bitchy | Sarah Pidgeon & Paul Anthony Kelly talk about ‘Love Story,’ vibe checks & Kennedys

Did you know that Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is a nine-episode limited series? That makes me wonder about the pacing. The fifth episode (last week) was about John and Carolyn’s engagement and their infamous fight in Battery Park. The sixth episode (this week) is the wedding. So the last three episodes are about their marriage and how they separated in the last year before their deaths? Hm. While I loved the Battery Park episode, it was such a leap for them to already be living together and talking about marriage. Anyway, a lot of this comes up in this wonderful profile of Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly in Harper’s Bazaar. These interviews were done before the show even premiered, but Sarah knew that the show would land and that Paul would become a star. She was right – people are completely obsessed with him. You can read the full Bazaar piece here. Some highlights:

Sarah on the weight of playing Carolyn: “When I got the role, the weight of that responsibility was always in the back of my mind, along with how much I wanted to do Carolyn justice in this interpretation of her story.”

Paul on getting the role of John: “The opportunity presented itself, and it was a big one. I just had this feeling like I could relate to him. I still think I do. I understand who he was at his core, and I think our values are aligned. It was something I knew I was capable of doing and I could have fun with and explore. It was definitely a challenging role—and there were a lot of similarities that I could find myself in with him that I think eventually became a truthful characterization. But I’m still processing it. I still can’t believe it’s me.”

The expectations for Paul’s “star is born” moment: When I ask if he’s ready for the influx of fan-cam edits that will surely come after the show’s premiere, he holds his face in his palm and shakes his head no, endearingly. In general, he tries to stay off social media. “You can scroll through my TikTok if you don’t want to download it,” Pidgeon warmly offers, just in case he ends up curious.

Paul on who John really was: “There weren’t really any discussions on how exactly he should be [portrayed], aside from the words that Connor wrote, which are so informative of what’s going on in the interiors of these individuals. How I approached playing him was the way I always kind of saw him holding himself. There are those quiet moments where he lets his guard down and he is a very kind, sarcastic, self-deprecating guy, but there’s also power in that. His goal in life was to just really be a normal dude, but you can’t escape that reality when you’re a Kennedy.”

The wedding episode: “There’s this wonderful documentary, The Lost Tapes, that has [so much wedding] footage,” Pidgeon shares. “I watched that while I was getting ready for the role, and then I watched it again the night before we started shooting, and then I watched it again around the time of the wedding episode. To hear the people that knew them talk about just how much love and magic they all felt in that weekend was incredible.” Kelly echoes the sentiment of his costar. “It really was a transportive situation and place to be when we were re-creating the whole thing,” he says. “It’s one of the most famous weddings in American history, but then also so little is known about it because they wanted it that way. It was very hush-hush, and I think there’s something so romantic about that too. To relive that and reimagine it was a pretty special experience.”

Vibe-checking Carolyn Bessette: “So much of Carolyn is this vibe; it’s this essence. There is a shared sense of people’s understanding of her. In the show, our interpretation really examines parts of her life that aren’t as familiar to the public,” says Pidgeon. “But there was always this sense of a vibe check—this is my attitude, my energy, my intuition—that I think of when I think of Carolyn.” As a publicist, Bessette would have known a thing or two about interacting with the media. “I admire that she was so self-possessed and knew herself so well, and I think she showed incredible strength in choosing not to speak.” Pidgeon continues. “She didn’t need to speak.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I want to praise both actors for different reasons. For Sarah, I think she’s doing an amazing job fleshing out a woman who was very much an enigma, who did not want to be known. Sarah isn’t playing Carolyn as impossibly cool and unknowable, because that wouldn’t work, so Sarah has really just thrown herself into the role and made some tough decisions about how she thinks Carolyn would have behaved and reacted. That’s brave, to try to interpret the unknowable and still do justice to Carolyn in some way. For Paul, I think he’s doing a good job of really subtly layering in some of John’s less-than-flattering qualities – John could be childish, he could be a vacant himbo, he expected everyone to cater to him. Paul isn’t underlining those moments in bold, he’s playing them (for the most part) as subtext, especially in his interactions with Sarah/Carolyn. Anyway, I really like this show and I hope the last episodes don’t go off the rails. (Note: I still have not seen this week’s episode, I save this show to watch it on Fridays.)

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Instagram courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar.