I went into Ryan Murphy’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette with low expectations. The last time I tried to watch a RM-produced show, it was Feud: Capote & the Swans and I had to tap out by the last few episodes because they literally lost the plot. Well, last Thursday, FX dropped the first three episodes of Love Story and… you guys, it’s actually really well-done so far? Maybe it will fall off a cliff towards the end, but I’m really enjoying the vintage-’90s everything. The music choices – Portishead, Bjork, Mazzie Star!! – are elite. The locations are terrific. Sarah Pidgeon (Carolyn) and Paul Anthony Kelly (John) are fantastic. And most importantly, the clothes, hair and style are all perfect. After everyone freaked out last year, Murphy assembled an elite team of hairstylists and fashion historians to nail down Carolyn and John’s aesthetics.
Still, all of the great style in the world wouldn’t rescue the series if the actors weren’t getting it done, and I’m shocked by Sarah and Paul Anthony’s performances. Paul in particular – he looks enough like John to really embody that Kennedy rizz, but it isn’t creepy or unsettling at all. Paul is really bringing so much vulnerability to the role of “America’s prince.” Sarah is wonderful too, and she’s getting much more attention than Paul. Sarah is the one doing most of the interviews, because people are still obsessed with the enigma of Carolyn Bessette. Sarah chatted with the Hollywood Reporter recently – some highlights:
Auditioning for Love Story: “I got an audition for it at the end of January 2025. It came into my inbox, and the next day I put it on tape at my agency. My agent’s assistant helped me pick the right one, and we sent them off. Then, a few weeks later, I got word that I was moving up the ranks, and producers were watching it, and I was going to come in for a session. I went in and I auditioned. Ryan [Murphy] was there. Honestly, I think I blacked out during it. But I could not read the room at all. Sometimes you leave an audition and you’re like, “Oh, I think I might have a good shot at this.” I’ve had a few bad auditions in my life that, as I’ve left the room, I’ve turned around and said, “I just want you to know that I know that that wasn’t good.” (Laughs.) But I left and I called my team, and I was like, “I think I did what I wanted to do, but who knows how it went.” And then a couple of days passed, and I got a call from my team, and they told me I got it.
Her favorite of all of Carolyn’s looks: “I’m a huge fan of all her Yohji Yamamoto outfits. There’s one in particular, which is a cream pencil skirt, and it has these buttons. There’s boning, so it’s very structured, and these long sleeves with beige Manolo heels. That image of Carolyn wearing that, I think of her immediately. She’s holding John’s hand and she’s smiling. It was just, in particular, wearing these clothes that are so iconic of her later in life, because that was when she was really heavily photographed, you understand just how much they change how you hold yourself. I don’t know if she herself wore it, but I believe we got it from a collector.
Deciding what Carolyn would have worn in her early days: “The real creative conversations came when we were discussing Carolyn’s wardrobe in the early episodes because she had so much anonymity before she went out with John. There are photographs of her modeling and her college days and early 20s, but of course, that was also a photo shoot. So it’s not necessarily her in her own wardrobe. But it was nice to have these conversations about whether we could incorporate clothes from Calvin Klein at the time? Maybe she was able to pull this off the rack? Because she’s either in these Calvin uniforms and Narciso Rodriguez dresses and just thinking about what would a young Carolyn wear. There’s not a bad outfit in the show. I was wearing Calvin Klein from the ’90s in some of the scenes. I’m still waiting to see if I can get my hands on my wardrobe. Time will tell. There’s a few pieces that I got, but I have my eye on a few outfits that I wore that I really think I need. It’s like getting medically necessary at this point.”
Nailing Carolyn’s hair: “Karri Hill, who did my color for the show, is just such a genius, and working with Barry Lee Moe, who found the Carolyn hair. I’m just so thankful to him, in particular, he styled it every day. I am understanding how transformative the power of hair is, because this is my biggest hair transformation yet…”
Her chemistry with Paul Anthony Kelly: “From his immediate audition, everyone was so excited by him just walking in the room. There was just something there. We just immediately trusted each other and felt comfortable with each other, and there was a real friendship that developed. This series takes place over so many years, and there’s highs and lows, and at some points we were shooting three episodes at a time, so really we just had to give ourselves over to one another. There was never a moment where either one of us felt like the other didn’t have our back and was game to figure out where each character was in this moment.
Something really smart from Murphy’s team is that they’ve been posting a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff on FX’s YouTube channel. They’re showing people that they actually did the work to get a lot of this stuff right, especially Carolyn’s hair and wardrobe. And I’m sold on it – Murphy’s shows frequently sh-t the bed, but his team has really shown people that they are capable of doing amazing work. Now, I do have a couple of complaints! Like, Naomi Watts’ Jackie Kennedy was just bizarre and overwrought. And they’re doing Daryl Hannah so dirty!! But Dree Hemingway is doing such a great impression of Daryl, oh my GOD.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, screencaps courtesy of FX.
