John F. Kennedy Jr. was something akin to royalty, accustomed to his every move being observed. Carolyn Bessette didn't like getting her picture taken. When America's prince and the beautiful unknown fell in love and married, the paparazzi stalked her ruthlessly to feed the tabloids. The pressures of living under a microscope took a terrible toll on their relationship up until the day John, Carolyn and her sister Lauren died in the small private place he was piloting to a family wedding in 1999.
Executive producer Ryan Murphy brought the idea of a love story anthology series to Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, who executive-produce the American Crime Story franchise with him. Long fascinated by John and Carolyn, he wanted to start with their relationship. “In a cynical time, we’re trying to bring something sincere to people,” Simpson says. And they needed someone just as devoted to write it.
Creator Connor Hines (Space Force) had always been intrigued by the Kennedys and had read every book published about them. When he learned about John and Carolyn, “I couldn’t believe nobody had done a story about this — what a powerful, moving and tumultuous love story,” he recalls. “I imagined I wouldn’t get a chance to write this until much further along in my career, but I had it on a little bucket list I had written on my phone.” When the show was announced, “I felt a sense of destiny to be part of it, in a way I’d never felt about anything.” He successfully conveyed that intensity to Murphy.
The 2024 bestseller Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, by Elizabeth Beller, provided key inspiration and a fresh take for Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, premiering February 12 on FX and Hulu.
“All the books about John and Carolyn had a pretty dated narrative about her, slightly if not overtly misogynistic in their perspective on the marriage,” Hines says. “Elizabeth’s book was one of the few sources that was balanced and empathetic and really contextualized her, so I found that to be helpful in terms of a guide for Carolyn’s arc specifically.”
Watch Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon during the emmy cover shoot in this exclusive video.
Carolyn’s confidence and fashion sense fueled her ascent from folding sweaters at a Calvin Klein store in Boston to the company’s Manhattan C-suite. “She was really the North Star for me through this project creatively,” Hines says. “The more I understood her, the more I understood how the rest of the show would unfold.” Simpson adds, “We realized we really wanted to tell the story of her entering his world.”
Casting was a mammoth challenge; the actors had to not only look like John and Carolyn but also possess their magnetism. “In addition to them being the most beautiful people on Earth, they were rock stars,” Hines says.
The executive producers had seen Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things) in the Broadway hit Stereophonic, “and she’d blown us away,” Simpson remembers. When she went in to audition, “pretty quickly we knew she was Carolyn. She had the angled, beautiful face, and she had not just the charisma but the inner strength that we think Carolyn had.” Pilot executive producer and director Max Winkler says that when he met her, “I immediately knew we were in good hands. She’s such an adult and so poised.”
Finding their John took much longer. “We auditioned almost every possible actor between 25 and 40 who fit the part,” Simpson says. “And it was really difficult, because John is iconic in his looks, but he also had a sort of American 1980s to 1990s masculinity to his look that you don’t see in a lot of men right now.” Adds Jacobson, “Just finding a guy with chest hair is virtually impossible now. John was very athletic, and everybody used to see him out playing football or on his bike, but he wasn’t ripped and shaven and waxed.”
Four weeks out from production, trying not to panic, they turned to the slush pile of rejected audition tapes, found newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly and brought him in for a chemistry read with Pidgeon. “There was something that Paul walked in with that just made everyone in the room want to lean in a bit closer,” Jacobson remembers.
Hines says, “There’s a gravitas, but there’s also a warmth and humility to Paul. He can walk into a room and own it, but then he has that ability to talk to anyone and make them feel like they’re the only person there. That’s such a JFK Jr. attribute.”
He looked right, too. “One of the hair people came up to me and said, ‘You have to cast this guy. All the women on set are swooning over him,’” Simpson recalls.
The actors immediately dove into research. Pidgeon pored over every small fragment of information she could find and worked with movement coach Julia Crockett. “I cannot sing Julia’s praises enough,” Pidgeon says. “I was trying to figure out a way into this character who’s based on someone very enigmatic. It made me feel like I was back in theater school, which was so freeing.” As the story progresses, her physicality alters. “What happens when this private person starts becoming quite public? How does that change this vivacious, vibrant young woman who suddenly feels she’s so much more seen and watched and part of this storied family?”
Kelly had much more information to work with. “Luckily for me, unlike Carolyn, John is a very well-documented individual. He was always out, he was always giving interviews, he was a man of the people,” Kelly says. “He narrates his father’s book, Profiles in Courage. I would listen to that religiously during the whole endeavor, just to get his mannerisms and the way that he spoke.”
To read the rest of the story, pick up a copy of emmy magazine here.
This article originally appeared in its entirety in emmy magazine, issue #1, 2026, under the title "American Heartbreak."
