John F. Kennedy Jr.'s cousin, Douglas Kennedy, is jumping into theLove Storydiscourse to supportDaryl Hannahaftershe published her scathing guest essaycalling outRyan MurphyinThe New York Timeson Friday.
Hannah, who is portrayed byDree Hemingwayon the series, accused the show of depicting her as the villainous "adversary" to the titular romance, JFK Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon), anddenied several elements of her characterization, including the coke-sniffing and funeral-crashing. According to Kennedy, she has a right to be upset.
"Daryl Hannah was great," Kennedy toldPage Six. "Whenever I saw her, she was very sweet and had [John's] best interests at heart. I think that's a misrepresentation."
Kennedy added that he hasn't watched the series but believes the show's take on Hannah is "unfortunate."
"It's difficult to capture the intricacies of people's lives in movies or television," he told the outlet. "If you know people, these types of things often fail in capturing the essence of who people were."
The sentiment is one that Hannah emphasized in her op-ed, in which the Grammy-nominated actress wrote that she usually ignores media coverage because "engaging with distortion often amplifies it," but she chose to speak out against the FX show's depiction because it has "resulted in "real-life consequences."
"In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual," she claimed. "Many people believe what they see on TV and do not distinguish between dramatization and documented fact — and the impact is not abstract. In a digital era, entertainment often becomes collective memory. Real names are not fictional tools. They belong to real lives."
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Hannah added that her silence "should not be mistaken for agreement with lies," and in a direct message to readers, stated: "Know that most (if not all) of those claiming to have any intimate knowledge of our personal lives are self-serving sensationalists trading in gossip, innuendo and speculation."
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TheKill Billstar decried the series' portrayal of her as "not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John."
"The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue," she asserted. "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."
JFK Jr. and Hannah broke up in 1994 after dating for several years. He then went on to date Carolyn Bessette, whom he married in 1996. The couple died in a plane crash along with Bassette's sister, Lauren, in 1999. Hannah, meanwhile, has been married to musician Neil Young since 2018.
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, created by Connor Hines, tells the story of how Kennedy and Bessette met and fell in love, and the first couple of episodes depict Hannah's relationship with Kennedy — and what the Kennedy family thought of the actress.
Murphy's "based on a true story" serialsdon't solicit input from the real people being depicted, producer Nina Jacobson revealed toGold Derbyahead ofLove Story's Feb. 12 premiere. Instead, production relied on Elizabeth Beller's 2024 book,Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, as its source material. But Jacobson added that the show's crew "tried to be very mindful of giving people the dimension and complexity that they deserve as human beings."
"We always try to come from a place of compassion," Jacobson said specifically of the show's portrayal of Hannah. "Given how much we're rooting for John and Carolyn, Daryl Hannah occupies a space where she's an adversary to what you want narratively in the story. But we still try to really show respect to the fact that she does have a fluency with this world that Carolyn doesn't have. She is able to swim in his tank in a way that is much more difficult for Carolyn."
Despite discontent from the real-life subjects of the story, the series has been doing well for the network. FX announced last week thatLove Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessettehadbecome the network's most-watched limited series everon streaming, raking in more than 25 million hours viewed across the first five episodes on Disney+ and Hulu.
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessetteairs new episodes Thursdays on FX, and streams on Hulu.
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