{"id":307345,"date":"2026-02-24T07:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T07:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/307345\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T07:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T07:38:08","slug":"katie-couric-on-jfk-jrs-final-tv-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/307345\/","title":{"rendered":"Katie Couric on JFK Jr’s Final TV Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of months before his July 1999 death, I sat down with John F. Kennedy Jr. on the TODAY Show for what would turn out to be his last TV interview. Now that John and his wife Carolyn Bessette<\/a> are the subjects of a splashy new TV series, Love Story on FX, I’m recalling what it was like to talk with him so many years ago.<\/p>\n

When we decided to try to interview him for the show, I was so excited\u200a \u2014\u200a because, like so many others, I had a crush on him. I had followed his career and was so thrilled to be featured on the cover of his brash upstart politics magazine<\/a>, George, in May 1997. (I have a huge poster of that cover in my basement. Sometimes I look at it, and it feels like a lifetime ago\u200a \u2014\u200a when my hair was very, very brown.)<\/p>\n

An NBC colleague and friend Lori Beecher and I met John at Michael\u2019s restaurant in Midtown to try to make the interview happen. Michael\u2019s is a popular lunch hotspot for the media crowd, but we picked it for a breakfast rendezvous. John ordered cereal with fruit. I clearly remember that they gave him cornflakes with honeydew sliced up on top of it. We all laughed and thought that was super bizarre.<\/p>\n

\"\"Letting go of his mother’s hand, John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes his father’s flag-draped casket as it passes on November 25, 1963 — the boy’s third birthday. (Photo by Dan Farrell\/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Growing up, \u201cCamelot\u201d had such a hold on the public\u2019s imagination. The image of \u201cJohn John\u201d as a three-year-old saluting his father\u2019s casket was seared into the American consciousness. After JFK\u2019s assassination<\/a>, everyone seemed to be looking for someone to recapture the spirit of the young, athletic, vibrant Kennedy family. To many, John seemed to be the embodiment of that potential and people couldn\u2019t seem to get enough of him, especially as he grew into a handsome young man.<\/p>\n

I always felt a lot of sympathy for him. Imagine the public humiliation he experienced when he was mercilessly mocked for not passing the bar exam \u200a\u2014\u200a not once, but twice. The expectations that were thrust upon him just by virtue of his name were so enormous, but somehow he pulled it off so gracefully.<\/p>\n

On the day of our interview, he rode his bike to the studio at 30 Rock, which was pretty typical for him. On camera, John was kind, self-effacing, and surprisingly open. When I had interviewed his sister Caroline, she seemed much more guarded and less relaxed. But John spoke freely about a lot of very personal things, from his relationship with his mother to whether he thought his father would be proud of his career.<\/p>\n

\"\"John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 with his son John at the White House. (Photo by: Photo12\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never forget when, two months later, on a Saturday in July 1999, my late sister Emily<\/a> called me to say that John had been in a plane crash. It reminded me of how I felt when Princess Diana was killed in that terrible accident just two years earlier \u2014\u00a0they were both global icons who we lost too soon. I often wonder what both would be doing now.<\/p>\n

Any time I go to Nantucket, I think about him flying over the same waters and plunging into the Atlantic along with his young wife and her sister. Three lives ended that night \u2014 deeply heartbreaking for their families. But for the country at large, the hope and promise of Camelot seemed to be extinguished for good.<\/p>\n

And if you haven\u2019t seen it, here\u2019s my 1999 interview with the late JFK Jr.: <\/p>\n

\"wake-up<\/p>\n

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\n By joining you accept KCM Terms of Service<\/a> & Privacy Policy<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A couple of months before his July 1999 death, I sat down with John F. Kennedy Jr. on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[458,3190,146,25175,85,46,545,238],"class_list":["post-307345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-celebrities","tag-death","tag-entertainment","tag-essay","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-opinion","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}