Friends & Enemies

When Truman Capote published the secrets of his closest confidantes, the betrayal ignited a scandal that's still smoldering 50 years later. Now a new series explores why we should still be careful what we wish for.

- ADAM RATHE

How do you define the enduring appeal of some of the most storied women of the 20th century? Ryan Murphy has a thought. "They were like the original Real Housewives," he says, not without a hint of admiration. "That's something now that people are obsessed with." In fact, he's banking on it. This winter the limited series he produced, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, will premiere on FX, bringing to the small screen what may still be the most chattered about society scandal of all time. It dramatizes what happened when Truman Capote, having spent years as an intimate of Park Avenue lionesses, wove their deepest, most mortifying secrets into "La Côte Basque, 1965, a thinly veiled piece of fiction published in Esquire. For those of us who revel in this kind of history, it's a delectable romp through midcentury Manhattan-all masked balls, Billy Baldwin-designed penthouses, and very bad behavior by people with platinum-plated names. For newcomers to the spectacle, it's a timeless fable about the dangers of ambition, the trouble with money, and the cutthroat instincts of ladies who lunch.