying to play a scene between two historical figures? Speaking to Town & Country, he made it clear that he tried not to focus on whether or not the discussion ever actually took place:
I didn’t concern myself and I never would; it’d be a train wreck to try. It would be too intimidating for me as an artist to go in and try to find the conversation and mimic it. So, whether it happened or not, my job was to make it feel fresh. In the time I had to prep, I just sucked up everything that I could that felt autobiographical and read a lot of Baldwin’s writing to get deeper into who he was so that I could honor it. That doesn’t really answer your question—did this really happen? I would never even care. I don’t want to bog myself down with that responsibility in that way.
In the end, it does seem more like this show is trying to capture the spirit of this interaction, and how Truman felt about the Swans through the course of his life. We’ll see the results of all of this within the hours to come.
Related – Get more news now on Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, including the run time for what’s next
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This article was written by Jessica BunBun.