Feud season 2 revived with Naomi Watts set to star

It’s been five years since the last season of FX’s Feud, but they’re finally moving forward with the next installment. Deadline has reported that Naomi Watts is set to star in Feud season 2, which will be subtitled Capote’s Women and based upon Laurence Leamer’s Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era.

The first season of Feud chronicled the rivalry between Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) on and off the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? FX renewed the anthology series for a second season before the first debuted but it was supposed to revolve around the relationship between Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Matthew Goode and Rosamund Pike were reportedly set to star in the series but FX CEO John Landgraf later said they “didn’t feel we had the material right and decided not to move forward with it.” This latest incarnation of Feud season 2 will be set in the 1970s and tell the story of Truman Capote enjoying the enormous success of In Cold Blood. The writer was the toast of New York society with many of the city’s most influential and wealthy women becoming his close friends… until their bitter falling out. Take it away, Deadline!

It chronicles the tale of the famous wunderkind author as he stabs several of his female friends — whom he called his “swans” — in the back by publishing a roman à clef short story called “La Côte Basque 1965” in Esquire in 1975. The piece was intended to be a chapter in Capote’s infamous unfinished novel “Answered Prayers,” his follow-up to the blockbuster “In Cold Blood.”

Naomi Watts will play Babe Paley, the wife of then-CBS chairman Bill Paley and one of Capote’s “swans”. Watts will also serve as an executive producer on Feud: Capote’s Women and the search is on for actors to play Capote and the other women. Gus Van Sant will direct the new series with Jon Robin Baitz writing and serving as showrunner.