'Capote vs. The Swans' Second Trailer Expands FX's 'Feud'

Tom Hollander first caught the attention of the PBS crowd in the late 1990s with his appearance in the BBC-Masterpiece joint production of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. A couple of years later, he landed on the big screen in Gosford Park, cementing his place as part of the costume drama crowd, which meant, for American viewers, he mainly shuttled back and forth from PBS to HBO and back again. But in the past few years, Hollander has broken into the broader mainstream on television, going from a "that guy" British dude in films like Mission Impossible and The Muppets to iconic roles in The Night Manager, The White Lotus, and now Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

The Feud series is part of the Ryan Murphy-verse, which most American TV watchers will know as the very American set of shows that mainly air on the Disney-owed FX network and streams on the Disney-owned Hulu, plus a few occasional hits on Netflix. Murphy tends to use and reuse the same actors over and over. While he does occasionally glom on to a British actor here and there (Russell Tovey, for instance, has appeared in many of his series, and he recently started casting up-and-coming English actors Cara Delevingne and Annabelle Dexter-Jones), it's rare for him to cast someone so established like this. However, British actors are a mark of prestige TV, and Feud is the prestige show in Murphy's lineup.

Moreover, Hollander's turn as the iconic Capote is absolutely worth watching. Check out the new trailer, which gives viewers their first real look at his performance.

Here's the synopsis:

Truman Capote surrounded himself with a coterie of society’s most elite women – rich, glamorous socialites who defined a bygone era of high society in New York – whom he nicknamed “the swans.” Beautiful and distinguished, the group included grande dame Barbara “Babe” Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z. Guest, and Lee Radziwill. Enchanted and captivated by these doyennes, Capote ingratiated himself into their lives, befriending them and becoming their confidante, only to ultimately betray them by writing a thinly veiled fictionalization of their lives, exposing their most intimate secrets. When an excerpt from the book, "Answered Prayers," Capote’s planned magnum opus, was published in Esquire, it effectively destroyed his relationship with his swans, banished him from the high society he so loved, and sent him into a spiral of self-destruction from which he would ultimately never recover.

Tom Hollander (Us) leads the series as Capote with a roster of A-listers, including British actor Russell Tovey (Flesh & Blood) and Australian actor Naomi Watts (The Watcher). The rest of the cast is made up of Americans, but many PBS viewers will recognize, including Diane Lane (House of Cards), Chloë Sevigny (American Horror Story), Molly Ringwald (Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), Joe Mantello (Hollywood), Calista Flockhart (Brothers & Sisters), Demi Moore (Brave New World), and the late Treat Williams (Blue Bloods) in his final on-screen role.

The eight-episode limited series is based on the bestselling book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer, adapted for television by Jon Robin Baitz and directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler, and Jennifer Lynch. The show is executive-produced by Murphy, Baitz, Van Sant, Watts, Alexis Martin Woodall, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Eric Kovtun, and Scott Robertson and produced by 20th Television.

Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans premieres with two episodes on Wednesday, January 31, 2024, at 10 p.m. ET on linear FX and streams the next day on Hulu, with one episode a week to follow.