Molly Ringwald Says Johnny Carson’s Ex-Wife Joanne Was Like a Social ‘Outcast’ After They Divorced (Exclusive)

Times have changed in many ways since the era depicted in Feud: Capote vs. Swansand one of them is how society views divorce.

Molly Ringwald stars as Joanne Carson in the FX limited series, playing TV personality Johnny Carson’s second wife after they split.

Truman Capote, played by Tom Hollander, considered Joanne one of his closest confidants after alienating his best friends from the Manhattan elite by sharing intimate details of their personal lives in “La Côte Basque, 1965,” a chapter from his book Answered prayers.

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“She and Truman were outcasts together,” Ringwald, 55, tells PEOPLE. “After she got divorced from Johnny Carson, my character was kind of thrown out of this kind of insert in Los Angeles.”

Johnny and Joanne Carson married in 1963 but divorced seven years later. They were officially divorced in 1972. Joanne maintained her friendship with Capote despite his reputation in New York. He had a writing room in her house and died there in 1985.

“Joanne was really his last friend and in some ways the only person who really loved him unconditionally and really supported his writing, even though he wrote some things about her,” says Ringwald. “I think she was one of the few people who said, ‘Well, it’s not really that important.’ He’s a writer and she seemed to really understand that, unlike these other women who were really scandalized and so offended.”

Johnny and Joanne Carson.

Hulton Archive/Getty

On QuarrelCalista Flockhart, Diane Lane, Demi Moore, Chloë Sevigny and Naomi Watts play “swans”, as Captoe called them, who expelled the author from his inner circle after Esquire published “La Côte Basque, 1965” in 1975.

“La Côte Basque, 1965.” exposed the affair that Babe Paley’s (Watts) husband allegedly had with the New York governor’s wife and alleged that Ann Woodward (Moore) killed her husband. (The 1955 killing of Woodward’s husband, William Jr., was ruled an accident.)

The Swans were constantly in the public eye and were always wearing the latest designer looks, dining at the fanciest restaurants and attending the most exclusive parties in New York. Joanne’s life in Los Angeles looked a little different.

“During the second period of her life, when she was married to one of the most famous men in America, I think there was probably a lot of pressure to be a certain way and to be a homemaker,” says Ringwald. “The lives of all these women were somewhat controlled by their husbands.”

Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson.

Pari Duković/FX

The Pretty in pink star compares swans to “American royalty.”

“Since we don’t really have one, we had to invent it,” she says. “And then I think it kind of became Hollywood.”

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Today, Ringwald thinks women are looked up to by the public as positive role models.

“I think we’ve gotten to a place where a lot of the women that people look up to are self-made women, like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé,” says Ringwald. “When I think about these women, it’s not about who they’re married to, it’s about what they do. It’s definitely progress.”

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Feud: Capote vs. Swans airs Wednesdays at 10pm ET on FX.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education