Remember the Kennedys Miniseries Even History Wouldn’t Touch?

With a preposterous docuseries called Ancient Aliens and discredited documentaries about Bigfoot and Amelia Earhart, History doesn’t have a sterling reputation among actual historians. But in 2011, the cable channel found the miniseries The Kennedys subpar and decided against airing the $30 million production.

For weeks, TV viewers weren’t sure they’d ever get to see the miniseries, which starred Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes as former President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jackie Kennedy. Fifteen years after the miniseries ended its run on Reelz on April 10, 2011, we’re taking a look at how the controversy unfolded…

Early scripts angered Kennedy scholars and insiders.

The backlash toward The Kennedys ramped up even before the miniseries had a cast in place. In February 2010, The New York Times reported that Kennedy scholars and insiders who had read early scripts were speaking out against the project.

One of the organizers of those protests was Robert Greenwald, director of documentaries like Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism and Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War. Greenwald launched a website called Stop Kennedy Smears, in which he cataloged objections to The Kennedys’ scripts.

“I was amazed to find, reading those pages, that every single conversation with the president in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened. There were no such conversations,” Ted Sorensen, who worked as an advisor and speechwriter for Kennedy, said in one blurb on the website. “A minimum amount of research could’ve avoided the remarkable number of obvious errors of that kind in this script.”

Greenwald called the project “political character assassination” in an interview with The Times. “It was sexist titillation and pandering, and it was turning everything into a cheap soap opera of the worst kind.”

Sorensen and the other historians Greenwald assembled called out scenes they said were erroneous or even fully invented, the Times reported. They said the scripts had misdated the invention of exit polling and the creation of the Peace Corps, attributed the idea for the Berlin Wall to Kennedy, and depicted the late president as a philanderer who told his brother Robert that he got migraines unless he slept with different women every couple of days.

“No network or cable channel has ever done anything anywhere close to this, in the way it treats a president,” Greenwald said.

Executive producer and co-screenwriter Joel Surnow’s reputation as a rare Hollywood conservative didn’t help assuage the agenda accusations. But Stephen Kronish was the other screenwriter penning scripts, and he told the Times that he was a liberal Democrat and that he based his writing for the miniseries on nonfiction books by Seymour Hersh, Robert Dallek, and David Talbot. “If I’m wrong, I guess all of them are wrong,” he declared.

History deemed the production “not a fit” and canceled its airing.

Nearly a year later, in January 2011, History stunned Hollywood by canceling The Kennedys months before its airing — and after all eight episodes had been filmed. The decision was speculated to have cost History parent A&E Television Networks and its owners — Disney, NBCUniversal, and Hearst Corporation millions of dollars — millions of dollars.

“Upon completion of the production of The Kennedys, History has decided not to air the 8-part miniseries on the network,” a representative for the channel told The Hollywood Reporter. “While the film is produced and acted with the highest quality, after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.”

Ultimately, History concluded that The Kennedys was not historically accurate enough for its programming slate, per THR. “We recognize historical fiction is an important medium for storytelling and commend all the hard work and passion that has gone into the making of the series, but ultimately deem this as the right programming decision for our network,” a rep told the outlet.

But THR later reported that Caroline Kennedy, the late president’s daughter, and that Maria Shriver, his niece, both reached out to executives with concerns about the project.

“I will say it happened at the corporate level, at the board level,” Surnow told the magazine, reflecting on the cancellation decision. “I don’t want to mention anyone by name. … To this day, I’m not sure if it’s the whole story. I think it’s very simple to say that certain board members are friends with the Kennedys.”

The miniseries ultimately aired on Reelz, getting mixed reviews but Emmy wins.

Weeks after History canceled the airing, THR announced The Kennedys would hit screens on Reelz (then called ReelzChannel), after Showtime, Starz, and FX declined the opportunity. At the time, Reelz was a cable channel just four years old and known for showbiz-related programming.

“We think [The Kennedys] will drive ratings and put a spotlight on this network that has never been on it before,” Reelz CEO Stan Hubbard told the mag. “One of the benefits of being an independent network is that you can be an independent voice, and you don’t have to worry about corporate pressure or political pressure. This is a project that deserves to be seen.”

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Reviews for The Kennedys were all over the place. The New York Post’s Linda Stasi rapturously called it “without a doubt one of the best, most riveting, historically accurate dramas about a time and place in American history that has ever been done for TV.” But USA Today’s Robert Bianco said the miniseries “has nothing much new to tell, and tells it over and over again,” and Time’s James Poniewozik called it “pretty bad TV: melodramatic, rote, and grim.”

Perhaps The Kennedy’s cast, creatives, and crew got the last laugh, however. At the Primetime Emmys and the Creative Arts Emmys that year, the miniseries earned 10 nominations and four wins — including trophies for star Barry Pepper (Robert F. Kennedy) and the production’s makeup artists, hairstylists, and sound mixers — and a sequel miniseries, The Kennedys: After Camelot, aired on Reelz in 2017.