Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The new season of the anthology series Feud takes us back to New York of yesteryear through the story of the city's most fabulous socialites like Babe Paley and Lee Bouvier- Radziwill and their confidante turned frenemy, writer and bon vivant Truman Capote. Coming off the wild success of In Cold Blood and the film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Capote was a sought-after companion for some of New York City's wealthiest women, until he published a tell-all story in 1975 about their not-so-perfect lives.

The piece shook up high society and these powerful ladies who lunch, Capote called them The Swans, froze him out of every party, event, and their private lives. Alone and an addict, he spiraled out of control. Our guest today, Molly Ringwald, plays the one woman who stuck by him through all of it, Joanne Carson, ex-wife of Johnny Carson, who invites Truman to come stay with her on the West Coast. He'll end up spending his final days there.

Joining Molly Ringwald to star in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans are Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloe Sevigny, Calista Flockhart and Demi Moore, and opposite Tom Hollander, who is a go-for-broke Truman Capote. The series is directed by Gus Van Sant and it premieres on FX and Hulu on Wednesday. Molly Ringwald joins us now along with Millie, her dog. Hi, Molly.

Molly Ringwald: Hi, Alison. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: So happy to have you. And you know, I thought about you in this part because you have been a New Yorker. You used to have this really cool apartment on East 10th Street and you've lived in Paris and they both have very different energies than the California energy where your character is from. What were your conversations like with Ryan and director Gus Van Sant about how to capture this Californianess of Joanne?

Molly Ringwald: Well, you know, I'm originally from California. No matter what, I feel it's in my blood. I only have to be around somebody from California for all of 30 seconds to get my Valley speak back. As much as I love New York and consider myself a New Yorker, there's definitely a Californian in there from too many generations. They really talked to me about wanting to have a difference between The Swans, all of those, Babe Paley, CZ Guest, Slim Keith, these very sort of buttoned up, very, private women and really have this contrast between those women and my character, who really was more of a friend to them, to Truman specifically.

They were also I think, in a way, they were sort of outcast together because Joanne was married to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. For a long time, Johnny Carson was it and had incredible insider access. She had that as well because of being married to him. Then when they divorced, I think she really was kind of on the outs a bit. She didn't have everybody's name on speed dial like before. I think she and Truman bonded together and were a little bit outcast together. I also believe that Joanne really absolutely adored him unconditionally and may have been one of the only people in his life who did so.

Alison Stewart: When you think unconditionally, meaning that she didn't want anything from him but friendship?

Molly Ringwald: Yes, I don't really think that she wanted that much from him. At that point, there really wasn't that much that she could get from him or needed from him. I think she had enough money from the divorce, the alimony. He lived in her house. She really just kind of wanted to facilitate his literary genius because I really do believe that she had an incredible amount of respect for his writing. More than anybody else, I think the other women treated him a bit as a court jester and he was happy to play that role for a while.

I think maybe there might have been some unexpressed anger, some subconscious anger of being treated like this little dance monkey dance, you know. It's a little bit like being a part of a world but always being a little bit on the outside of it as well. I don't think that he felt that with Joanne. I think that she really just loved him and wanted to help keep him sober and buy his special pencils and erasers and really facilitate that genius because I think that she really believed in him. She was right. He was a literary genius.

Alison Stewart: She sets him up to have a good experience on the West Coast. I want to ask you, though, about this, that at one point, Truman Capote voices, seems confused about why these women are so mad, disbelief that he's a writer and they should know what did they think he was going to do with all of his life experiences. That's what writers do. They write from their life experiences. You're a writer, you're a translator. What do you think of that argument? Does he have a point?

Molly Ringwald: I definitely think he has a point. I also think that there was a way that he could have written that book and maybe not-- He could have changed the details a little bit more than he did. There was no reason why he had to just write this expose. There was a way I think he could have written it to where they didn't really know who he was writing about. I think that's a question writers ask themselves all the time.

