Ryan Murphy’s miniseries success has continued with the premiere of “Feud” on FX.
The initial buzz about the show started almost a year ago, when Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon were cast as Hollywood starlets Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. From there, the buzz continued to grow with the casting of Sarah Paulson, Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci in other roles on the show.
The first episode definitely lived up to the hype. Like most of Murphy’s shows and any TV show, the first episode seemed to drag a little as a way for the audience to find out the roots of Davis and Crawford’s longstanding feud.
The show delightfully tackled what people behind-the-scenes of the movie did to keep the feud going. In a promo, Tucci’s character of Jack Warner, one of the famous Warner Brothers, tells a gossip columnist of the time, Hedda Hopper, to make up anything she can think of to ignite interest in the film they were both working on and to get people to go see the movie once it was released to theaters.
But what makes the show sparkle is how, despite taking place in the 1960s, it still has relevance for the 2017 world we live in.
In one scene of the first episode, Lange as Crawford laments that there’s no roles for her to play now that she’s older. Sarandon as Davis is cast in a Tennessee Williams play, but she plays a maid who offers the main characters a cocktail.
Even when “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” is being pitched to movie studios, executives don’t want the aging Davis and Crawford to be the focus of the movie, instead wanting to focus on the younger neighbor or wanting to cast Audrey Hepburn in a role because she’s younger.
This is a fate that many older actresses are facing in today’s world and in the land of Hollywood. In a interview that Lange and Sarandon gave to Variety at the beginning of the year, Lange said that Hollywood views aging women as something that’s undesirable.
If you asked either of the actresses, they’ll give you different answers on whether Hollywood is getting better about casting older women. Sarandon said it is slowly getting better, but Lange doesn’t think much is happening.
This is also seen in the episode, as Lange’s Crawford does anything she can to stay young and young-looking, whether it is dunking her face in ice water first thing in the morning or rubbing lemons on her elbows to keep the skin from sagging.
FX is keeping their business with Murphy going, as “Feud” has been renewed for a second season and will depict Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage.
