SUBSCRIBE

SUBSCRIBE

THE LAST WORD

Chloë Sevigny
Is So Over
NYC’s Women
Walking Their
Dogs in
Athleisure
The Feud: Capote vs. the Swans star
dishes to Rolling Stone about fashion
trends, martinis, and the state of New
York City
BY M A R L OW S T E R N
Illustration by Mark Summers
JAN 31, 2024 8:30 AM

H O B E T T E R T O play a

W New York high society

socialite than Chloë Sevigny,
the former club kid turned
fashionista who was profiled by Jay
McInerney for The New Yorker at 19?

In 1995, one year after that infamous piece

hit newsstands, Sevigny would star as a
Manhattan teen who discovers she’s HIV
positive in Kids, written by her pal
Harmony Korine. The film was almost
immediately cemented as a cult classic,
sending her down an arthouse-cinema path
that’s included Gummo, Boys Don’t Cry
(earning her an Oscar nomination),
American Psycho, Dogville, Shattered
Glass, and Zodiac, as well as TV roles on Big
Love, Portlandia, two seasons of American
Horror Story, and Russian Doll. Along the
way, she became one of the world’s most
revered fashion and style icons, modeling in
shows for Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton, and
having her singular sartorial taste guide the
masses. Sevigny’s fashion influence is so
powerful that her used clothing sale last
year turned into the social event of the
season. She is the original Nineties It girl
and, even though her clubbing days are far
behind her, still cool as hell.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

Sevigny, now 49 and mother to a three-

year-old boy, reunited with TV creator Ryan
Murphy for the latest edition in his Feud
franchise, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,
premiering Jan. 31. She plays C.Z. Guest, a
Boston Brahmin who married a British
aristocrat and spent her days as a columnist,
fashion designer/icon, and socialite. She
was one of the Swans — a coterie of high
society Manhattan socialites whose lives
served as fodder for their supposed pal
Truman Capote’s novel Answered Prayers.
When Capote (splendidly played by Tom
Hollander) began publishing chapters of the
book in the pages of Esquire, the women —
Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith
(Diane Lane), Lee Radziwill (Calista
Flockheart), Ann Woodward (Demi Moore),
Joanne Carson (Molly Ringwald), and Guest
(Sevigny) — band together and seek
revenge.

Rolling Stone spoke with Sevigny about,

well, everything.

E
EDD II T
TOOR
R’’ SS P
P II C
CKK SS

The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All

Time

The 500 Greatest Albums of All

Time

The 50 Worst Decisions in Movie

History

Every Awful Thing Trump Has

Promised to Do in a Second Term

What was it like for you to weather

the recent actors’ strike?
I felt more empathy for the crews — after
the pandemic having not worked for so
long, and then having no work again. It was
more wanting to stand in solidarity with all
the below-the-line people whose entire
livelihoods were upside down. As an actor,
you’re used to periods of exploration and
then these dry spells.

The tagline for Feud: Capote vs. The

Swans is “The Original Housewives.”
Do you watch any Real Housewives?
I have never watched a single episode of a
single Housewife. I don’t know who any of
them are or any of their things going on.
Didn’t one of them do something for a
college application?

I think you’re thinking of Lori

Loughlin of Full House.
Oh, she wasn’t a Housewife? Shows how
much I know. OK.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

Are you not a reality TV person?

I’m not really much of a TV person, period. I
used to be really into Project Runway, but
this was pre-baby, pre-husband, single life.
I’ve never watched a Kardashian episode.
It’s been a while.

What’s it like to play in the Ryan

Murphy pond as an actor?
It’s great. He’s so prolific. I remember when
I was first offered American Horror Story,
it was still Facebook-y days, and I looked it
up and saw that all my old alternative
weirdo friends were into the show, and I
was like, “OK, this feels right.”

How did you channel C.Z. Guest, this

high society Fifties socialite?
There’s not a lot of footage of her speaking,
unfortunately. But there are a couple of
interviews I watched numerous times, and a
beautiful Rizzoli book of her friends and
their accounts of her. And I read the book
that our show’s based on, Capote’s Women,
and looked at Slim Keith photos to feel that
time and energy.

Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest in ‘Feud: Capote vs. the

Swans.’ PARI DUKOVIC/FX

The Swans meet for regular gossipy

lunches. Do you have any regular
routines with your girlfriends?
I used to have these girls’ nights where I’d
only have girlfriends over and we’d drink
martinis and talk shit, but that hasn’t
happened as much now that the small
person is always around my house and
never leaves. [Laughs] One of my New
Year’s resolutions was to start carving out
more time for friends.

R
REEL
L AT
AT E
EDD

The Best Men's Thermal Underwear

for Every Winter Activity

29 Best Sites for Menswear: A Men’s

Guide to Shopping Online

'Vanderpump Rules' is Back with

Season 11: Here's How to Watch the
Reality Show Online

How do you take your martini?

Dry with a twist.

Gin or vodka?
Vodka. I like Chopin.

Your Jay McInerney New Yorker

profile will turn 30 this year. How do
you feel about it?
It was so odd to be written about before you
were even famous for anything, you know?
That was the hard part about it for me: I
didn’t really understand why it was
happening. In retrospect, I think it’s
interesting to follow a girl who’s coming into
her own, but at the time I didn’t feel it was
justified. I was like, “Why do you even
care?” I was like, “Why am I even doing
this?” [Jay] promised to buy me this dress
and my father read The New Yorker.

