In those final fading years of the New York socialites, Diane Lane was a teenager and already an actor. It was Manhattan in the 70s, and she had glimpses into the world of high society insiders such as Babe Paley and CZ Guest – women the writer Truman Capote “collected” and then betrayed, as depicted in the Disney Plus series Feud: Capote vs The Swans. Lane, who plays queen bee Slim Keith, remembers occasionally coming into these women’s orbits.
“I met Lee Radziwill on several occasions,” she says, of the sister of Jackie Kennedy and another of Capote’s “swans”. “I was a young person and she was not, but I distinctly remember what that feeling is when you have youth and you’re surrounded by people who don’t, and they’re looking at you with knives.” Lane smiles. Youth and beauty, then as now, were currency, as well as status. Around that time, Lane had been hailed as the next Grace Kelly by Laurence Olivier, with whom she had just starred in A Little Romance. Though even that, Lane points out, was an outdated reference. The world was changing.
