Head Swan: Naomi Watts on her Ryan Murphy collabs and Feud transformation

Naomi Watts probably wouldn't consider her latest character, Barbara "Babe" Paley, to be the head of the "Swans," a nickname author Truman Capote bestowed on the menagerie of high-society women he claimed as close friends in the 1960s and '70s. Even Babe Paley wouldn't consider Babe Paley to be any kind of ringleader. But in the eyes of Capote, she certainly was.

The same could be said of Watts herself, considering her working relationship with TV producer Ryan Murphy. Press have already begun calling Murphy's growing list of frequent collaborators his Swans, especially with the impending arrival of his latest series, Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans. And though the two-time Oscar nominee of 21 Grams and The Impossible hasn't appeared in as many Murphy projects as, say, Sarah Paulson or Jessica Lange, Watts can consider herself officially part of the recurring troupe. After starring in Netflix's The Watcher, her performance as Paley leads the ensemble of Feud's second season, which premieres on FX Wednesday night.

"I hope that's close to the truth because I would just love to be continually invited back," Watts tells EW over Zoom in mid January. "We know how good he is at creating these worlds of delicious, fraught, tense spaces with complex characters. I mean, this was it. This felt like it was a dream on every level," she adds of her latest role.

Among a star-studded cast that includes Diane Lane as Slim Keith, Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, Demi Moore as Ann Woodward, Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson, and Tom Hollander as Truman Capote, Watts' Paley stands out. The daughter of noted neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing, the New York socialite worked as a fashion editor at Vogue for two years before marrying William S. Paley (played on Feud by the late Treat Williams), a titan among TV executives.

"It was like performance art that she put forward into the world," Watts comments on Paley. "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."

While the season investigates the lives of Paley, Capote, and the other Swans, the feud element surrounds the publication of excerpts from the writer's still incomplete novel Answered Prayers. Suffering from alcoholism and a bout of writer's block, Capote tried turning things around by writing about New York society and using specifics from the lives of his friends as inspiration. It did not go over well, and most of the Swans then tried to oust Capote from society altogether.

The part of Paley feels transformative for Watts, who dons fake teeth for the role as a nod to the car accident the real socialite suffered. "I had to learn how to talk with them, find the dialect," she says. "I had brown contact lenses, and then you get to the clothes and the hair. Each step you're getting closer and closer to [the character]." Furthermore, with so little archival material to go on, Watts had to piece the performance together from scraps of information. "She was never filmed in the press. I didn't have any recordings of her, audio or visual," the actress adds. "So I had to really invent all that based on what was available."

With such an impressive roster of formidable actresses, Watts admits she spoke with Sevigny about their shared experience of working in Murphy's orbit multiple times. Sevigny starred in season 2's Asylum theme of American Horror Story, and after playing C.Z. Guest on Feud, she's going to appear in the second season of Netflix's Monster, about the Menéndez brothers. "She was just wonderful and had deep appreciation for both the parts that we were playing," Watts remarks.

Speaking of AHS, Watts, who's also an executive producer on Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans, says her kid would be thrilled if she were to make her way over to that horror anthology series some day. "That's probably the only one of [Murphy's] that I haven't watched, but I would totally be up for it," she says.

The actress had begun speaking with Murphy about what their next project might look like after filming finished on Feud. "As we started getting close to the end, I was like, 'Come on, Ryan! What's my fall slot? I love my fall slot with you,'" she says (she finished shooting season 1 of The Watcher the previous fall). But those conversations went silent around the Hollywood writer and actor strikes last year.

She also doesn't know what's happening with season 2 of The Watcher, which had been announced for renewal in 2022. "I know they said yes to the next series, but I haven't heard anything more," Watts says. "And to be honest, we left the house, so I don't know if we'll be coming back." (Watts' Nora and Bobby Cannavale's Dean moved out of the tormented home in the season 1 finale.) "I don't know what the plan is there, so I can't give you a straight answer, I'm afraid."

Whatever ultimately happens next for her, with or without Murphy, Watts feels stunned that there are still meaty opportunities for her at the age of 55. "We were told at a certain time that everything fizzles out and dries up and you're done in Hollywood," she says, "but just when there's people like Ryan Murphy running the show, that's just not the case."

The first two episodes of Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans premiere on FX Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT. They will then stream on Hulu the next day.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Meet the real ladies who lunch behind the Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans cast
• See Jessica Lange return to Feud in season 2 trailer for Capote Vs. the Swans
• The next Truman Capote: The White Lotus star Tom Hollander on channeling the writer in Feud season 2