The Swans is about Capote writing

scandalous, exaggerated things about
his female friends. Has anyone ever
written anything particularly
egregious about you?
There was someone who used to write for
the [New York Times] Style section, Bob
Morris. It was very hurtful, and he wrote
some really ugly things. I still think about it.
He was like, “She’s not that attractive, she’s
not that smart, and she’s not that good at
acting.” When you’re 20 years old and you
read that, you’re like, “Huh?!”

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

You had your baby at 45 in May 2020,

at the height of the pandemic. That’s
wild.
It’s amazing just to have a baby. I didn’t
think it was going to happen to me, and
then to have this thing … I can’t imagine life
without him. And like I said, he just never
leaves. He’s always around here. I had a
doctor that specializes in these “high-risk”
pregnancies, and there was a pressure to
induce for the sake of the hospital staff
because if you induced you could get a Covid
test, and then the nurses and the hospital
staff would feel more comfortable if you
were negative, which is so crazy that that
was something that was being encouraged.
It’s such a complicated thing to talk about in
the press because it’s such a personal thing.
I hope people will be happy that it happened
for me, but I also don’t want them to think
it’s the be-all and end-all. I even have
friends that were like, “I have a great career.
If I didn’t have a kid, then it would have
been fine.” I was like, “What?!” Like, wow.
[Laughs] But I had tried other avenues and
not had luck with them, so to naturally
conceive at that age is kind of a miracle.

FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swa…

What’s the best advice you’ve ever

received?
I don’t really have an answer for that. I
think there are things you learn as you go
along, like comparing and despairing and
how unhealthy that is, and running your
own race, and they’re all truisms but feel
trite to say out loud, so I’m always kind of
ugh.

What about style advice you’d give

people?
Style is so personal. There are people that
say, “Less is more,” but I don’t know if that’s
necessarily true. I think whatever is true for
you and makes you feel best.

Natasha Lyonne is one of your oldest

friends. How did you two meet, and
how have you managed to sustain
such a lasting friendship?
We carve out the time to see one another.
She came away with me for my 49th
birthday recently. We have a similar attitude
toward certain things about life and the
business. We met when we were both
roommates with Mike Rapaport. She was
his roommate in L.A., and I was his
roommate in New York, where we were both
living with him for free even more than
being roommates. He introduced us, and we
were very like-minded.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

What did you two do for your 49th

birthday?
We went to this place called Palm Heights in
Grand Cayman, which is easy to get to from
New York and this all-inclusive resort where
you don’t have to leave. She loves the water.
She’s a weird water baby and will be in the
water for four hours straight. She has a very
hard time vacationing because she loves to
work, so to get her to not work is a feat.

I’ve always admired how you’ve stuck

to your guns and done almost entirely
art films and no empty studio
pictures. Was this a conscious
decision on your part or Hollywood
putting you in a box?
I think it’s a little bit of both. Early on, it
was by choice. And later, I’d kind of dug my
own niche that I was then boxed into. I do
like to think that I’ve maintained that across
TV as well. I like working with, dare I say,
auteurs — Ryan Murphy, Portlandia, Louis
C.K., Russian Doll, and even Big Love, to an
extent. Doing these TV projects with strong
showrunners and writer-directors. But as
far as studio pictures, I don’t know where
those are. Most of my work has been
incoming calls, and a lot of that has to do
with living in New York and not L.A. My
father died when I was 20, and I never
wanted to be far from my mother.

When I was younger, you

could tell who was a
punker, who was a
hardcore kid, who was into
hip hop. And now,
everybody looks like
they’re just into fashion … I
imagine it’s harder for kids
to feel like more of an
individual, I would assume?
I don’t know.

Do you have favorite films you’ve

been in? There are so many good
ones.
I like the impact that Gummo has had on
young people. That makes people think
differently about movies. It might not be my
favorite performance, per se. Also, Boys
Don’t Cry, in terms of the social impact that
had. It’s so rare to do something that’s so
moving, eye-opening, and hopefully changes
people’s consciousness.

How do you feel about Kids today?

I mean, I see the moments that are real.
They were all my friends, so I’m like, “Oh,
that person is not acting in that moment.
That’s a real moment.” I feel like Harold
[Hunter] and Justin [Pierce] are the only
real ones in that movie and everybody else
is kind of … performing. I also like to see the
city. I’m nostalgic for the time because it
was my youth, and people still come up to
me every day about that movie. It’s crazy. I
just can’t believe it’s had the life that it’s
had.

It’s surprising to see skater brands

like Stüssy becoming popular again in
recent years.
I think it’s just because there’s been this
streetwear explosion in the last ten years or
so, and Supreme lead the charge for that in
being this “uber-cool” skate brand that
became more than a skate brand. To me, it’s
always had such a presence because I live in
New York and am on the subway and
walking around, so I’m more confronted
with it being actual streetwear. Now,
everything is intermeshed. When I was
younger, you could tell who was a punker,
who was a hardcore kid, who was into hip-
hop. And now, everybody looks like they’re
just into fashion. It’s hard to dress in a way
that identifies you in a certain rebellious
milieu. I imagine it’s harder for kids to feel
like more of an individual, I would assume?
I don’t know.

A D V E RT I S E M E N T

How do you feel about the state of

New York City? It’s increasingly a city
for the rich.
Yeah. The athleisure and the dogs are taking
over, and that’s really unfortunate.
Everybody’s in Lululemon and has a fucking
dog and it’s driving me crazy. I’m sorry, dog
lovers. There are too many of you. I’m not
going out to clubs in Ridgewood, so I’m sure
it’s there somewhere, but I’m not
experiencing it. I hope there are places for
people to go when they want to. I miss the
megaclubs and the accessibility. I would like
to know that they were there [in Manhattan]
and not in Ridgewood, which seems very