Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto: ‘Truman and Tennessee were lightning rods’

The Big Bang Theory and Star Trek actors lend their voices to Capote and Williams in a film about their friendship. They discuss self-loathing, being gay in Hollywood and coping in lockdown

It really was an intellectual friendship," Truman Capote said of his 40-year relationship with the playwright Tennessee Williams. Though people thought otherwise."

The two aspiring writers met in 1940, when Capote was 16 and Williams was 29, still a few years off his first success with The Glass Menagerie. Both were southerners (Capote from Louisiana, Williams from Mississippi); had impossible relationships with their families; went from being what Williams called the teased queer in the schoolyard" to out gay celebrities; created iconic female characters (Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire); and later became recognised as giants of 20th-century American literature.