FXFor some, the Super Bowl is all about commercials, commercials like the ones with the first footage from Feud: Bette and Joan, FX's new drama starring Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon.
Lange and Sarandon play the titular Bette and Joan— Sarandon is Bette Davis and Lange is Joan Crawford. The new series from Ryan Murphy recounts the old Hollywood feud between the two Oscar-winning actresses while they made Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? As if Lange and Sarandon weren't a draw enough, the cast also features Kathy Bates, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Judy Davis, Alfred Molina, Sarah Paulson (would it be a Ryan Murphy show without her?), Jackie Hoffman, Alison Wright and Kiernan Shipka.
The first spot features Sarandon, Lange and Zeta-Jones and the second gives viewers a little taste of that feud between the two actresses.
At the 2017 TCA Winter Press Tour, the cast and Murphy spoke about the feud at the center of the series and what drove it, including modern issues like misogyny and ageism. Murphy said he didn't want to make a campy drama, he wanted to tackle the issues at hand. "For me, what I love about the show, even though it's set in 1962, the themes and issues are so modern," he said. "We really wanted to lean into that aspect of the show…We just wanted to take it away from what people would expect and make it a little more emotional."
Lange said Hollywood is a big part of the drama.
"I think that's a big part of this show, which is what Hollywood does to women as they age, which is just a microcosm of what happens to women as they age—whether they become invisible. I think with this film, we've touched on that in a very profound way," Lange said. "I mean, Joan was 10 years younger when this takes place than I am now, and yet her career was finished because of her age. I think what we've tried to do is somehow investigate what that does to a woman."
Feud: Bette and Joan premieres Sunday, March 5 at 10 p.m. on FX.