FX’s Love Story is centered on public figures John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette and others in their lives — but has the show’s creative team heard from any of the real people featured on screen?
“We haven’t yet, and we hope that people appreciate their portrayals,” executive producer Brad Simpson exclusively told Us Weekly during a joint interview with Nina Jacobson. “Every actor approached [their role] with love.”
Simpson specifically addressed the mixed reactions to how actress Darryl Hannah — who previously dated JFK Jr. — was written on the show. (She is played by Dree Hemingway.)
“Darryl’s points to John are really what people are sort of missing. They are very relevant when she’s saying that not every woman is going to be able to deal with this level of fame,” he noted. “He didn’t understand. And her warnings about that turned out to be true for Carolyn.”
How the ‘Love Story’ Cast Compares to Real Members of the Kennedy Family
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is the first installment in Ryan Murphy’s latest anthology and is inspired by Elizabeth Beller’s book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. Sarah Pidgeon plays Bessette, while Paul Anthony Kelly portrays JFK Jr.
Despite pulling from real events, the writing team largely didn’t consult with the subjects portrayed on the show.
“You reach out to one person, and then it becomes, ‘Why are you not reaching out to every person?’ We love these characters. We did deep, deep research. It’s based on not just the Elizabeth Beller book but many other artifacts from that time and many other histories,” he explained to Us. “We came from a place of love, but if you foreground one person’s personal story and their version of the truth, then you have to foreground everybody’s, and often they’re in conflict. On all our shows we tried to be true to what we think the characters were and show you what it was like to walk in their footsteps.”
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Before Love Story, Simpson and Jacobson worked on other scripted shows based on actual events including American Crime Story.
“The only time on any of our shows that we’ve actually involved the person was with Monica Lewinsky because she had been muzzled and was never able to speak to her experience. There was no way we could make a show that she was at the center of without giving her voice the respect that she deserved because it’s about her,” Jacobson noted. “Beyond that, we have really exclusively only worked from research, because if you are trying to address one person’s version of the story they want you to tell, then why wouldn’t you address everybody’s version of the story they want to tell?”
She continued: “Also it is our job to create a narrative that we think is rooted in who the people really were. But we’re not making a documentary. So we’re not saying, ‘Well, we know for a fact that this is what they talked about in the scene.’ We know who they are as people, and we deduce and then try to create the dramatic version of who we thought of, how they would respond in any given moment.”
New episodes of Love Story air Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on FX and stream on Hulu the next day.
