Babe Paley's Granddaughter Criticizes 'Feud: Capote vs. the Swans'
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There are just two episodes left in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, but Babe Paley's granddaughter has had enough.
In a new opinion essay for the New York Times, Belle Burden writes about her experience watching her grandmother's life dramatized on the FX show. "I can accept that details are changed when real people are fictionalized," she writes. "I know it is hard to capture the ineffable magic of someone’s presence. There are no live recordings of Babe, no way for an actress to know how she moved and spoke. What I cannot accept is the theft of my grandmother’s narrative."
She compares the show's creators—executive producer Ryan Murphy, writer Jon Robin Baitz, and director Gus Van Sant—to what Truman Capote did to Babe when he wrote "La Côte Basque, 1965." Burden explains, "My grandmother was wounded by Capote taking the things she told him, changing them, betraying her confidence and her privacy, which she guarded fiercely. Now her life has been stolen and twisted again, posthumously."
For what it's worth, the creators of Feud never said they were aiming for historical truth. In an interview before the premiere, Robin Baitz spoke with T&C about the truthfulness of Feud, saying, "I often think that truth is just a guess. I don't think there's such a thing as empirical truth ever when it comes to human beings, and Capote's Women author Laurence Leamer said the show is "an artistic creation and moves seamlessly in and out of factual truth."
Burden writes that she didn't plan to take the show seriously, "to remind myself it was made to be fun, a campy romp," not expecting it to upset her. Yet, she says, "it is a strange thing to see one’s family portrayed on television, to see a beloved grandparent dying again, to see facts changed, stories embellished, demeaning details added for the sake of entertainment." Watching each episode, Burden says, "I felt furious, in defense of her."
She goes on to correct many things she views as faults with show: Babe "wasn’t a pill popper or prone to drinking to excess." She "wouldn’t have worn a shift dress, a clip hat or baggy pants." She quit smoking as soon as she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Burden wishes that the Feud: Capote vs. the Swans creators reached out to the family to consult on Babe, to create a more nuanced, complex, multidimensional portrait of her grandmother. She concludes her essay by writing, "What I wish more than anything is that my grandmother had lived long enough, and been bold enough, to tell her own story, claiming it before anyone had the chance to steal it from her."
Read "The Babe Paley in 'Feud' Is Not the Woman I Knew" by Belle Burden in the New York Times.
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