{"id":334005,"date":"2026-03-17T13:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/334005\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T13:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:34:07","slug":"why-we-fell-in-love-with-love-story-jfk-jr-and-carolyn-bessette-us-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/334005\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we fell in love with Love Story: JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette | US television"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a recent sunny Sunday in New York, Love Story<\/a> seemed to be everywhere. Fans lined up around the block for tables at Panna II, the twinkly string-lit Indian restaurant where Ryan Murphy\u2019s megahit charmingly \u2013 and if we\u2019re being picky, inaccurately \u2013 sets John F Kennedy Jr<\/a> and Carolyn Bessette\u2019s first date. Across town was a JFK Jr lookalike contest, which was rudely organized in Washington Square Park and not in my bedroom. Young women downtown wore hip-hugging pants and clean-girl makeup, and outside a repertory cinema everyone was smoking as though Parliaments were still $2 a pack.<\/p>\n

Ryan Murphy\u2019s swoony reimagining of JFK Jr and Bessette\u2019s romance has been a sensation, with Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette racking up<\/a> 40m viewing hours to become FX\u2019s most-watched limited series on Hulu\/Disney+ to date. But it has struck a deeper chord in culture too, with legions of fans eating up the couple\u2019s fashion and insouciant swagger, often wanting to try it on for size. Nearly 300,000 TikTok and Instagram posts are tagged #CBK, mainly videos focusing on Bessette\u2019s sleek style<\/a>, while brands jostle to cash in on what Puck calls the Bessette \u201chalo effect\u201d. While working on this piece, I received a J Crew newsletter titled \u201cA 90s minimalism love story\u201d with links to Bessette wardrobe dupes like a \u201cCarolyn crewneck\u201d and tortoiseshell headband.<\/p>\n

Love Story cannily lifts the lid on a couple who were so ingrained in the American public imagination that, after their death in 1999, the New Yorker<\/a>\u2019s cover showed the Statue of Liberty wearing a black mourning veil. We know from the show\u2019s first frames showing the couple boarding a light aircraft that this love story will not end well, but early episodes hit the frisky beats of a vintage romcom. Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon) is edgy and droll: the type who can roll out of bed hungover, tousle her hair and still show up to her publicity job at Calvin Klein looking like she stepped out of a magazine. Next to her, JFK Jr (Paul Anthony Kelly) is a golden retriever whose suave suit belies his desire to delay his assigned fate as the heir of Camelot for as long as possible. Sparks fly between the couple after they meet at a gala, where Bessette toys with the mooning manchild and refuses to give him her phone number. \u201cYou know where I work,\u201d she says, biting her lip.<\/p>\n

Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette in Love Story. Photograph: FX<\/p>\n

She\u2019s way too cool for him, and he knows it. In scenes that aim for and sometimes approach the sexy will-they-won\u2019t-they frisson and eyeball-fucking of a Nora Ephron movie, JFK Jr pursues Bessette across the city, showers her with red roses, and makes overtures on moonlit walks through mysteriously trash-free streets (Murphy hates litter). Just as enjoyable are moments when the show leans into the heart-swelling big feelings of a Nicholas Sparks paperback: after one brief estrangement, JFK Jr bikes to Bessette\u2019s place to declare his love for her in the pouring rain.<\/p>\n

