Director of “Capote vs. The Swans” analyzes Babe Paley’s death scene

(from left) Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, Treat Williams as Bill Paley in “Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans”

Courtesy of FX

The penultimate episode of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans Babe Paley, the New York high society lady played by Naomi Watts, succumbs to cancer and dies on her bed, separated from her boyfriend Truman Capote (Tom Hollander). The shot of Paley’s death is a rare moment of inaction in the series, a deliberate decision by the director of the seventh episode (titled “Beautiful Babe”), Jennifer Lynch.

“It’s such a pivotal moment in the show,” she says. “There was so much in the series that had movement, elegance, flair and pace. What I really wanted to capture in Babe’s death was the stillness, that the only thing moving in that room was her breath, and that she was tiny in that big bed.”

Lynch insisted that the camera remain still: “There was some resistance. The cameraman was concerned. And I said, ‘This is not about letting the audience float away into heaven. This is a static, horrible, sad moment.'” The position of the mourner at her bedside – her children in chairs opposite the foot of the bed and her husband Bill Paley (Treat Williams) at her side – was also a calculated choreography: “The production tells me about her family and the distance between them all.”

The fragile moment was captured under time pressure – Lynch recalls that the crew had “less than 90 minutes to set everything up”. A rich blue palette is a nod to “the dance between the worlds, the living and the dead”.

This story first appeared in a single issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine in June. Click here to subscribe.