A Love Story
Volume 06
The stars of FX’s record-breaking show have brought Camelot’s most talked-about romance back to life, capturing its glamour, longing and inevitable heartbreak.
Photography by Laurence Ellis. Fashion Editor Michaela Dosamantes
Nearly three decades after their tragic deaths, the legacy of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy has lived on as the “it” couple of 1990s New York City gone too soon. The glamour, sweeping romance and tragedy that encapsulated their relationship—as well as the media frenzy that followed it—was propelled back into the cultural zeitgeist by Ryan Murphy and Connor Hines’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.
As the series caught enough eyes to become FX’s most-watched limited series ever on Disney+ and Hulu, viewers filled social media with inspiration from Bessette Kennedy’s effortless style in an effort to emulate the ultimate cool girl. But the impact of Love Story went far beyond the fashion, with the series bringing the pain points that came with pursuing such a high-profile courtship to the next generation.
The chemistry between Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly sold the show, with the duo gracefully embodying the coy chase between the Calvin Klein employee and the political prince, as well as the vulnerability that came with opening themselves up to something more profound than they expected. As the couple deepened their relationship and involved their families, Love Story also opened the door to strong showings from supporting performers Grace Gummer, Constance Zimmer and Naomi Watts, who respectively play Caroline Kennedy, Carolyn's mother Ann Marie Messina and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. The series also transformed Pidgeon, who previously headlined The Wilds, and newcomer Kelly into household names, with Pidgeon earning her first Emmy nomination while Kelly lined up his feature debut with The Housemaid’s Secret.
Like any Ryan Murphy series depicting real-life figures, Love Story wasn’t without its controversies: Jack Schlossberg, JFK Jr.’s nephew, called out the show for profiting off of admiration for his uncle in a “grotesque” way, and JFK Jr.’s ex-girlfriend, Daryl Hannah, wrote a scathing essay in the New York Times in response to the show’s portrayal of her as “irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate.”
But as Love Story follows the couple from their meeting to their shocking death, what will stay with viewers is their pure connection, which battled to outweigh the noise until the very end. —Loree Seitz
© Laurence Ellis