If you want to be a complete recluse, fine, write about whatever you want. I don't think he wanted to lose that whole social circle and so what he did was very self-destructive. I think that there was a way he could have done it and they wouldn't have suspected that he was writing about them specifically. I think it's something that writers think about all the time.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Molly Ringwald. She stars as Joanne Carson in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. It premieres on FX and Hulu on Wednesday. Let's play a clip and Tom Hollander, he really goes for it in this performance in terms of his voice and the way and his movements. We can get a sense of the relationship here. This is you as Joanne welcoming Truman Capote to her Thanksgiving dinner. He's brought his abusive boyfriend, John, who is sitting in the car. This is from Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

Joanne: Hi, honey.

Truman Capote: Oh, hi. I come bearing gifts.

Joanne: Gracias. Thank you. Thank you.

Truman Capote: Happy Thanksgiving.

Joanne: Mwah. Mwah. Why is your friend sitting in the car?

Truman Capote: John wants me to buy him a house in Malibu. Little Prince Pauper is pouting. Once he realizes there's a Manhattan waiting for him, he'll come knit. When's dinner?

Joanne: In an hour, but there's lots of snacky, drinky things. I hope you like nachos and tamales.

Truman Capote: I love them.

Joanne: Do you know what that is?

Truman Capote: [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: What impressed you about his performance?

Molly Ringwald: Oh, everything. I really didn't know what it was going to be like until I saw him on set. We didn't have any rehearsal time at all. I knew Tom Hollander was a fine actor, but I had no idea how transformative that performance would be. I got along with him immediately. I found Tom really charming and generous and absolutely lovely. He would go back and forth between Tom and Truman. Usually right before we would start a scene, he would be listening to something that he had on his device just to get that voice in his head.

It wasn't just the voice. It was the mannerisms. It was the way that he walked. I remember seeing Truman Capote when I was a little girl on all those shows that my parents watched, The Tonight Show, The Cabot, and half the time he was drunk. He was very entertaining. He always seemed to like a little bit like a train wreck. He had this very specific way of moving and Tom just completely nailed it. I liked him and I enjoyed working with him, which was so important for my character. Because like I said, my character really had this unconditional love for him, so he made that very easy.

Alison Stewart: Listening to you, and I think you answered this, but I want to ask it anyway. How often was he always in character? Did he come in and out? What was that like if he did? It sounds like he did.

Molly Ringwald: No, he definitely came in and out, which I think is more common for actors, at least in my experience in England. They don't do the method in character all the time. It was nice. I got to know Tom as Tom. Then I also got to know him as Tom as Truman. He really moved effortlessly in between the two.

Alison Stewart: Working with Gus Van Sant, obviously done Good Will Hunting and Milk. He directed, I believe, all the episodes for the series.

Molly Ringwald: No, he didn't. He directed almost all of the episodes, but there were a couple that I'm in that were directed by Jen Lynch, who also directed me in Dahmer, which I had done for Ryan Murphy. There's, I think one other director, and I wasn't in that episode, so I'm afraid I can't remember his name, but that's a wonderful episode as well, but most of them were directed by Gus Van Sant.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for clearing that up. That's so interesting. Working with the same director on two very different projects, what was that experience like? Was she a similar kind of director on both projects or did she shape and change with the projects?

Molly Ringwald: I think that she is a similar director. I think her ways of directing work really well with mine. I think she's very generous as a director, and letting you try your thing and really cares a lot about the emotion and about the feeling. She felt like a real actor's director to me. I was grateful that I had already had the experience working with her on Dahmer, so I knew a little bit how she worked.

Alison Stewart: Tell us a little bit about your wardrobe, because Joanne has a look.

Molly Ringwald: My wardrobe?

Alison Stewart: Yes. [chuckles]

Molly Ringwald: [chuckles] Yes. They really definitely wanted a contrast between these buttoned-up pillbox-wearing hats. Females in New York, they really wanted Joanne to seem a lot more free and bohemian. I'm in colorful caftans and I really embody that quintessential California ease, which I was happy to do.

Alison Stewart: When you think about the relationship between Joanne and Truman Capote, I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole and read her obituary in the New York Times, and she's buried next to him.

Molly Ringwald: Yes. Yes, she is.

Alison Stewart: They were that close.

