I’ve simply gone into Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette with the understanding that it’s just a lukewarm dramatization of real life, and they’re not doing a comprehensive and historically accurate version. Love Story has gotten some stuff correct, but obviously, they did Daryl Hannah dirty. One of the saddest parts about the show is that they show how close John was to his Bouvier cousin, Anthony Radziwill. Or Prince Anthony, since his father was a Polish prince. Anthony and John really were close in age, they were best friends and more like brothers. As seen on the show, Anthony was in remission from cancer in the early and mid-’90s, but the cancer came back. Anthony died in 1999, just weeks after John and Carolyn died that same summer. One thing which Love Story has not shown and apparently will not show? Anthony’s wife Carole Radziwill, who was also very close to John and Carolyn. Many people only know Carole from The Real Housewives of New York, but Carole is connected to the Bouviers/Kennedys through marriage. Well, Love Story’s producers have come out and said that they’re not making Carole into a character whatsoever.
Carole Radziwill isn’t featured in “Love Story” because the showrunners wanted to highlight Carolyn Bessette’s close relationship with her sister, Lauren Bessette.
“There were tons of people in their lives that we weren’t able to include, including some of John’s closest friends, but we decided to make Lauren [Carolyn’s] closest confidant, and then Anthony [John F. Kennedy Jr.’s] closest confidant,” producer Brad Simpson told TV Insider Monday.
“You know, we’re trying to pack a lot into 43 minutes,” he added. “People’s lives are full and rich. There’s tons of people in them, and you have to make decisions.”
The “Real Housewives of New York” star was married to Kennedy Jr.’s late cousin Anthony Radziwill from 1994 until 1999, when he died of cancer — just three weeks after the tragic plane crash that killed Kennedy Jr., Carolyn and Lauren.
Anthony, portrayed by Erich Bergen, is heavily featured in the Hulu series and seen as Kennedy Jr.’s right hand man. In real life, he and Carole were both very close with Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn but she was excluded from the series to “really focus” on building Lauren’s character.
Simpson further told the outlet that they made the decision to focus on Lauren because she is “often an afterthought in all of this.”
After the series — which stars Paul Anthony Kelly as Kennedy Jr. and Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn — premiered last month, Carole confirmed on her Substack that she wouldn’t be watching the show, but said others should tune in to “fall in love with” Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn “the way we all did back then.”
She did throw some shade at the show as well, however, writing, “And yet the story keeps being told. Reinvented. Embroidered. Filled with details no one could possibly know, by people who weren’t there and don’t care about the truth.”
I totally understand and respect the decision to center Lauren Bessette in Love Story and really focus on the sisters’ relationship. But it also feels like they’re trying to show a version of Carolyn who was deeply alone, even within her marriage. And I don’t know if that’s the truth. Like, Carole Radziwill and Carolyn reportedly got along very well and they treated each other like sisters-in-law. Love Story could have easily shown a bit of that, but their goal is to emphasize Carolyn’s isolation. Even after she left Calvin Klein, Carolyn still had good friends in the fashion world too, which they’re choosing not to show. Anyway, Love Story was probably worried about pissing off Carole Radziwill, or maybe getting sued if they brought in too many “characters” who are still alive.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid, FX.
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