Roush Review: FX’s ‘Love Story’ Is a Gripping Look at JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette’s Romance and Tragedy

Love Story

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He was the sexiest man alive, “America’s uncrowned prince.” She was the sexiest woman no one really knew. Theirs was a storybook romance told in bold tabloid type with the sort of tragic ending that could only befall a Kennedy.

Megaproducer Ryan Murphy inaugurates his new Love Story limited-series FX franchise with John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, a compellingly voyeuristic drama that taps into our endless fascination with the Kennedy clan, which has an unhappy knack for losing its best and brightest at too early an age. In depicting the passionate yet stormy relationship of golden boy John F. Kennedy Jr. (handsome newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly) and his enigmatic, spotlight-averse bride Carolyn Bessette (the ravishing Sarah Pidgeon), series creator Connor Hines (working from Elizabeth Beller’s book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy) presents the insular world of the Kennedys as a soul-suffocating force akin to “The Firm” of the British royal family as seen in Netflix’s The Crown.

“There isn’t enough exposure in the world to prepare a woman to be your wife,” warns Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (a whispery, wispy Naomi Watts) to her callow son, wishing to spare him the “pervasive narrative of entitlement and recklessness that’s plagued every other member of this family.” She’s no fan of his current on-and-off girlfriend, the actress Daryl Hannah (played thanklessly by Dree Hemingway as a needy, self-absorbed brat), and neither is he, really.

So, when he meets the coolly confident Carolyn, who’s rising the ranks as a publicist for Calvin Klein (Alessandro Nivola) and coyly plays hard to get during a meet-cute at a swank party, John is instantly smitten, though she chalks the moment up to him being “bored and innately flirtatious.” She’s half right — and is nonplussed when he continues the chase. Jackie O’s untimely death from cancer (though not before we see her dancing to Camelot in front of a portrait of her late husband) sends the louche lad into the arms of his new and future soulmate.

Eric Liebowitz/FX

Love Story is at its fascinating best when giving us an inside look at this rarified bubble of privilege from the perspective of an overwhelmed outsider. When John drags an unprepared Carolyn to a birthday sit-down dinner for his sister Caroline (a prickly Grace Gummer), his peeved sibling demands to know, “Why would you put her in that position?” and tells him to “act your age.” Carolyn is similarly out of her depth on her first visit to the iconic Hyannis Port compound, where Ethel Kennedy (the terrifically starchy Jessica Harper) rules as matriarch and grills the family on politics during dinner, patronizing the newcomer with a “You might want to read about it” jibe.

As the spoiled and naïve John, whose stewardship of the political/pop-culture magazine George is shown as another of his quixotic failures, Kelly is a paragon of boyishly earnest and frustrated charisma. The series belongs to Pidgeon, a Tony nominee for the acclaimed play Stereophonic, an electrifying talent who reveals a gutsy fire beneath Carolyn’s guardedness, making it even more shattering when the relentless paparazzi outside their door and cruel tabloid gossip make her an emotionally paralyzed prisoner in their luxury loft.

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“I just don’t want you to lose yourself,” her skeptical mother Ann (a memorable Constance Zimmer) warns her after the relationship first goes public. (Mothers always know.) Even Ethel, likening Carolyn’s dilemma to the late Jackie’s, offers sage advice: “The whole world will be watching you. It’s your choice what you want them to see.”

Sadly, most people didn’t get to see the real Carolyn in the three short years of their marriage before the tragic small-plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. Their Love Story is haunted by the Kennedy curse, which ironically is the selling point for this gripping cautionary tale of the dark side of celebrity.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, Limited Series Premiere (three episodes), Thursday, February 12, 9/8c, FX and Hulu