The finale of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’ rivalry, as presented on Feud: Bette and Joan,was tied up in a bow even more perfectly knotted than the one atop Baby Jane Hudson’s head.
That’s thanks in large part to the storytellers who crafted the final chapter of the FX series with elegance, pathos and a lingering bite of acidity.
Gina Welch was the credited writer of the season finale, and also shared writing credit with executive producer Tim Minear on the fourth episode “More, or Less,” and episode 7, “Hagsloitation,” – an installment that Minear also directed.
Welch and Minear joined Mashableto provide their perspective on the creative choices they embraced to close out Feudon notes of triumph, tragedy and the reconciliations that might have been.
How did you approach the finale in terms of wrapping up the narrative? Which parts of the story still needed to be told to give it a good resolution?
Gina Welch: I think in coming to the end we thought a lot about the beginning. For us, Joan’s storyline was largely about a woman who had been defined throughout her career as a beauty, so we wanted to end this story with what happens when your body starts to fall apart, and that’s your identity: what you look like?
Bette was sort of a tougher end, because of course her career continued for years after we finish. I think what we came to was that, Bette had sort of learned that her value was only when she was on the screen. Her roles dried up. So what ended up happening with her is of course she did all these un-produced pilots, she went on every talk show, and she basically was being trotted out to give the signature Bette Davis one-liners and to talk shit about her costars. For us, that was sort of a parallel of tragedy.
Tim Minear:But there’s also a thing too that I think people aren’t noticing in the show -- which I’m just now thinking about myself – which is: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford... yes, there were a lot of forces allied against them, but the truth of the matter is, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis survived like no other stars of their era. You know what I mean? Norma Shearer, no. I guess Rosalind [Russell]. Rosalind had a long run.
But the truth of the matter is, Joan Crawford started in silent movies, and she worked almost up until the end. Joan’s story in particular is a tragedy. In a way, both of their stories are a victory. Every human story of victory ends in aging, decay and death. So there’s that. We’re on a toboggan ride to the grave. Thank you, and have a pleasant evening.
You had these two great moments of reconciliation – one in Joan’s head, and one flashback to their first day together on set. Why was it important for you to show that to the audience?
Minear:We wanted them to be emotionally satisfied. That was the only way to do it.
Welch: Yeah. Bette gave interviews after Joan’s death. Everything she said about Joan after Joan died was very clipped. We read sort of between the lines that there was kind of potentially an understanding once Joan was gone that Joan was more than she’d given her credit for. So of course we imagined some desire for a deeper connection.
Did Bette have regrets?Credit: FXMinear:We imagined some regrets, but also, there’s the moment where Bette says, “Joan Crawford’s dead. Good.” That’s a famous quote of hers. But when you watch the way Susan Sarandon plays that line, it is the most genius line reading.
Welch:Yes. The subtext is so perfect.
Minear: The subtext -- in three words, she’s telling you what we as writers couldn’t tell you in an act of the show. And it really crystalizes the yearning, and the regret, and the opportunities lost. And we all know what we should do and how we should behave, and what would probably even make us happier. We know that because of who we are, but because of who we are, we’re never going to be able to do it.
Welch: Especially for Bette Davis, who had a persona to maintain. You feel the sort of fragility in that moment of wanting to break that persona, and knowing her career depends on keeping it.
Thematically, there’s such a great tie-in with What Ever Happened to Baby Janethrough the title that you used for the episode, “You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?” the famous closing quote from that film. That was a nice stroke of inspiration. Did that come easy?
Minear:Easy.
Welch: That was Ryan Murphy.
Minear:Ryan knew what he wanted to call it. “Here’s what it’s called, and here’s what’s going to happen in it, and I’d like it by 3 o’clock.”
Did that help you get to the flashback moment where they see the potential for a friendship between the two of them?
Minear:That was something we came to late in the breaking of that story. We were sitting with Ryan, and we wanted the perfect last image to go out on, and the thought was, “Well, maybe we go out the way we came in, and we just recreate that first image, because we saw them talking but we didn’t know what they were saying.
So maybe it’s our demi-"Rosebud" moment, because we know what’s going to happen, and we’re returning to a moment when they still have the potential of it being okay, and they don’t yet know what’s going to happen. Suddenly, something banal, a very simple exchange between two people, is fraught with all kinds of tragic meaning.
Welch:And you get the freshness of the beginning between them, because it’s such a throwaway moment. You just sense that they don’t know what they’re heading into, and you get the lost possibility.
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