With no Murphy writing or directing credits, Love Story gains its deft balance of pulp and prestige from creator Connor Hines, a relative newcomer whose previous biggest writing gig was on Netflix\u2019s sci-fi sitcom Space Force<\/a>. From the jump, Hines knew that he wanted to bring JFK Jr and Bessette down to earth. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in a show about famous people,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cI want it to just feel like you\u2019re watching a boy and a girl figuring their shit out. He\u2019s in his head and she\u2019s in his head, and he hasn\u2019t called and she hasn\u2019t called \u2026 I want it to feel like, \u2018Oh, my God, I\u2019ve been there, or I\u2019ve sat there wondering.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Pidgeon is already tipped<\/a> for an Emmy nomination (and likely a win) for her role as Bessette. She acts circles around Kelly, a former model who doesn\u2019t quite have the panty-dropping magnetism of JFK Jr but does possess the square jaw and period accurate chest hair. \u201cWe live in a world of electrolysis men,\u201d executive producer Brad Simpson told GQ. \u201cIt was a real challenge to find that sort of guy \u2013 a guy that women and gay men are attracted to, but also guys want to hang out and have a beer with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other details take a fuzzier approach to fealty. Production designer Alex DiGerlando told Curbed that while they painstakingly recreated<\/a> Jackie Kennedy Onassis\u2019s manse from existing images, the interior of JFK Jr\u2019s Tribeca apartment is a mystery. That gave set designers free rein to imagine it as a shrine to 90s minimalism with glass bricks and granite countertops. It is chic as hell, and probably far too sophisticated for the real life yankee bachelor with a big dog. Would America\u2019s son really be uninhibited enough for a loft bedroom with no walls? It\u2019s fun to imagine.<\/p>\n

Paul Anthony Kelly as John F Kennedy Jr. Photograph: FX<\/p>\n

Not everyone is as enchanted. When asked about Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette in a recent interview, Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg was categorial. \u201cI want people who watch the show to keep one letter in mind, and that\u2019s F for fiction,\u201d he said<\/a>, adding of Murphy. \u201cHe\u2019s making a ton of money on a grotesque display of someone else\u2019s life.\u201d In a New York Times op-ed<\/a>, the actor and one-time JFK Jr girlfriend Daryl Hannah<\/a> condemned her unflattering depiction as \u201ctragedy-exploiting\u201d and \u201ctextbook misogyny\u201d.<\/p>\n

The show works best if you make peace with it as glossy embellishment of one of the all-time great American myths. JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette were the closest thing that the US came to royalty, capturing the public imagination and enduring an emboldened paparazzi who tailed their every move. They were the perfect 90s gossip magazine fodder, feeding the rags\u2019 appetite for candid paparazzi shots over styled red carpet images. It helped that they were stylish, young, and not afraid to get into a blazing argument in public. \u201cYou\u2019re going to be the American people\u2019s princess,\u201d Bessette is informed as she prepares to marry JFK Jr on a remote Georgia island. She rolls her eyes at her friends before replying, \u201cYou two are demented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost as demented as imagining Bessette would be caught dead wearing Zara. When Ryan Murphy posted camera test pictures<\/a> of Pidgeon as Bessette last year, fans slammed the costumes as looking suspiciously off-the-rack (\u201cShein Camelot\u201d was my favorite of the snarky comments). Murphy listened, hiring<\/a> a 10-person \u201cstyle advisory board\u201d who scoured eBay and borrowed for collectors to outfit Pidgeon in original Prada and Yohji Yamamoto pieces, as well as an Herm\u00e8s Birkin that they artfully bashed-up to resemble the bag Bessette carried while taking the subway. It rarely pays off when shows pay too much attention to internet chatter, but Love Story\u2019s style recalibration is a rare example of fan service that pays off.<\/p>\n

Love Story arrives in the wake of a slew of dodgy 90s remakes and reboots like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream and The Crow, and with news that The X-Files and Clueless are up next. It\u2019s no surprise that we want the 90s back on screen. The decade was far from perfect, but at least we weren\u2019t all walking around with tiny computers in our pockets that gave us minute-by-minute updates on all the awful things happening in the world. Perhaps that\u2019s why Love Story feels like a glamorous off-switch for anxiety: it taps into a time when if you didn\u2019t turn on the TV or stop at the newsstand that morning, you could simply tune the world out.<\/p>\n

But in my mind the show\u2019s masterstroke is not merely to recapture the decade but to auramaxx it. In Murphy and Hines\u2019s hands, JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette\u2019s romance is bigger, the streets are cleaner, apartments are chicer, and the couple are as beautifully doomed as the Lana Del Rey songs that accompany their fan edits. Love Story doesn\u2019t offer a time machine back to the 90s. It makes it better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a recent sunny Sunday in New York, Love Story seemed to be everywhere. Fans lined up around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-334005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}