No one plays James Baldwin on screen, but Chris Chalk made it look easy
James Baldwin is, to put it mildly, foundational. Oft-quoted and adapted across media, Baldwin’s work still forms the spine of our modern understanding of racial and sexual liberation, yet — perhaps out of reverence — he’s rarely been portrayed dramatically on-screen. Chris Chalk, in other words, had monumental shoes to fill in portraying the beloved writer, who, as a well-documented orator, many Americans are intimately familiar with. Chalk takes on the challenge with aplomb, giving a scene-stealing turn in this week’s episode of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.
In the episode, titled “The Secret Inner Lives of Swans,” Chalk’s Baldwin visits Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) to shake the writer out of his near-suicidal malaise following the publication of Capote’s essay exposing the scandals of his socialite friends. The two spend a day roaming New York having a wide-ranging conversation cutting at the core of Feud’s themes: the shallow performances of the wealthy, the thinly veiled racism and bigotry underpinning high society, and the artist’s duty in portraying them.
Sitting down for a Zoom conversation with Polygon, Chalk — an exuberant and loquacious presence — contemplated a lot of the same things, talking about Baldwin’s legacy and imagined tension between both literary giants.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Polygon: I know when the casting was announced you said you’d always wanted to portray Baldwin. He’s someone we haven’t really seen on screen in a professional context much. Did that make your job harder, easier? Is there anything you wanted to accomplish with this little time you have?
Chris Chalk: I don’t think it was harder or easier that no one else has played him. I think that I took in that as the gravity of how important it was. I think that he’s a person that people don’t toy with. One of the things I panicked about — not panic, I’m being hyperbolic — but the thing that was stressing me was, the made-up stress, was like:
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