It always comes back to the mother. After waging a war on the ladies who lunch, Tom Hollander’s Truman Capote faces the final boss in the twilight hours of his life: his mother, Nina Capote—portrayed by legendary actress Jessica Lange. In the final episode of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, “Phantasm Forgiveness,” it’s not Diane Lane’s duplicitous Slim Keith, or Calista Flockhart’s acerbic Lee Radziwill, or even Naomi Watt’s beautiful Babe Paley, but Lange’s striving and resentful Lillie Mae who looms largest in Capote’s psyche in the last moments of his life.
Born Lillie Mae Faulk, Capote’s mother always longed to escape her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama and join society’s elite up in New York City. After divorcing Truman’s father when Truman was two years old, Lillie Mae changed her name to Nina and moved north in search of a more glamorous life, leaving Truman in Monroeville to be raised by her relatives. Eventually, Truman joined his mother and her new husband, José García Capote, in New York City, where, despite her best efforts, Lillie Mae was never fully embraced by the Park Avenue crowd that Capote would later infiltrate and set aflame. Lillie Mae would ultimately take her own life when Capote was 29.
“It’s tough, isn’t it?” says Lange of Lillie Mae’s fate. We’re speaking over the phone from Los Angeles the day before she’s set to present the best-actress award with fellow Oscar winners Charlize Theron, Sally Field, Jennifer Lawrence, and Michelle Yeoh. Regarding Capote’s mother, she puts it succinctly: “That’s the kind of mother you don’t want.”
As Feud comes to a close, Lange chats with VF about bad mothers, her meticulous research, and her lack of interest in the ladies who lunch.
Vanity Fair: The finale of Feud really focuses on Truman’s relationship with his mother. What was it like getting that final script and unpacking the complicated mother-son relationship?
Jessica Lange: Well, in classic Ryan Murphy fashion, I’d [only] gotten the first couple scripts. It was literally two scenes—there was the first episode, and then the Black and White ball. Then he said to me, because they were still writing, “What would you like to play? Because most of your scenes will be in the eighth episode.”
Having done some research reading the book, Capote and His Women, I thought, Well, what’s really interesting would be Truman’s childhood, which, of course, informs so much of his life and who he became. So I said, “Well, can we do a flashback to his early years?” So we had those couple scenes. And then, in classic actress fashion, I said, “What about her suicide scene?” Not to be maudlin or mawkish, but that would be an amazing scene to play. So we kind of went from there. I haven’t seen it, but I felt like they wrote some really great scenes.
The one thing that he didn’t agree to, which I had asked for, was to play [Capote’s short story] “A Christmas Memory.” I wanted to see a scene of Truman and his aunt [Nanny Rumbley Faulk, a.k.a. “Sook”], because she was such a primary caretaker, and they loved each other so deeply. I wanted to play that character too, in just the short scene of fruitcake season. But he said no to that one.
In many ways, Lillie Mae serves as the ultimate swan: The black swan that haunts Truman and antagonizes him, driving him to drink. How did you see her role?
Well, she gave up everything. She left her husband, the South, her child—which, as a mother, seems inconceivable—but she wanted so desperately to be part of that New York society and to fit in. And of course, she never did. I think that informed so much of her relationship to him, especially when he befriends all the kind of people that rejected her and really, I think, broke her heart.
It works as a metaphor in the piece—that she believes Truman is trying to get some kind of justice for her, trying to get even in a way. Then it’s just the writer’s imagination that she’s coercing him into drinking. It works in that dramatic context of, yeah, maybe he does drink partly because of his mother. Maybe he does take pills because of his mother. Maybe his disappointment…that life has something to do with his mother. It’s not meant to be literal.
You’ve collaborated with Ryan Murphy so much in recent years, but Ryan was a little bit more hands-off with this edition of the franchise. What was it like to work on a Ryan Murphy project that he wasn’t writing and that he didn’t direct?
Well, I missed him. I have to say, I only worked maybe four or five days altogether on the whole thing. I shot two days in New York and a couple days out in Los Angeles, so I wasn’t on the set much at all. But I know that, for instance, when we did Bette and Joan, his presence was constant. He directed some of the episodes, and I always loved working with Ryan that way. I’m not sure on this one because, like I said, I was barely there.
