Tom Hollander goes deep on 'Feud' finale, why he's still haunted by Truman Capote

Spoiler alert! The following story contains details about the series finale of FX's "Feud: Capote and the Swans" (now streaming on Hulu).

Nearly 20 years ago, Tom Hollander auditioned to play Truman Capote in the 2006 biopic "Infamous."

The role ultimately went to Toby Jones. But as fate would have it, Hollander got another shot to play the literary icon in Ryan Murphy's FX series "Feud: Capote and the Swans," an eight-episode drama about a rift between the writer and a group of New York socialites, who inspired his dishy (and some would say slanderous) novel "Answered Prayers." The show follows Capote until his death from liver disease at age 59 in 1984. (The unfinished book was published two years later.)

"I'm now, of course, thrilled that I didn't get it," Hollander says of the earlier film. "This 'Feud' version is a sort of elegy; it's the last phase and the dark journey that he took. I couldn't have played that then. The right things happen at the right moment."

The series finale, which premiered Wednesday, is "a fantasy of how things might have been," the British actor says. In the episode, Capote imagines himself apologizing to (and healing with) each of the Swans, played by stars including Naomi Watts, Calista Flockhart and Demi Moore. In one sequence, he goes on a desert getaway with C.Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny); in another, he smashes plates with an embittered "Slim" Keith (Diane Lane).

USA TODAY spoke with Hollander, 56, about the finale and more. (Edited and condensed for clarity.)

Question: From your research, do you think Truman Capote felt genuine guilt for what he did to the Swans? Or did he simply miss the lifestyle that came with them?

Tom Hollander: I’m not entirely convinced that he did feel guilty, because I don’t think he felt he had anything to be guilty about. I know what we were trying to communicate in the finale, and that was about forgiveness. If you ask for forgiveness, does that presume guilt? I don’t know. He desperately missed his friends: As you see in the show, he calls Babe (Paley) repeatedly and begs to be friends again. But at other moments, he felt defiant and enraged that they’d gotten so angry when he was merely being himself ― the person they all had known for years. Why, suddenly, should they be so surprised? Why should they be so vain?

The episode wrestles with this idea that some things are beyond forgiveness. Do you believe that?

Some people say that if you don’t forgive, then it’s only yourself that you’re hurting. Forgiveness allows us to release ourselves from the pain and the anger of the hurt. So for that reason, forgiveness is to be encouraged. But I bear a whole lot of grudges, and I don't intend to let them go. In a sense, they define the way you think you should be treated. We all need to know how much we can take and where we need to draw the line. It’s the way that people have made us feel in the past that helps you find those boundaries. It's probably healthier for your heart to forgive, but you don’t want to forget.

What did you find most fascinating about "Answered Prayers"?

I felt the writing was not as good as in his great period. He lost some of the humanity and sensitivity; it was coarser than what he’d done when he was younger, which was so nuanced and elegant and compassionate. A lot of that isn't in "Answered Prayers," because it's so (scandalous) and mean. If the writing had been better, maybe people wouldn’t have gotten so cross. If he’d written the ladies more beautifully, maybe they wouldn’t have been so outraged about having their secrets uncovered.

The finale ends with a title card saying that the real-life Joanne Carson (played by Molly Ringwald) read three unpublished chapters of the book. What do you think happened to those?

I don’t know; I’m not an authority on any of it. Wouldn’t it be lovely to think they had been written, and that there was this great work that was somehow lost and could maybe be found? But I think if it had been there, it would have been found by now. I worry that he simply never got down to it, or threw them away because he knew it wasn't good enough.

I imagine he would've loved all the intrigue around those chapters and his ashes, which were bought by a mystery bidder at auction in 2016.

Exactly, you’re right. He would’ve loved all of that.

After six months of moving and speaking like Truman, does he still haunt you in any way?

At the moment, he does. I still find myself doing some of his hand movements. It was a big deal for me playing Truman: Eight episodes is a long time (to inhabit someone), and I’ve rarely been asked to perform such beautiful things. So I do miss him. When a character is in your body and heart for long enough, then you miss them like a friend when you don’t do it anymore. You walk down the road with them all that time, and then eventually you have to wave goodbye at the crossroads.