Molly Ringwald comes full circle with new Truman Capote series

Q33:51Molly Ringwald

Before her breakout role in Sixteen Candles or her Golden Globe nomination at 13 years old for The Tempest, even before her first TV appearance on Diff'rent Strokes, Molly Ringwald made her stage debut at the tender age of three. It was a community theatre production of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp. 

"I've just always been really interested in Truman Capote from the time I was little," the actor and author tells Q's Tom Power in a conversation. "I mean, it was literally my first job ever."

It's fitting then that Ringwald is back on television screens in the FX series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, about the In Cold Blood author's storied fall from New York society.

"When I found out that [producer] Ryan Murphy was doing it, I was really excited because it was something that I really wanted to see," she says. "When I was asked to be a part of it, I was even more excited."

Ringwald plays Joanne Carson, second wife of The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson and an important friend and confidant to Capote. 

"[Joanne] ended up divorcing Johnny Carson and then became a little bit of a social outcast herself," Ringwald explains. "She went from being married to this incredibly powerful man — the person that everyone wants to know in Hollywood — to kind of being on her own out there. So [Joanne and Truman] were outcasts together."

WATCH | Official trailer for Feud: Capote vs. The Swans:

In their career-spanning interview, Ringwald and Power discuss growing up and performing with Molly's famous jazz musician father, and of course, the impossible-to-predict, runaway success of her John Hughes roles. 

"I was thinking that [Sixteen Candles] was just going to be like another job," she says. "I was going to do that, and then I was going to do another job, and then I was going to do another job, and I was just going to keep on building. I didn't expect, all of a sudden, to become a skyscraper overnight."

She also shares how difficult it was to spend the messy and awkward period of young adulthood in the public eye — "I didn't feel like there was any place where I could be totally private," she says — and how she decamped to Paris for school, where she became a translator and a writer, and returned to acting more selectively.

"I'm grateful for the life that I've had," Ringwald says. "It's been an interesting, complicated life."

The full interview with Molly Ringwald is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. She talks more about '80s fame, growing up in the public eye and why she took a step back. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Molly Ringwald produced by Lise Hosein.