It’s been a while since Naomi Watts came to the frontline spotlight. The actor who is decorated with acclaimed titles including 21 Grams and Mulholland Drive recently played Barbara “Babe” Paley in the upcoming FX show, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans for Hulu.
The show also stars several astounding actors including Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny, Calista Flockhart, and co. But, to our knowledge, Watts has put her soul into bringing her role to life in the show based on one of the biggest Hollywood controversies that grabbed headlines for a long time.
Naomi Watts Plays Barbara “Babe” Paley in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
Naomi Watts is all set to bring her A-game in the upcoming Hulu show Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Based on Laurence Leamer’s bestselling book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era, the eight-episode series will follow Hollywood’s Captoe vs. The Swans controversies. For Watts, it was never easy to accurately breathe the same air as the historical figure who was in constant limelight. Her character, Babe is a rich woman with immaculate fashion sensibilities who worked at Vogue for nearly a decade as a fashion editor. Watts knew the challenges and carried out all the essence of Babe onto the screen.
“She had this level of perfection with her presentation. She never had her hair out of place. She had such grace and elegance, and everything about her was so well groomed. But underneath it all, she had cracks. There was a lot of pressure to look that pristine all the time,” Watts told Vanity Fair.
The demand for physical and mental dedication while playing the character was more challenging but fans can believe Watts would do justice to the character. The show will essentially reflect the controversy and the aristocracy of Truman Capote and the jet-setting socialites of New York City as the author was targetted to be buried as he wrote scandalous and hedonistic personal lives of the elites in his fiction Answered Prayers.
Who is Barbara “Babe” Paley?
Looking back at the history of Hollywood, one must recall The Swans while going through the pages or narrative of Captoe. Among Captoe’s Swans, Lee Radziwill, Paley with Slim Keith, Ann Woodward, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, and Pamela Harriman have remarkable prominence in the narrative. These women were often seen with Captoe in his inner circle. They were rich and sophisticated. Babe Paley, like her co-swans, was very well dressed. The friendship with the author, however, derailed in the following events of his La Côte Basque 1965— an excerpt published in Esquire before Answered Prayers that exposes what’s behind the lavish lifestyle.
Paley’s lavish habit was not always easy to play for the Infinite Storm star. Walking the same steps as Babe, Watts smoked about 200 cigarettes. “They burn very quickly. The stage cigarettes are almost worse than real cigarettes,” she told Vanity Fair.
“You get an instant headache, and it hurts your eyes. It’s really not a fun process, but I was playing a woman who had double lung cancer on a decline with her health, so I needed to show that and really commit to it.”
Created by Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen, and Michael Zam and directed by Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler, and Jennifer Lynch, the show will inherently recreate the glamour and significance required to represent Watts’ Babe and other Swans and their conspiracy-riddled lives. Scribed for the screen by Jon Robin Baitz, the FX show will debut on Hulu on January 31, 2024.
