‘Collected them like people collect objects’

This Swan has secrets.

Diane Lane plays the pivotal role of socialite Slim Keith in FX’s “Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans,” based on Laurence Leamer’s book, “Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal and a Swan Song for an Era.”

The second installment of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud” anthology series revolves around writer Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) and his coterie of high-society women friends he dubs “The Swans”: Nancy “Slim” Keith, Barbara “Babe” Paley (Naomi Watts), CZ Guest (Chloë Sevigny), Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart), Anne Woodward (Demi Moore) and Joanne Carson (Molly Ringwald).

Capote’s relationship with the women sours, in differing degrees, when, in 1975, Esquire magazine publishes his roman a clef, “La Côte Basque 1965,” named after the New York City restaurant at which the Swans lunch regularly. It paints the women as petty and backstabbing and reveals deeply held secrets of affairs and even an alleged murder. 

“La Côte Basque 1965” is told through the eyes of Lady Ina Coolbirth, a thinly disguised take on the vivacious, thrice-married Slim Keith (whose husbands included Leland Hayward and Howard Hawks) and whose famous friends included Ernest Hemingway. 

Once the story is published, an enraged Keith makes it her mission to cut Capote out of the Swans’ lives forever as he descends into a life of pills and alcohol that ultimately killed him in 1984.

Lane spoke to The Post about “Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans” in an exclusive interview.

Does Slim have one trait you stuck to while filming the role?

I had an abundant gift of having her voice in my head from her autobiography [“Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life“]. I just loved her energy and her spin on things and I can see why she was such an infectious person. Some people just charge a room with charisma. I loved her, I get her, she had a joie de vivre. Like it or not, her generation of women went through what was filtered and framed by male evaluation … and she knew how to maximize that and own it and that was very refreshing.

Slim was the ringleader in ostracizing Truman Capote.

I have to say I can see why. He has all of this coming out of her mouth [in “La Côte Basque 1965”] and she’s the one betraying everyone. He’s doing it himself, too, between the quotes of Ina Coolbirth, but he makes it look as though she’s the one and, I think, in her self-defense, she was quite motivated as well. She’s being accused of being a mouthpiece for this horrible stuff.

Describe a “Swan.”

They were of an era and you get to understand that by the end of the show. Part of the fun is the context — without that they couldn’t have existed. What was considered important we would consider luxury today. The game itself doesn’t exist anymore; it’s like trying to explain an ancient civilization and culture … that Capote gave to the world with his writing about these women. The fact that it happened to be mean and punitive and all the emotions he had toward them, what they embodied and what he projected onto them, that’s framing. He grouped them together and collected them like people collect objects. He wanted and needed them and provided service to them in his friendship, which was almost transactional. I was horrified for [the women] but I was also happy for them because, in another way, their humanity was allowed oxygen. It’s a double-edged sword and it really is something that is hard to look away from.

What’s your takeaway of “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”?

I think what was created in the writing of this series is that it’s so insightful, like Origami folded upon itself. I think the show is brilliant and to care about people that are frightening is interesting to me. I’m not sure how “sympathetic” the characters are … it’s not about that. It’s about being fascinated about what it is to be human. When Ryan [Murphy] says “Feud” is not about hate but love, that is the point.

Tom Hollander is excellent as Truman Capote.

The depths that he was asked to plumb and that we are fathoming with him … he takes us on this journey and it’s just an opus. He’s not a fictitious character; that’s the thing about Truman, but he knew he had this absurd personality and he leaned into it and very few get to to that in their lifetime. That’s a very strong piece of work that Mr. Hollander gave to the world.

“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.