EXCLUSIVE: Chris Chalk will star as James Baldwin in the latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s Feud series—Feud: Capote’s Women.
During a conversation for an upcoming episode of Deadline podcast 20 Questions on Deadline, Chalk, who is currently starring in HBO series Perry Mason, revealed the exclusive news of this new role in Season 2 of Murphy’s FX show. “I’ve always wanted to play him,” Chalk said of Baldwin, adding that the set was “such a supportive environment, like mind-blowingly supportive,” but that the role—which he already shot several months ago, directed by Max Winkler—was by no means easy. “We shot 20 pages in two days,” he said. “I got the script and was like, ‘That’s a lot of words.’ I had a little mini panic attack… but it was amazing.
Then there was a five-page monologue.” Chalk, who plays private detective Paul Drake in Perry Mason, has also starred in Gotham, Homeland, 12 Years a Slave and When They See Us.
One of his earliest roles was in the 2010 Broadway production of Fences, alongside Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. Feud: Capote’s Women, based on Laurence Leamer’s bestselling book with a script from Jon Robin Baitz, follows the story of Truman Capote’s friendship with a group of society women he called his “swans”.
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