Oscar and Emmy winner Jessica Lange may currently be feuding with Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis in her role as Joan Crawford in Ryan Murphy’s latest smash TV show Feud: Bette and Joan, but Lange told Stephen Colbert that her real-life feud is the one going on in her head with Donald Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Lange, a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF who often focused that work on children with HIV/AIDS, is known best these days for her Emmy-winning roles in Murphy’s American Horror Story anthology. But following some promotion for the new series Feud, which focuses on the decades-ling rivalry between Davis and Crawford that culminated when they made Whatever Happened to Baby Jane together, she took a moment to chat with Colbert on his show about the remarkable nature of Conway’s role in the country.
When Colbert asked Lange, who happens to grace this month's cover of Out, if she was engaged in any feuds in real life she replied, “I feud in my head with people. Now I’m carrying on a feud with Kellyanne Conway in my head.”
Lange, who was not incidentally sporting a Planned Parenthood pin on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, went on to paint a picture of how unbelievable she finds Conway’s current position by employing, what else? An acting metaphor.
“Your agent calls you—you’ve been offered this part, one of the most important women in the government. She’s council to the president. She’s a spokesperson,” Lange told Colbert. “You read it and you think, ‘They’ve got to be kidding.’ You’ve got a scene where you talk about ‘alternative facts.’ You’ve got a scene where you imagine the microwave is turning into a camera. You go to the inauguration dressed as a nutcracker.”
While Lange began the exchange lightheartedly enough, she quickly got to the crux of her concern with Conway.
“Nobody’s going to take this character seriously. She’s a joke,” Lange said.
Watch the video below.