{"id":465184,"date":"2026-02-13T00:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465184\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T00:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:32:08","slug":"love-story-nails-americas-obsession-with-the-kennedy-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465184\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Story nails America\u2019s obsession with the Kennedy family."},"content":{"rendered":"

If the United States has an American equivalent of the British royal family, it has to be the Kennedys. This country has been acquainted with the Kennedy family for the past century and a half, and has been obsessed with them since around the midcentury, when John F. Kennedy\u2019s so-called Camelot presidency and its tragic ending captured the public imagination. In the intervening decades, the American fascination with this political dynasty has shown no signs of stopping, given that Robert \u201cBobby\u201d F. Kennedy, Edward \u201cTed\u201d Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy II, Joe P. Kennedy III, Patrick J. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have all either been elected or appointed to federal office in the intervening years. (And that extensive list does not include members of the family who married in or don\u2019t carry that famous last name.) Today the Kennedys are once again across our politics, if they ever truly left. There\u2019s our dairy-obsessed<\/a> health secretary, of course, whose anti-science views prompted five of his own siblings to speak out against him<\/a> during the 2024 election. Then there\u2019s Jack Schlossberg<\/a>, the 33-year-old son of Caroline Kennedy and near-clone of his late uncle, who has entered the race for a vacant congressional seat in Manhattan. Oh, and don\u2019t forget that the president now has his eyes\u2014and his name<\/a>\u2014on the Kennedy Center, named in honor of the late commander in chief.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in this cultural morass that FX\u2019s Love Story, a Ryan Murphy\u2013produced anthology series that builds its first season around John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, debuts on Thursday. It\u2019s one of at least two splashy Kennedy-centric series in the pipeline; the other is Netflix\u2019s Kennedy<\/a>, a look at the origins of the family that is centered around patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr., who will be played by Michael Fassbender.<\/p>\n

Love Story, which is based on Elizabeth Beller\u2019s 2024 biography Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, charts the romance between JFK Jr. and his fashion-industry bride. The late Kennedy scion is now widely remembered as the little boy who once saluted his father\u2019s coffin<\/a> but later struggled to find his place in public life as an adult. He tried his hand at law and flirted with acting before settling in media, founding the magazine George, which ran from 1995 to 2001. But for a time he was best known as the country\u2019s most eligible bachelor, with a string of high-profile romances, from Daryl Hannah to Sarah Jessica Parker. In 1992 Kennedy met fashion publicist Bessette and soon began a sometimes stormy romance<\/a> with her that culminated in their 1996 wedding. As a glamorous young couple, the pair seemed\u2014in the public imagination, at least\u2014the heirs to JFK\u2019s and Jackie O\u2019s political lives. But these plans, like those of JFK Jr.\u2019s parents, also ended in tragedy when the pair, still in their 30s, were killed in a plane crash in 1999.<\/p>\n

This new series is reminiscent of The Crown, from which Love Story showrunner Connor Hines drew inspiration<\/a> when coming up with this show. You can see signs of this shared DNA throughout the nine episodes. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna be the American people\u2019s princess,\u201d one of Bessette\u2019s (Sarah Pidgeon) friends tells her as her relationship with JFK Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) picks up steam. Later, as Bessette struggles with the paparazzi infestation that has overtaken her life, she watches, horrified, as news reports announce Princess Diana\u2019s death, fearing that she too will be killed at the hands of the press. Both series question the fairy tale behind these famous families, while simultaneously serving it up to lavish effect. They each understand that, as much as many of us may roll our eyes at the notion of hereditary monarchies or political dynasties, we still can\u2019t help but return to them. It\u2019s a cultural obsession. A soap opera. A romance.<\/p>\n

\n The Kennedys serve as avatars for our national successes and failures, as subjects of easy adoration and\u00a0derision.\n<\/p>\n

In the U.K., at least, there are constitutional and historical reasons for the monarchy\u2019s continued existence. In the U.S., all we can point to is our continued preoccupation with celebrity\u2014a well-established phenomenon in politics long before Donald Trump rode it all the way to the White House. Here, famous leaders have famous spouses and children, who themselves become subjects for will-they-or-won\u2019t-they speculation. (See, for example, the constant discussion of Michelle Obama\u2019s electoral prospects or the political ambitions of the Trump children<\/a>.) Many politicians feel they are destined for higher office, but for the Kennedys and other dynasties, there is an expectation placed upon their members, both internally and externally. We hold them up as evidence that under the American dream, we too can create a legacy. They serve as avatars for our national successes and failures, as subjects of easy adoration and derision. They are characters for our consumption\u2014real people and not, flawed humans and fictional versions of them. \u201cIn [people\u2019s] minds, we don\u2019t exist without them,\u201d we see Jackie Kennedy Onassis (Naomi Watts) tell her son in Love Story.<\/p>\n

