FX series “Love Story John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.” Produced by Ryan Murphy, and directed by Max Winkler, Jesse Peretz, Crystal Roberson, Gillian Robespierre, and Anthony Hemingway. Premiered with a three-episode event on February 12 and has been airing weekly since. Starring Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette and Paul Anthony Kelly as John F. Kennedy Jr., Naomi Watts as Jackie Kennedy, and Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy, and tells the love story of Kennedy. and Bessette before their tragic death alongside Bessette’s sister in 1999 via a plane crash.
The series starts in a flash forward to 1999 when the plane carrying the Bessette sisters was flown by Kennedy. takes off in a foretelling of what we know will happen before flashing back to seven years. We meet Carolyn Bessette, who works at Cavlin Klein, and on the opposite end of Kennedy, who has made the news for failing the bar exam for the second time. This episode is the jump-off point for their relationship as they have their “meet-cute” at a fundraiser where Calvin Klein introduces the two.
The actors display amazing chemistry from their first meeting all the way until the end. While Kennedy and Carolyn have one date the pair does not continue their relationship originally with both going to be with different people Jr. with his recent ex how came back from California Daryl Hannah (Dree Hemingway) is a an American actress who dated Jr. on and off for 5 years and Bessette dating an at the time young unknown model Michael Burgin (Noah Fearnley) who later went on the star in Baywatch and much like Jr. and Daryl the relationship was on and off.
Kennedy and Bessette go about their lives, occasionally meeting, and every time they are pictured on screen, the chemistry is magnetic. Eventually, they come together under the sad circumstances of Jackie Kennedy’s death when Kennedy goes to Carolyn for comfort after being strong for the camera and his sister while breaking down inside. The acting during this sequence is breathtaking and personally had me in tears.
Their relationship grows while trying to hide it from the media which eventually fails resulting in pressure and tension but this blows over and we flash forward a little bit to July 1995 when Bessette is invited to Martha’s Vineyard to meet the Kennedy’s and this is where he later proposes with the famous line “When you go fishing, it’s always better with a partner. Would you be my partner?”. While Bessette held off on answering for a long time and while this fight did happen in real life it was about something entirely different then was is depicted in the show with the pair arguing through every issue they have before Carolyn agrees to marry Kennedy in what is known as the “infamous 1996 park fight” was blasted all over the papers but the couple stayed together. Though in the show, what the couple was fighting about proved to be untrue.
The story continues on to their marriage and more on Kennedy’s relationship with his cousin and best friend, also the best man at his wedding, Anthony Radziwill (Erich Bergen), and his struggle with cancer.
Though many people find the show to be distasteful as parts of the story are not accurate and or dramatized for the effect, I found that the acting, chemistry, set, clothing, and soundtrack are what make the show definitely worth watching, even with the inaccuracies from the true story of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
While I did enjoy the show and the ending made me cry quite a few tears with Grace Gummer giving an amazing performance of genuine heartbreak, I give this show 4 out of 5 stars because of the inaccuracies.
–April 7, 2026–
