The first time I saw Naomi Watts playing my grandmother Babe Paley in “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” she was in tears. She had just discovered her husband’s affair with Happy Rockefeller, the governor’s wife, finding him on the bedroom floor, scrubbing a stain of menstrual blood from their plush carpet. Babe summons Truman Capote to her Fifth Avenue apartment, her face set in distress, her mascara running. He tries to comfort her, handing her a Valium, reminding her that her marital arrangement is still worth it; she can buy a Matisse to soothe her broken heart.
None of this happened.
The torrid, bloodied scene is based in part on Capote’s short story “La Côte Basque, 1965,” published in Esquire in 1975, and on Laurence Leamer’s 2021 nonfiction book, “Capote’s Women.” In Capote’s story, the husband, a media titan who is given a different name, is never on the floor, never discovered by his wife; he scrubs the sheets in the bathtub and places them in the oven to dry. In his book, Mr. Leamer surmises that the governor’s wife in Capote’s story is Marie Harriman, not Ms. Rockefeller.
I can accept that details are changed when real people are fictionalized. 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.
I was 9 when she died, the day after her 63rd birthday, in 1978. As a grandmother to me, my brother and my older cousins, she was magic. She let us run wild at Kiluna Farm, her house in Manhasset on Long Island. She insisted we join the adults at every meal. To entertain us, she would arrange a large piece of lettuce or spinach in her teeth, smiling, pretending it wasn’t there. We would dissolve into laughter, squealing, “Baba,” the name we called her. She cheered when my cousin Brooke directed us in elaborate skits performed for her guests after dinner.
My grandmother was tactile and affectionate. She always pulled me onto her lap, kissed the nape of my neck and told me what flavor she tasted — honey, marmalade, lavender. At bedtime, she used her long red manicured nails to compose imaginary paintings on my face. She let me try on all her jewelry, the two of us in front of her mirror, her graceful hands clasping necklaces around my neck, bracelets on my small wrists. She had fake versions of my favorite pieces made for me for Christmas, all perfectly arranged in a red lacquer box.
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, by the creators of “Feud,” including the executive producer Ryan Murphy, the writer Jon Rabin Baitz and the director Gus Van Sant. In the show, Babe is drawn as the ultimate victim: of her husband’s infidelity, Capote’s betrayal, her failing health. In victimhood, in her constant suffering, in the dramatic fabrications, she becomes one-dimensional, a woman defined by surfaces — a woman defined by men, reconstructing her life to suit their needs.
I had planned to take the show lightly, to remind myself it was made to be fun, a campy romp. I did not expect it to upset me. But 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. Babe comes off fairly well, at least compared with the other fictionalized swans. Her fame, her status as an icon of the era, is burnished by the show. I should not complain. Yet, as I watched each episode, as the inaccuracies and misrepresentations stacked up, I felt furious, in defense of her.
In real life, the grandmother I knew wasn’t a pill popper or prone to drinking to excess. She would never have been so shallow as to be placated by a piece of art or jewelry. She wouldn’t have worn a shift dress, a clip hat or baggy pants. She was not, as Capote tells us in the show, an “ugly duckling” before a car accident in her teens; as recounted to me by my mother, Amanda Burden, my grandmother lost only her teeth in that accident, not her cheekbones, and she was, by many accounts, quite beautiful before the event. My grandmother quit smoking the day she was diagnosed with lung cancer; in almost every episode of the show, Babe smokes, even after chemotherapy sessions. According to my mother, the birthday party featured in the fifth episode, in which Babe ends up drunk in a bathtub, never happened. The writers of the show have embellished the facts of my grandmother’s life. The viewing public, including close friends of mine, have accepted this portrayal as the truth.
My grandmother was far more complex than that. She was brilliant. She was funny. She was rarely at rest. She read constantly. She could lead a conversation on any topic. She was an artist, drawing in pencil and sculpting in clay, skills she kept hidden from most of the world. She was tall — 5-foot-9 — and her entry into any room was regal, commanding. She had a steely strength, not a weepy one, and a warm and playful charisma. Her famous style was born from those things: intelligence and artistry.
The creators of “Feud” have made an entertaining and stylish show. But to my knowledge, no one in my family, not even my mother, was consulted by the creators, writers, directors or cast members to lend color or truth to Babe’s portrait, to her strengths and struggles, her complexities and contradictions. Had they asked us and a different portrait of my grandmother — faithful to her, multidimensional — had been drawn, the whole of the story would have had more shape, more tension, more depth.
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.
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