Diane Lane ('Feud: Capote vs. The Swans') reveals how Slim Keith 'stuck to her guns' after betrayal

hello everyone I'm Sam Ekman of gold Derby here with Diane Lane from Feud capot versus the swans and Diane I think one of my favorite aspects of this series is watching the hierarchy of the swans play out uh in this friends group because slim your character in many ways emerges and asserts herself as kind of the leader of the group a lot so how how does that hierarchy work for slim h i she's coming back to me just to hear you describe her um I I think that she stuck to her guns you know more than some other people might have said it's time to forgive and she wasn't ready and maybe that makes her a leader in the unforgiveness department but um I think she felt particularly betrayed for her own reasons and of course each of these women had their own uh regrettable experience in their trust of Truman capot um you know in Slim's case when the excerpt from his book was released in um Esquire um it was it was as though she were the one being portrayed as as the main gossip she was the one she could tell by the way she was described that she was the one who was doing the dishing on every I mean I I so she wasn't going to stand for that I don't think and also she had done so much personally and professionally uh as a friend to Truman um she helped him you know get his book a million dooll offer uh she helped him attain the the Services of Swifty Lazar as his agent after she was his first agent actually uh as a friend um because she knew so many people and she was such a social Maven and I mean they traveled to Russia to Europe they they were real Pals and she did get to read the first drafts every time there was a new draft she she was the first one to read it or so she said she was so proud of that she loved him she nurtured his career and so I think that that's why she stuck to her guns and if you want to call her the leader of the that's too I'm not I don't feel the need to defend her but I want to explain it a little bit that's all sure sure well um the the Dynamics of that group often play out over these amazing lunch scenes at lote Basque and uh some of your co-stars I talked to Tom and Naomi and they were saying that as opposed to a normal way of filming a dinner scene where it's one person's reaction you go through often times Gus was making the camera kind of swirl around the the tables and I'm wondering what did that do for you how did that kind of filming style affect your approach to the scenes well it depends I mean sometimes you think am I even on camera right now or other times you're like oh I'm so glad the camera was not on me when I said that line because I really want another whack at it or gee I wonder if it doesn't matter if I'm you know like you let go you you practice letting go of what is being captured and what is not and you certainly would never time things for when the camera's on you but sometimes we got lucky and and they would choose they you know they would try to choose moments when sometimes the people who were speaking were actually on camera but sometimes un often they weren't because that's that's like life that's like lunch that's like hanging out with people we're not always uh in each other's face and and analyzing each other uh so I think he was trying to capture that feeling of what it is to be in a social situation with more than just one other person uh the energy is moving and flowing and you get a sense of the place uh and the food and how they didn't eat much stuff I don't know you so it I I enjoyed it it felt like theater more than uh strictly filming process yeah as you researched slim uh was there any particular aspect of her that you discovered that really you latched on to and you thought oh this is kind of my way in to [Music] her well I was lucky enough to hear her voice it was a recording that I stole with my iPhone off of uh a recording that was part of a documentary about Truman so I heard her being interviewed and her responses and and how I mean I really wasn't doing her voice I wasn't leaning back she she really leaned back in her throat a lot and and was and had a body way of speaking so I wasn't trying to emulate I mean sound like her too too much but I caught the I was trying to catch the you know the emphasis on the cabable you know the uh the way she kind of spoke in an almost dead pan way it's it's like her humor was up to you to get it and if you missed it oh well you know there was something about her that just trusted her own her own way and you know people were much more I think full of personality in other eras I don't know maybe it's just me because I wasn't around then I I wasn't an adult yet anyway and um I don't know I so I so I loved listening to her voice in the recordings she did about her experience in the documentary she wasn't on camera but um and then her her her autobiography which I'm actually looking at the spine of right now in my office and I loved that book I I felt transported I cared about her I felt her journey from young woman to and with the perspective of time looking back on her Youth and understanding it in a more circumspect way and the way she graciously handled um her experience and memories of Truman and and and the regrets there you know she handled it so delicately because of course she learned so much from her experience having been on the other end of a regrettable memoir or or any piece of writing you know you just I think a lot of people bought her book and just went right to the Truman Pages because they were just dying to see what she had to say and she handled it so well I think but so I really enjoyed reading it and I really enjoyed uh sort of hearing hearing her voice uh through her writing and that that helped me if that's a very long answer to your very simple question was great and you mentioned you mentioned the uh the era uh that we're in and she really was like an extremely glamorous woman of that era and you know always came out with looking you know like a 10 at each moment so when you got into hair and makeup and costume what did that kind did that unlock anything for you well we certainly felt very grateful and highly dependent on the the costume and the hair and the makeup and all the crew making us look beautiful and you know the cinematography was just delicious and I think the whole project I keep saying film the whole series um is just an apex moment for every department on their credit list you know it's just a wonderful thing to be a part of and so um the transformation was pretty extreme at 5: in the morning you walk in the trailer looking like one thing and you walk out looking like something else entirely much improved um but uh but you know and then the humility of of at the end of the day washing it all off and just saying got to do that again tomorrow how did these women do it you know how did they do it I guess practice practice makes perfect and and um they they only had to be themselves in I say only but at least you know you get you get that one thing really down and uh yeah so she has a really uh shocking moment for viewers when we discover that she's sleeping with Babe's husband and it's