Molly Ringwald: They were that close. Yes. I think I remember reading something about how when she got the ashes, she kept half of them and then gave half of them to his other long-term lover, played by Joe Mantello. Yes, there was a little bit of a thing about that. Yes, she apparently kept him pretty close and talked to him. It was just one of those relationships for whatever reason that was really, really important to her.

Alison Stewart: What is it that she understood about Truman that the New York Swans didn't?

Molly Ringwald: I really think that she had a respect for his writing perhaps more than they did. I think that they really valued him as a character and as a storyteller, I don't know that they respected him as much as a writer, and I think Joanne did. I think it's something that she was really impressed by. Perhaps that's from being married to Johnny Carson and being around writers. I don't know exactly where that came from, but she really, really did think that he was one of the great American writers.

I would be inclined to agree with her. I think he lost the plot a little bit in terms of his life. I think he got a little bit carried away with the social life, and the drinking, and the drugging, and all of that. I think that he really was sentenced for sentence one of the greats.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Molly Ringwald, you can see her in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, premieres on FX and Hulu on Wednesday. After that clip that we played, there's a scene, it's really upsetting. It gets very violent, this lover of his who has been violent with him in the past.

Molly Ringwald: Played by Russell Tovey, by the way, a wonderful English actor.

Alison Stewart: It's a pretty terrifying altercation at the table. Two things for you as an actor, and there's another scene where you have to basically save Truman's life, you pull him out of a pool. When you're in a scene where there is that kind of violence, what is that like for you as an actor? I know as a viewer, it's hard to watch. I know it's your job and all, but I'm very curious as a human what that's like.

Molly Ringwald: As a human, they had already rehearsed it, so they knew exactly what they were doing, but for me, it was the first time I had seen it and it was incredibly well done. It really looked like he was having everything just beaten out of him. Even though I knew that it was made up, it couldn't help but raise the cortisol. That fight or flight. Yes, it made me gasp. We did it a couple of times, and just being around it, it really felt like I was watching the real thing. Fortunately, it's all for the camera, it's not real, but yes, it definitely looked real.

Alison Stewart: You've worked with Ryan Murphy before?

Molly Ringwald: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What is it that he does that's unique? What does he bring to the creative process that's unique?

Molly Ringwald: I think that one of Ryan's geniuses, he's definitely in the zeitgeist, he knows what people want to see. He also takes chances, especially in terms of hiring all of these women that are not 22 years old. I'm incredibly grateful for that because I feel like I have some of my most interesting work coming up, but it really requires somebody in Ryan's position to make that call, somebody in that position of power.

He really does, he's really interested in giving voices and giving power to people who might not have that opportunity. That's whether it's women of a certain age or people of a certain color or ethnicity. That's something that he has really focused on a lot which makes him very interesting as a filmmaker, and of course, very interesting for me to work with. I would say yes to anything of Ryan's. If he wants me to come read the phone book, I'm there.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Before we let you go, you have a great singing voice. I don't know if people know that about you. You've done shows at 54 Below. Do you have any more plans to sing and do any more shows?

Molly Ringwald: Eventually, I do, but right now, I'm very focused on the acting and also writing.

Alison Stewart: Oh, nice.

Molly Ringwald: I'm also a writer as well, and that takes a little time and a little focus. Right now, I think at least for the next year or so, it's going to be acting and writing. Then maybe I'll come back. I'm hoping that one day I get to do everything I want to do all on the same project. Maybe directing, writing, acting, singing, everything else. Maybe a little French in there, who knows?

Alison Stewart: There you go. Molly Ringwald stars as Joanne Carson in Feud: Truman Capote vs. The Swans, premieres on FX and Hulu on Wednesday. Molly, thank you for making time. I hope you're okay if I go out on a little bit of you singing a certain song.

Molly Ringwald: Oh, sure.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen. Thanks, Molly.

Molly Ringwald: Thank you, Alison.

[MUSIC-Molly Ringwald: Don't You Forget About Me]

Alison Stewart: That's pretty good, right? That's all of it for today. I am Alison Stewart, I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you, and I will meet you back here next time.

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