In the first three episodes of FX’s Feud, Joan Crawford is characterized as the kind of woman who mows down obstacles—male, female, or material—to blaze her own movie-star path. This precedent is precisely why Sunday’s episode “More, or Less” proved so devastating for Pauline, the character of Robert Aldrich’s assistant (played brilliantly by Alison Wright), who gathers all of her courage to pitch Crawford (played by Jessica Lange) on the prospect of starring in a drama written and directed by her—a first-time filmmaker. Although Pauline’s script is just the kind of showcase Crawford had been feverishly trying to find only a few episodes earlier, she turns Pauline down with a scathing monologue about how she won’t waste her time on a female director.

Although Pauline never existed, and their conversation therefore never took place, Feud executive producer Tim Minear—who co-wrote this episode with Gina Welch—explains that the monologue was inspired by Crawford’s experience working with a female director in the late 1930s.

“When Gina and I wrote the script, we went back to Joan’s own words, and a book called Conversations with Joan Crawford, and several other books and interviews,” Minear told Vanity Fair. “Obviously we were inventing the scenario, but we tried to keep it as true to who we thought Joan was as possible. There was one interesting piece of information that we wanted to get into, but it felt a little too Wikipedia-ish, so we only had Joan reference it—that was, when Joan talks about how in 1937 she was labeled box-office poison, it was for The Bride Wore Red, the one film she made that was directed by a female director.

“That was the film that started Joan's period in the wilderness as box-office poison,” Minear continued. “So the fact that Joan was ruminating on that moment of her life and now this woman is coming to her and saying, ‘Let me direct you in a movie,’ that was something that could subconsciously make Joan say, ‘No, thank you.’ ”

The director Crawford had worked with: Dorothy Arzner, one of the only female filmmakers who held onto her career in Hollywood after films went from silent to talkies. According to Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, by Lawrence J. Quirk, Arzner did not want Crawford to star in the film—a detail that only became more complicated when the studio demanded Crawford star . . . and Arzner, who was openly gay, reportedly found herself attracted to Crawford.