Tom Hollander as Truman Capote

Tom Hollander stars as Truman Capote, author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. Hollander initially auditioned for the role 20 years ago for Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.

On his preparation and examination for the role, Hollander told Vanity Fair: “I do like playing failures. It’s so human. If you think of an actor, actors are often playing people who are extraordinary, who are really brilliant at something. To play a hero is quite difficult because few of us are actually heroes. Truman was a drunk, and he blew it. I’ve been around that stuff enough in my life to have a sense of what it smells like—the alcoholism—and this is a story about alcoholism. It’s about addiction. I mean, the canvas is big, isn’t it? The canvas is enormous.”

Naomi Watts as Babe Paley

Naomi Watts plays Barbara “Babe” Paley, a magazine editor and socialite who was married to media mogul William S. Paley.

On playing Paley, Naomi Watts had to get fully in the mindset of a high-end New York elites, “It was like performance art that she put forward into the world,” Watts told Entertainment Weekly. “Everything she thought about was planned: how she plans a dinner party and who was there. Who’s sitting next to each other? Where does the fork go? What are the fabrics of the napkins? Do the candles smell right? All of these things that created such a huge amount of planning, but nothing was left for herself so often. This was how she was raised. She came from a family where the women were there to serve their husbands and nothing else.”

Diane Lane as Slim Keith

Diane Lane plays Slim Keith, a socialite married to Kenneth Keith.

After reading her memoir, Diane Lane told Vanity Fair that she “became a fan of her spirit, her energy, and the way she tells a story—it’s very classy in her choice to omit certain things. So it’s an important responsibility to be judicious and be gracious about what you say for the next generation.”

Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest

Chloë Sevigny plays C.Z. Guest, a writer, designer, and socialite who was married to Winston Frederick Churchill Guest.

On how she channeled the mannerisms of Guest, she told Rolling Stone, “There’s not a lot of footage of her speaking, unfortunately. But there are a couple of interviews I watched numerous times, and a beautiful Rizzoli book of her friends and their accounts of her. And I read the book that our show’s based on, Capote’s Women, and looked at Slim Keith photos to feel that time and energy.”

Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwll

Calista Flockhart plays Lee Radziwell, a public relations executive and socialite married to Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł. She’s the sister of Jackie Onassis Kennedy.

Murphy ideated Radziwell as a snake like kind of character. He told The New York Times, “She was the most famous — American royalty. I wasn’t sure that Calista, who had been Ally McBeal and really had a reputation of being America’s sweetheart, girl-next-door, would want to do something like that at this point in her life. But she said yes with no hesitation. She really went for it, which I admired. She was sharp and dagger-like.

Answered Prayers by Truman Capote

For more about Truman Capote’s Swans, you can’t miss Answered Prayers , his unfinished book that was published posthumously; the preview of which was published by Esquire led to his exile from New York high society. It includes such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead, as well as cunning beauty and nasty husbands. “What did they expect?” Capote famously said after the controversy. “I’m a writer, and I use everything. Did all those people think I was there just to entertain them?”

Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson

Molly Ringwald plays Joanne Carson, wife of famed talk show host Johnny Carson.

Ringwald told W Magazine about her preparation for the role. “There was not a lot out there, as opposed to Babe or some of these other women,” she recounted. “She wasn’t really that well-known, but there was one interview that she had done later, where she was talking about health foods—she was very into health foods and New Age-y stuff. I watched that a bunch of times. I did talk to people who knew her. Ultimately I was just playing an interpretation of her by our screenwriter, Jon Robin Baitz. I was playing her as somebody who just had unconditional love for Truman, which I really believe that she did. I think she really, really loved him.”

Demi Moore as Ann Woodward

Demi Moore plays Ann Woodward, a radio actress and socialite married to William Woodward Jr. She was accused by Capote of killing her husband and she later died by suicide.

“I think there’s great responsibility when you are stepping in to play a real person,” Moore told Good Morning America about her role. “It was important to me to kind of honor the truth as much as possible.”

“Ann lived a life that was a lot of rejection. The family rejected her that she married into. No matter how good, she never lived up to anybody’s standards. She just never fit that social stratosphere.”