This series, then, serves to both question and propagate this arrangement. It\u2019s a sexy, swoon-worthy fairy tale that also wants us to know that none of this fantasy, this toxic codependency, is good for the country or the families caught up in it. A dramatized, ripped-from-the-headlines (or history books, depending on your age) miniseries is bound to agitate those for whom this is all very real (and, indeed, the show has upset at least one Kennedy descendant<\/a>), but it\u2019s also the perfect vehicle to perpetuate the illusion at the core of their identities. As the couple at the center of Love Story learn during their ill-fated relationship, outsiders, insiders, and even love itself can all be chewed up and spit out in the service of a mythmaking so strong it makes it hard to keep track of what\u2019s true. \u201cMy experience is generally not trustworthy. I\u2019m always trying to understand what parts are real and what parts aren\u2019t,\u201d JFK Jr. tells Bessette during one of their many fights. \u201cBut us? That felt so, so real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somehow, despite a degree of current-day Kennedy fatigue, this FX series feels fresh and compelling. Watts is memorable in a short turn as the late first lady, hitting those unique vowel sounds<\/a> just as Natalie Portman did in 2016\u2019s Jackie<\/a>, while Grace Gummer is suitably no-nonsense as Caroline Kennedy, the under-the-radar antithesis of her brother. Particularly charming is the melodic theme composer Bryce Dessner has devised to serve as the lovers\u2019 delicate motif across the series. Fashion fans will also be pleased to learn that the creative team took to heart criticism of the early costuming<\/a>, working to source designer pieces that accurately reflect the era and its players. I struggle to think of a period show that has ever made the 1990s look more chic.<\/p>\n

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For many viewers, though, this will be their first in-depth study of Bessette. The former Calvin Klein executive is now remembered mostly as a style icon<\/a> for trendy<\/a>, minimalist \u201990s fashion<\/a>, but she was once a daily character in the tabloids, positioned as victim and villain alike. Deftly played here by Pidgeon, who scored a 2024 Tony nomination for her amazing turn in the play Stereophonic, this iteration of Bessette makes it easy to see why the world\u2019s most eligible bachelor felt as if he had met his match, romantically and competitively. She is impossibly lithe and cool, endlessly puffing on cigarettes (an activity that, as the show takes great joy in reminding us, you could still do inside bars in the \u201990s) or strutting through Tribeca with a model\u2019s ease. At times, Pidgeon\u2019s wide eyes and high cheeks reminded me of Natascha McElhone, who played the protagonist\u2019s beguiling but forbidden love interest in 1998\u2019s The Truman Show; at other points, she seemed to slightly resemble Olivia Nuzzi<\/a>, the journalist whose recent love affair with RFK Jr. became its own tabloid sensation. But Pidgeon\u2019s performance succeeds beyond her physical likeness; the actor summons a charisma that is both mysterious and charming, elusive yet approachable. It\u2019s no wonder that Klein himself (here played by Alessandro Nivola) is so impressed with her, or that Bessette is so loath to give herself over to the Kennedy machine.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s creative team struggled for some time to find its Kennedy Jr., eventually settling on Kelly, a former model, just weeks before filming in part because, incredibly, he had the build and chest hair<\/a> that the role required. If anything, Kelly is in the somewhat enviable position of being too beautiful to play JFK Jr.; his features are sharper, his eyes darker, his hair slicker. But Kelly is terrific as the tortured boy king, at once magnetic and pathetic. When he walks into a room, all eyes turn toward him and voices lower, but this position comes with dangers too. As Klein\u2019s wife, Kelly (Leila George), warns Bessette, there\u2019s a rush to being with someone like that, feeling like a source of envy and perhaps even mutual fascination. \u201cBut at the end of the day, they never really choose you, not in the way that you wish they would,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cShiny people like that\u2014they belong to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this imbalance that eventually becomes the fatal flaw in the Kennedy\u2013Bessette romance. Having worked in public relations, Bessette understands the press, but not in the same way that Kennedy does. She knows she\u2019ll be giving her life over to the public; he grew up with that spotlight and can\u2019t envision life without it. She fears losing control of her own image; he takes power and pride in manipulating the media as best he can. Every story needs a protagonist and antagonist, Bessette\u2019s sister Lauren (Sydney Lemmon) warns her, and JFK Jr. is the living embodiment of a protagonist. So where will that leave her? An eternal tabloid villain? The envy of every woman\u2014and gay man, as Kennedy jokes to her\u2014in America? The ultimate answer may, in the public\u2019s eye, simply be as Mrs.\u00a0John F.\u00a0Kennedy Jr. \u201cShe knows if she marries him, that will be her defining characteristic,\u201d Kelly Klein astutely observes at one point of Bessette\u2014and of herself. \u201cIt will be like she never existed before she met him.\u201d<\/p>\n


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There is a certain gruesomeness to bearing witness to the tragedy of the Kennedys; in the show\u2019s opening, the couple and Lauren board the small plane on which they will ultimately lose their lives in a crash off the coast of Martha\u2019s Vineyard. It feels especially morbid in light of the family\u2019s recent loss, with the untimely death in December of Tatiana Schlossberg<\/a> (Caroline\u2019s daughter and Jack\u2019s sister) from leukemia at just 35. Young child actors pop up occasionally as Tatiana and her siblings in Love Story, lending an uneasiness to the whole thing. You can sympathize, then, with Schlossberg\u2019s anger at Murphy for \u201cmaking a public spectacle<\/a>\u201d of his family.<\/p>\n

But the Kennedy name\u2014on which Schlossberg\u2019s political push arguably relies, at least in part\u2014is likely to endure precisely because of works like Love Story, not in spite of them. Such works of romance (in the sense of both love and myth) only add to the family\u2019s mystique, helping to further embed their name in the public consciousness. As a nation, we want to believe in a family like the Kennedys because we want to believe in the fantastical promise of America, especially in such dark and lost times. \u201cAll he knows is who he\u2019s supposed to become: the heir to Camelot. That\u2019s the only thing the world has ever told him,\u201d Bessette\u2019s mother, Ann Messina Freeman (Constance Zimmer), tells her daughter of the rudderless JFK Jr. \u201cIf there\u2019s no Camelot, then what was the point of all this loss?\u201d<\/p>\n

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