SARANDON, LANGE SPAR IN DELICIOUS ‘FEUD’
Stars re-enact rivalry of grand dames Davis and Crawford
As Joan Crawford, aging and no longer in demand, agonizes in her living room over an unflattering newspaper photo, a swirl of conflicting feelings compete for cameos: disbelief, sadness, pride, self-pity, vengeance and — ultimately — fury.
As played by Jessica Lange in FX’s Feud: Bette and Joan (Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT), Crawford simmers in one take, before going full Vesuvius in another, shouting at her loyal housekeeper when she tries to calm her with tea.
After getting praise from the director and crew, Lange shows her dedication: “Can we do another take?” Minutes later, exiting the New York apartment set, the invigorated actress gives coexecutive producer Chip Vucelich a celebratory punch in the shoulder, like an athlete who just won the big game.
It’s a master class in acting that reveals Crawford’s pain as time erodes the carefully crafted mask of Hollywood glamour. Fading glory hurts anyone, but she and Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) were movie stars — and that means higher highs, lower lows and, in their case, bigger drama.
Feud, the latest anthology series from mega-producer Ryan Murphy, begins with the on- and off-screen battle between fading screen queens. The eight-episode project opens with the first-time pairing of Crawford and Davis, 56 and 54, respectively, on What
Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, a 1962 horror thriller conceived as a promotional vehicle that emerged as a genre classic.
“It was one of the first real psychological horror stories,” Sarandon says.
Feud follows the actresses in their later years, although it flashes back to glory days, as when Davis mesmerized in 1950’s
All About Eve and Crawford starred in 1952’s Sudden Fear. The story luxuriates in the enticing glamour of golden-age Hollywood while pulling the curtain back on the often ugly, imagemaking studio and media machinery behind it, rife with sexism and ageism that persist in show business today.
“It’s a blue-sky fantasy show,
and I think people want that now, particularly after this bruising election,” says Murphy, who will look at Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the second
Feud installment, due in 2018. “It’s fun to watch. It looks pretty. The sets, costumes, jewelry and music (create) a weird fantasy, but hopefully, there’s more depth than you would expect.”
If Baby Jane was already a Russian nesting doll of casting, featuring Davis and Crawford playing onetime movie stars Baby Jane and Blanche Hudson, Feud adds an extra golden layer, as Oscar winners Sarandon and Lange unite for the first time to play the film icons. The rest of the cast is statuette-shiny, too: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kathy Bates and Sarah Paulson play actresses Olivia de Havilland, Joan Blondell and Geraldine Page, respectively, who comment on the turmoil during media interviews.
“There’s nothing more delicious than movie stars playing movie stars,” Murphy says. “The only two people I ever wanted to do this with were Jessica and Susan. They just add a certain gravity. They have both been movie stars since the ’70s, so they bring a lot of knowledge about Hollywood and how things have changed and not changed that informs the material in a wonderful way.”
Lange, 67, relates to the feastor-famine nature of Hollywood film roles.
“When Crawford was really in her prime, the ’30s and ’40s, they exalted women and women’s stories, and I think that downward slope (that followed) must have been very hard. It’s not unlike my generation of actresses. We did amazing women’s stories in the ’70s and ’80s. I could mark it until the mid-’90s,” when such powerful roles started disappearing.
Feud explores misogyny and Hollywood hypocrisy, but it also offers a good A-list dust-up.
“I think it’s human nature that people love stars, and they love pitting people against each other and behind-the-scenes drama,” Murphy says.
Zeta-Jones says Lange and Sarandon grounded their portrayals of Crawford and Davis, who have long been the subject of campy imitation.
“Jessica and Susan play these roles not as caricatures but as real women, with the shield of armor one had to have when it was a cattle market in those studio systems,” she says. “They show the genuine vulnerability (and) fragility of these women, as well as the catfights, which the gossip columnists of the time loved. And I think we still love a good feud.”
Sarandon, 70, who first worried the story of battling film idols could be a “one-joke project,” says she became more intrigued by Murphy’s promise to send
Feud behind the scenes to look at Hollywood’s darker side and to fill many production positions with women, who directed half of