The Real Housewives of Truman Capote's New York

WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN queer men and glamorous women so intimate-and so volatile? Consider Jennifer Coolidge's tragic White Lotus character, Tanya, who wandered off with a crew of fortune hunters she memorably described as "high-end gays." Or Andy Cohen playing ringmaster to a universe of pugnacious Real Housewives.

- JUDY BERMAN

Half a century ago, the Andy Cohen of the Upper East Side was Truman Capote, and the women whose world he insinuated himself into were A-list socialites. For two decades, the author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's heard their confessions and dried their tears. Then, in 1975, he published a story in Esquire that exposed their deepest humiliations. FX's Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, the long-awaited second season of a Ryan Murphy anthology that began with 2017's Bette and Joan, traces the friendships and eventual schism. It's a messy rendering that, at times, reverts to cliché. But beneath the distracting artifice is a psychologically rich, wonderfully acted portrait of an artist torn between his work and the life that fueled it.

Tom Hollander (the lead villain in Lotus) is well cast as the diminutive Truman, in a story that spans from the mid-'50s through his death in 1984, hopping between eras with confusing frequency. At ladies-who-lunch mecca La Côte Basque, he charms the adventurous C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny), banters with brassy Slim Keith (Diane Lane, excellent), and taunts wild-eyed Ann Woodward (Demi Moore), who he insists killed her husband. A standout episode, framed as footage for a Maysles brothers documentary, revisits Truman's exclusive 1966 Black and White Ball, which marked the height of his influence.