Actress relished opportunity to tackle Davis role

Bette Davis finally caught up to Susan Sarandon.

After multiple opportunities to portray the screen legend, Sarandon was enticed by Ryan Murphy for his Emmy-nominated limited series “Feud: Bette and Joan.”

Facing off against old pal Jessica Lange as the equally formidable Joan Crawford wasn’t an enterprise into which the Oscar-winning actress entered lightly, but Sarandon’s take on the iconic star resulted in an Emmy nomination. (Lange, too, earned a nod.)

Sarandon talked recently about finally tackling the role.

You had been approached through the years about portraying Bette Davis, and you narrated a documentary about her. Was part of the appeal of “Feud” being able to really stretch out in the eight hours of this project?

Originally, it was a film, and when I read it, I just said, “It’s just kind of a one-joke thing, you know? They’re bitchy.” But what’s interesting is the last line, “If only we could’ve been friends,” or whatever that is, “You mean all this time we could’ve been friends?” I said, “That’s interesting to me.” You know, if women band together, they’re so powerful and what a shame that this happened. So, years later, he (Murphy) came and he said it was going to be all these episodes. ... And, “We’re going to look at it in the context of Hollywood and tell that story. And has it changed? And what about women?” And then it started to get much more interesting.

And you hadn’t worked with Lange before, but you knew her?

Yeah, we’re East Coast gals, and we’ve run into each other a lot. I had spent a little bit of time with my family, with her family in Mexico. And, you know, you survive in this business long enough and the ones who are left standing, you kind of feel bonded with.

And that denouement of they could have been friends. Did you try to tamp that down a bit?

Yeah, in the beginning, we would turn to each other and say, “Are we just doing, like, a series of memes? You know, what’s going on here?” Because we were so afraid of being overpowered by the kind of cliche of who these women were, especially Bette Davis, who’s been imitated so drastically. And so I think we focused on making the scenes work, rather than whatever the animosity was.