Tom Hollander was ‘very nervous’ to nail down Truman Capote’s ‘Feud’ accent: It’s ‘almost cartoonish’

nypost.com:

“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.”For the uninitiated, the eight-episode series — ending Wednesday night at 10 p.m. — charts the relationship between acclaimed writer Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) and his coterie of high society friends he dubs the “Swans”: Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Nancy “Slim” Keith (Diane Lane), CZ Guest (Chloë Sevigny), Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart), Ann Woodward (Demi Moore) and Joanne Carson (Molly Ringwald).Capote’s relationship with the women is irretrievably shattered in 1975 when Esquire magazine publishes his roman a clef, “La Côte Basque, 1965” — titled after the Manhattan restaurant frequented by Capote and the Swans — which paints the women as petty and backstabbing and reveals some of their deeply held secrets.

Most of them never forgave him for his literary transgression. In “Feud,” Capote backslides after being amputated from the Swans.

He died in 1984 at the age of 59 at the home of Joanne Carson after years of alcohol and pill addiction.Hollander, 56, who gives a bravura performance as Capote, spoke to The Post about his on-screen alter ego.Were you nervous about making Capote’s distinctive voice seem cartoonish?Yes, I was, because it is almost cartoonish.

It’s extreme, but I was very nervous until I wasn’t nervous anymore and that took a few weeks of shooting and people being nice to me, supporting artists, New York folk, coming up to me and saying, ‘That sounds like Truman’ and they had no reason to do that so I kind of believed them.