In his portrayal, Ferguson wants to find the balance between Capote’s larger-than-life personality and the tragic circumstances we see in Tru. Even in his darkest moments, Capote was “living very out loud” as a gay man, and Ferguson wants to celebrate that part of him. “I’m exploring him as a 50-year-old man who’s lived a very lovely life and gets to be openly gay,” Ferguson says.
Ferguson, still best known for playing Mitchell Pritchett on Modern Family, is very familiar with being gay in the public eye; he draws a few “don’t I know him?” looks in the Blue Box Café, even without his signature beard. Before Ferguson was married with children of his own, his portrayal of a gay partner and parent helped define those roles in the American imagination. “Fortunately, that version [of me] is someone that I really like and I’m really proud of, and it’s also pretty much just a shade of who I am,” he says.
The popular vision of Capote was much darker, especially in the aftermath of the Answered Prayers fiasco. But Ferguson—an actor whose ability to parlay exasperation and offense into good-natured humor is key to his broad appeal—wants to depict the talented, misunderstood person behind the talk show appearances and tabloid spreads. That’s why he bought the rights to the play and pursued production partners himself.
The play catalogs Capote’s dependence on not only alcohol, but also his famous friends and even the press. As his social life unravels, the writer chats nervously into a tape recorder for his biographer, Gerald Clarke. After sharing one outlandish anecdote, Capote imagines how Clarke might write it up: “Truman claimed when he was four, he danced on a riverboat where Louis Armstrong played. He claimed Armstrong called him a fine little dancer and took up a collection for him.” Ferguson says that Capote liked to “decorate” certain words; see, for instance, how he lingers on the word claimed.
As he’s finishing breakfast, Ferguson tells me about the silver catch-alls from Tiffany’s that his husband, Justin Mikita, gave him as an opening night gift. Capote clearly saw something special in this store: He made it a sacred place for Holly Golightly, a refuge from the quasi call girl’s urban anxieties. This production of Tru honors that connection by opening with Capote bursting into his apartment carrying Christmas presents from the store.
Capote “certainly took a little bit of credit for” the store’s renown, Ferguson says, recalling the Maysles brothers’ 1966 documentary short about Capote, which features the writer pushing his way through Tiffany’s revolving doors and right back out again. In the following scene, Capote claims the store’s directors have offered to send him “an entire breakfast set.” He continues: “I said, ‘That’s fine, as long as it’s solid silver and preferably gold.’”
It’s difficult to confirm if Capote ever received such a set. But today the upstairs café at Tiffany’s is more than happy to comp Ferguson’s meal—and serve it on an authentic silver platter.