Late last week, Daryl Hannah wrote a NYT op-ed blasting Ryan Murphy’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. Love Story included “Daryl” as a character in the early episodes, because in real life, John was still on-and-off with Daryl when he began pursuing Carolyn. The show dramatized that very real history into something completely false though – they treated Daryl as a druggy, flaky actress who would randomly reappear in John’s life and pressure him to get married. As Daryl wrote in the NYT, none of that is true. Well, they’ve got some Kennedy cousin on the record saying that they all loved Daryl too:
John F. Kennedy Jr.’s cousin says Daryl Hannah’s controversial portrayal on “Love Story” is completely fabricated. Douglas Kennedy — who has not watched the FX series — exclusively tells Page Six that the show’s take on Hannah is “unfortunate.”
“Daryl Hannah was great,” he says. “Whenever I saw her, she was very sweet and had [John’s] best interests at heart. I think that’s a misrepresentation.”
As for Carolyn Bessette — JFK Jr.’s wife who perished alongside him and her sister Lauren on the ill-fated July 1999 flight — viewers watched as she has struggled to feel accepted by her sister-in-law, Caroline Kennedy, and family matriarch, Ethel Kennedy.
But Douglas, the 10th child of Robert F. Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, tells Page Six, “Everybody around Carolyn loved Carolyn. It’s difficult to capture the intricacies of people’s lives in movies or television. If you know people, these types of things often fail in capturing the essence of who people were.”
“John was the leader of my generation,” he adds. “He was irreplaceable.”
I’m not caping for Ryan Murphy or Love Story’s writers whatsoever, but I will say this… I remember the 1990s and I remember the stories around John and Daryl too. While the Love Story team definitely owes Daryl a huge apology for how they portrayed her, one of the things Love Story got right was the sense that Jackie Onassis and the Kennedy family really didn’t want John to end up with Daryl. THEY saw her as a flaky actress who wasn’t good enough for America’s prince. Digging up some random Kennedy cousin doesn’t change how John’s family felt at the time.
Meanwhile, Dree Hemingway (who played Daryl in Love Story) was asked about Daryl in a newly-released interview. The interview was conducted weeks before Daryl’s NYT op-ed though – Dree talked about trying to reach out to Daryl via a “love note to her saying how much I admired her, how much I’ve admired her as an actress and a woman, prior to even being cast as Daryl. How much I really just fell in love with her as a human being.” Dree spoke about how it was a real pleasure to research Daryl’s life and watch her old interviews. Which I believe – Dree clearly researched Daryl and did some crazy work to get Daryl’s voice. But yeah, the writing wasn’t there. They used a false version of “Daryl” to make Carolyn look good.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images and Paul Adao/INFphoto.com.
