【An Affair – Young Stepmother (2019)】

Bette Davis' and An Affair – Young Stepmother (2019)Joan Crawford's careers predate Jessica Lange's and Susan Sarandon's.

But Lange and Sarandon, who play the Hollywood legends in Ryan Murphy's upcoming FX series Feud: Bette and Joan, say not much has changed for women in Hollywood in the last few decades.

"I don’t think it’s changed that much really to tell you the truth," Lange, 67, told reporters at FX's Television Critics Association presentation Thursday. "It’s not necessarily a question of age or looks. I think it is who is interested in these stories. If the powers that be don’t find there is anything valuable or interesting in a story about a woman of a certain age, those films aren’t going to get made."

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Sarandon, 70, echoed that, giving examples of her own experiences in the industry that parallel the struggles faced by Davis and Crawford in 1962, when they filmed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

The series, which debuts March 5, is the latest anthology from Murphy. It chronicles the legendary backstage battle between the two iconic actresses. Alison Wright, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kiernan Shipka co-star.

"The line has been pushed," Sarandon said about present-day Hollywood. But "aging actors still have the same problems. I can guarantee that."

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Lange cited comedian Amy Schumer's Comedy Central sketch "Last F*ckable Day" from 2015, which features Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette feasting to celebrate Louis-Dreyfus' "last f--ble day."

"Joan was 10 years younger when she did this film than I am now, but her career was finished when she did this film," Lange said. "Part of what this film does is investigate what that does to a woman....Particularly Joan, who was known for her tremendous beauty. What happens when that beauty is no longer viable, because it's connected to youth?"

A big part of Feudfocuses on "what Hollywood does to women as they age, which is just a microcosm of what happens to women generally as they age," she added.

Indeed, Murphy said the point was to show the actresses' lives, not just the feuds that made headlines.

"What i love about the show is it it set is in 1962, but the themes and issue in the show are so modern," he said. "Women are still going through this stuff today -- nothing has really changed. We wanted to dig into that aspect. Although I do still think they [Crawford and Davis] are hilarious and their interactions are hilarious -- we didn’t want to avoid that. But we wanted to hopefully take it away from what people would expect, and make it [a] little more emotional."

The idea for the series came after Murphy launched a foundation to tackle Hollywood's diversity problem. He said it resulted in conversations with women in Hollywood about the need for more stories about women, for women and featuring women both in front of and behind the camera.

"We were interested in doing a show about two women and their lives and the problems that they have," Murphy said. "I wasn't interested in doing anything too 'campy.' I was interested in doing something deeper, emotional and painful."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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