Daryl Hannah has responded to how she’s being portrayed in Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, saying it’s “appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show.”
In the buzzy FX series from prolific producer Ryan Murphy that is currently airing to record viewership, Hannah is played by Dree Hemingway, and her tumultuous relationship with JFK Jr. (played by star Paul Anthony Kelly) has been chronicled throughout the season’s early episodes.
In a New York Times opinion piece “How Can ‘Love Story’ Get Away With This?” published on Friday — the morning after the release of the sixth episode, “The Wedding,” which centered around the top-secret wedding between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette (played by star Sarah Pidgeon) — Hannah is condemning the series and its portrayal of her, saying, “The choice to portray [Hannah] as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident.”
In her essay, Hannah calls out the “gendered dimension” to using her likelihood as a “narrative device” to help the audience root for the JFK Jr. and Carolyn romance, instead of that with JFK Jr. and Hannah. “Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?” she writes.
Hannah claims that what viewers see in Love Story is “not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John,” taking issue with specific actions and behaviors featured in the series: “I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s. … These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”
Hannah says that in the weeks since the series premiered, she’s received “hostile and even threatening messages” from viewers. “When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation,” she writes.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to FX and the show’s creatives for comment. THR had previously reached out to a rep for Hannah for comment on the series, but did not receive a reply.
JFK Jr., Carolyn, and her sister Lauren Bessette famously died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. The series about the romance between the iconic ’90s pair, created by Connor Hines, is inspired by Elizabeth Beller’s book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. The cast also includes Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy, Naomi Watts as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Alessandro Nivola as Calvin Klein, Leila George as Kelly Klein, Sydney Lemmon as Lauren Bessette and Constance Zimmer as Ann Marie Messina.
The creatives and executives behind Love Story have been public about the show’s stance of not reaching out to the real-life subjects portrayed in the series, including the Kennedys. Executive producer Nina Jacobson explained to THR that “generally speaking, we don’t engage with the people who are public figures, because you end up either feeling obligated to honor something that they ask you .. or you feel that, that you’re having competing versions.”
But Hemingway shared with THR when Love Story premiered that she actually did reach out to Hannah. Hannah is a friend of her famous mother, actress Mariel Hemingway, so Hemingway says she wrote Hannah a “love note” with no expectations for a response.
“I have no expectations of her reaching out to me in any way, but I basically wrote her a love note of how much I appreciate her as a woman, as an actress, and what an honor of my life this has been,” she said, adding that playing Hannah was an “incredible and iconic shoe to fill” and that the series “is definitely told from a fictional aspect because we don’t know what happened [behind closed doors]. But it was amazing. She’s amazing. I love her.”
Jack Schlossberg has also taken issue with the portrayal of his late uncle and wife in the series, which courted backlash even before the show premiered. “We got intense feedback,” executive producer Brad Simpson told THR about early criticism, adding that they made “dramatic changes” based on the response. “What it showed us was how deeply people cared about Carolyn Bessette and how much she meant to generations,” he said. Pidgeon added of people watching, “I hope that they feel we led with respect and honor for John and Carolyn.”
Love Story, meanwhile, has racked up more than 25 million hours (or 1.5 billion minutes) of viewing for its first five episodes on Hulu and Disney+, FX says — a record streaming number for an FX limited series.