so fascinating to watch because she's been so upset at truman but she also has her own misdeeds how do you think she kind of compartmentalizes that and squares away those two things H I wish I knew I mean it's a different medium this medium of series because the scripts aren't written yet all of them usually not anyway in my experience certainly not so you learn as you go and you find out what's expected of you and sometimes there's surprises and and this was one of them so treat and I were like looks like we're gonna have a love scene um call my agent no I'm kidding uh but because because it was it was intended to surprise and it was intended I guess to surprise even us so sometimes that happens and you got to roll with it and and it was I was I was so torn because I was thinking you know to this day I'm wondering what I would have done differently she must have been a really good actress meaning to conceal the fact that she felt no guilt but I you know we hadn't gotten there yet and and things get reedited anyway so you know so much of What actors do is you provide the work and a lot lot of it is is edited and presented in a different um relation to each other and so you say oh I have all this blue in the tapestry well if I take away some of the green it makes the blue even Bluer you know and you're like but what but the green I was really counting on that I know it's a strange metaphor like analogy but that's how I make peace with things sometimes so sometimes things are added sometimes things are taken away you think you know what you're signing up for and you get surprised sometimes L and sometimes not and it's good because it keeps me flexible and strong and um you know super grateful for being flexible because um that was a fun challenge to to to be that person and to crumble from such a successful uh fooling I fooled people you know uh and and I do I feel a little bit guilty honestly about it I mean as a woman as an actress as a person because we don't know I mean slim would be 107 today I think and her daughter's still around and I she had her daughter when she was 29 so Kitty you know I I feel um a lot of feelings around it as you can tell but um you know I think what Ryan Murphy does is fantastic I glue when he did that first Feud I knew I knew from how much I loved the first one that this one was going to be shocking to me as well because the other one was shocking to me in a great way uh it just stretched it stretched the boundaries of what I imagined was permissible I think uh everyone I've spoken to from from Feud has kind of talked about this intermingling of pain and love that exists between the characters that is essential for a feud do you see those two things with slim how do you relate to those two with this character pain and love is that what you said yeah well I guess you can't I mean as much as you love is as much pain as you can they correlate if you don't care you don't care that's why they say you know not caring is the opposite of love it's not hate that's been established but in this case yes and full circle again to forgiveness and whatever that looks like because by the way if you live long enough I imagine everybody would be forgiven because you you just everything changes your priorities change your your you change your self- knowing changes so that's natural and um I that's that brings some peace that brings some modum of peace that we're not trapped in some unchanging World which would be very unforgiving actually so but as far as love and pain um yeah I mean what did the Buddhists say something about attachment there's a quote in there somewhere I'll let you well go look up your uh yeah you know attachment is it's not great to be attached to uh things because they're gonna they're going to change on you yeah you uh couple minutes ago I think you referred to it as you kept referring to it as the film and you have worked in film for I would say the bulk of your career except for the past several years you've been diving into series more and I'm curious is there a different kind of challenge with a series with this long form storytelling how do they compare to you well like I said um not being a th% certain you know what you're signing up for that's always a little uh different I I like to I mean my my my feeling is what Shakespeare said the play is the thing at least we know that like everybody can be fired but we know what we're here to do we're here to do this this play um but when when it things would get Rewritten and changed or haven't been written yet at all so that LE it's just another Echelon of of of flexibility within MyCraft and um that's just again change you know and how it's about trust it's about trust that you will be collaborating with you know your your Helm's people uh whether it's you know in this case the wonderful John Robbie Bates who was our writer and showrunner but also of course you know Ryan Murphy with his vision and his uh his desires and his preciseness and him you know knowing what he wants to mine emotionally out of out of these scenarios and getting to the parts that people can relate to and and and some of that is being shocked at by others and and what what choices they make and how different that is from us and wondering what we would do in that situation and how we would handle it and uh sometimes you just can't look away because it's so uh it's so shocking or uncomfortable or something I mean you know yeah this this is this is a pretty safe territory you know compared to some other Ryan Murphy shows you know so um you know I everybody's got their threshold of what their tastes are and preferences are and stuff this this is really right up my alley I I loved Feud one so much so I was so delighted to be in this room when my phone rang and it was Ryan and he said slim Keith and and we're just coming to you we're just calling people direct I was like oh that's how you do it didn't even come through my reps just went right right to me like how nice to be asked I'm still kind of amazed uh yeah it's nice nice nice nice nice moment in in in in life and um you know get attached well it's the latest in U I think a career that has had a lot of variety to it in the types of roles you've tackled over the years is there anything still that you like a style of performance or a genre that you haven't tackled yet but you're dying to a genre a style huh well I've always been a little bit afraid of horror it's not but I know that there would be one one day that if I vibed it I would take the leap but I'd have to Vibe it I and I don't know what that is because I'm not into Gore but I can get really scared by by movies and so I'd have to figure out what that is well Ryan Murphy could probably probably help you with horror a little bit that's true that is true he knows a lot about it but a lot I can't handle a lot of you know violence I just can't do it so everybody's got their thing well we'll see what you what you Vibe with in the future but in the meantime fantastic work in Feud and thank you so much Diane for sitting and talking with me thank you Sam so nice to meet you today this way like we're you know from from my home to your home it's very sweet yes [Music]