He was the real-life Prince Charming, scion of an American dynasty, who became famous at three when he tottered through the White House and gave a heart-wrenching salute to the funeral casket after a bullet took his father, President John F. Kennedy.
She was a paragon of minimalist chic long before “quiet luxury” was a buzzword. A mall girl turned Calvin Klein publicist turned fairy tale princess, she was an enigma: only 12 seconds of her speaking voice exist. She never gave an interview!
Together, John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette were the ultimate ’90s duo. This legacy has endured long after their untimely death in 1999, when a plane went down off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, killing them and Carolyn’s sister.
Now, they’re being made flesh again with Ryan Murphy’s latest anthology series, “Love Story: John F. Kennedy & Carolyn Bessette.”
“There’s a lot of trade offs being with someone like that. Shiny people like that. They belong to everyone,” says Sarah Pidgeon, playing Bessette, in an early scene. “There is your world, and there is mine.”
Starting Feb. 12, the series takes us back to a pre-smartphone Manhattan as they track the couple’s whirlwind courtship, intense public scrutiny and lurking tragedy. I was worried that the series might feel a tad tawdry, but was surprised by how thoughtful a portrait it is. Elegiac in tone, “Love Story” feels like a tome of a lost time.
Not to mention, it’s a total ’90s nostalgia bath: The fashion; the soundtrack (Sade, Madonna); the portrait of a New York nightlife scene before social media took hold, when everyone smoked indoors.
There are zesty scenes of John and Carolyn young and in love, dancing in their living room to “Common People” by Pulp, her wearing his Brown University sweatshirt. There are foreboding moments too, when they jump in the buff into the ocean; the same body of water that would take later take their lives.
There have been well over 1,000 books on the Kennedy dynasty and many cinematic portrayals, but this series arrives at an especially poignant time, amid controversies around the Kennedy Center in Washington, and a new family tragedy with the death of JFK Jr.’s niece, TatianaSchlossberg, from leukemia at 35.
Here are the notable things to look out for in the new series.
The leads
“Love Story” works because of the strength and relative unknowability of the two leads. Newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly is all charm and brawn, a dead-ringer for the reluctant scion right down to the chest hair. Pidgeon, known in theatre circles, plays Carolyn like a headstrong Elizabeth Bennet in cigarette pants, capturing her emotional miasma. Last summer, there was some furor when photos from the set emerged, especially over Carolyn’s appearance. Her former hairdresser told Vogue that Pigeon’s shade of blond was “too 2024.” But it all looks much better in context.
The New York of it all
Manhattan is essentially a character in “Love Story.” The couple frequent famed nightlife haunts of the era like The Roxy and Pravda, lunch at The Odeon, and socialize at Indochine (the scene of a Calvin Klein party, and the one of the couple’s earliest encounters). JFK Jr. bikes here, jogs there and sits in Central Park with his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (played by a wonderful Naomi Watts), near the reservoir named for her. The same park is the scene of an infamous physical row between John and Carolyn, captured by paparazzi and covered ad nauseam in the tabloid press. Notable New York personalities get call-outs, including fashion arbiter Andre Leon Talley and Calvin Klein himself, played by a scene-stealing Alessandro Nivola.
An analog world
For those of us who followed JFK Jr. and Carolyn in real time, it’s startling that this series feels like a period piece. It’s a bygone world where no one is looking down at their phones all the time; we see John at a pay phone at one point, and hear the trill of an answering machine. Print media is ubiquitous: the press tracks the minutiae of the couple’s lives, driving the conversation, and John starts his own magazine, George, which presciently blurred politics and pop culture. One delightful analog moment comes when two giddy teenage girls are seen stealing a Calvin Klein ad poster featuring Kate Moss from a bus stop; the Tumblr of the time.
The famous exes
When John and Carolyn start to circle each other, he is still involved with actress Daryl Hannah (played by Dree Hemingway) and she has a dalliance of her own. John, who is clearly dealing with generational trauma and emotional avoidance, has had no shortage of famous paramours including Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker. He is intrigued by Carolyn because she doesn’t seem to covet his fame. “She’s the only girl who looks at me, and sees something other than the little boy,” he says. But she has her qualms; her own mother warns her, “I see you making your world smaller.”
The royal connection
In many ways, this series feels like a companion piece to the latter seasons of “The Crown,” when Princess Diana, the outsider, has to navigate the ways of “The Firm” and life in the global fishbowl. As John tells Carolyn: “The world will be watching. It’s your choice how much you want it to see.”
We watch Carolyn watch the news of Diana’s death, in 1997. She had just seen her at Gianni Versace’s funeral. “They killed her,” Carolyn says. “She did everything right, posed for every photo. And they still killed her.” Clearly, she sees herself in Diana, while John relates to a young William and Harry: “Someone has to wake up their kids to tell them their mom is dead.”
A ’90s glossary
A rundown of social history that “Love Story” excavates.
The rules
Someone asks Carolyn if she is following “The Rules” with John: a reference to the famed dating guide for women that advised playing hard to get, never initiating dates and limiting phone conversation.
The wedding dress
Carolyn’s wedding gown, a silk-crepe slip dress cut on the bias, is one of the most influential wedding looks of all time, and made Cuban-born New York designer Narciso Rodriguez an overnight fashion star. The ceremony, held in a private, candlelit clapboard church on Cumberland Island in Georgia, takes place in episode 6.
“The hunk flunks”
This was the blaring New York Daily News headline when “John John,” as he was sometimes called, flunked the New York bar exam for a second time. Emblematic of the intense press interest in him, this ended up being one of the most memorable tabloid covers of all time, one he is still living down in the series.
Hyannis Port
In the show, Carolyn visits the Kennedy Compound on the idyllic Massachusetts coast for the first time with John, and faces hazing by the clan when the conversation turns to politics. This is where matriarch Ethel Kennedy reigns, and we see her confiding to Carolyn about the death of her husband, Bobby Kennedy, and alluding to her own rivalry with late sister-in-law Jackie.
The Tribeca effect
It’s New York real estate history: When JFK Jr moved to his storied loft at 20 North Moore Street in 1994, it marked a tipping point in the Tribeca neighbourhood’s transition from gritty industrial zone to one of Manhattan’s most exclusive addresses.
The first three episodes of “Love Story: John F. Kennedy & Carolyn Bessette” air on FX & Citytv on Feb 12, and will also stream on Disney Plus.
