It seems like forever ago that The Hunger Games were making their way into theaters and we owned a fansite that worked with Lionsgate on the movies. It was a lot of fun and an introduction Hollywood in. a way that was different and made me fall in love with it. There were champions for fansites, and one of the people that was so generous to people like me was producer, Nina Jacobson.
Since then, I have always admire Jacobsons career. She was one of the people that told us back then that we could do anything – not only by words, but by her actions. She’s one of two very strong women in Hollywood that has shaped my belief that it’s okay to be a fangirl and it’s okay to write from that perspective.
So if you think that I was not going to jump at the chance to talk to her and her Brad Simpson, you would be wrong. There was nothing that was going to keep me from that. The two have a vault of knowledge about Hollywood and what works. Also what doesn’t. The two are creative AF.
We weren’t talking about The Hunger Games, but rather we sat down to talk about Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette. We talking about why it works, why now is the time and the fascination with the couple.
WHY NOW IS THE TIME FOR THIS ROMANCE
There are some people that will live on forever, and John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette are two of those people. The two are American royalty and will live on forever. It’s been almost twenty-seven years since the two passed away in a tragic accident. There have been so many books and documentaries on the two and I know that we’ll never know what is real. After all the only people who know what truly happened are the people involved.
One thing that I can respect about the Kennedy family is that they keep a lot close to the chest.
But this, I had to wonder with all of the controversy surrounding this show, I wondered why. Why is now the time to tell their story?
“I would say that the name that resonates right now, we found as we went out, is that obviously, the Kennedy name is a massive historic name. Netflix is doing their own crown on the Kennedys, but Carolyn Bessette has found– Nina talks about her as a posthumous influencer. She has become to represent so much to so many generations of people. She has found this new life online and on social media. She, we discovered, was more well-known by younger people than JFK Jr.,” Brad said.
He then continued, “It’s interesting because during the time, it was like, “This is JFK Jr.’s wife or girlfriend.” That’s how you met her, but we found ourselves describing the show to younger people who were like, “No, this is the American prince that she married.”
CAROLYN’S INFLUENCE
There is no doubt that Carolyn Bessette Kennedy is and will forever be a style icon. The socialite had a minimalist style and didn’t show off labels.
“She has had this massive effect since she has died in terms of fashion, in terms of aesthetics, in terms of quiet luxury, in terms of also somebody who was famous but refused to play the game in this time, right now when everybody is so online, and people want to be famous, and everything is knowable about everybody.” Brad said, “She didn’t give interviews. The only photographs we have of her that she did one or two photo shoots, but otherwise they’re all paparazzi, long-lived photographs on the street. There’s an allure about her and a mystery that I think resonates. With generations of, I would say, women, gay men, too, but especially with women.”
WHY SHOOTING IN NEW YORK WAS ESSENTIAL
New York is a a main character in the show and that is a beautiful thing. John and Carolyn are quintessential New York. A lot of productions tends to go north of the border these days, but Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette filming in New York was important. Why?
Brad said, “There was never a question about shooting in New York. It wasn’t even something people asked financially. For the beginning, the studio, the assumption with Ryan and everybody is that we needed to be in New York because we were going to be outside so much. Yes, it’s a cliché to say that New York is a character, but it is. John very deliberately lived amongst everybody. His mother lived in a doorman building, and you could see her maybe sometimes walking around Central Park.”
He then continued, “It was like seeing a superhero walking around the city. He was very accessible. He was on the streets of Tribeca. He was having lunch at Bubby’s. He was at a public– not a public gym, but he was at a gym with a bunch of other guys working out. He was biking everywhere. The sightings of John were legendary in New York. This was also a time when Downtown, they didn’t have those fancy doorman buildings they do now. If you wanted to live Downtown, you had to live amongst everybody else.”
But was filming in New York easy? During filming it was hard to walk down streets and not see something that had to do with the production. At least it felt that way.
“It was actually a little difficult because New York has changed so much with the bike lanes and all this insane construction that’s happened everywhere, which I know is good because we need more housing. You walk through the neighborhoods, and the skylines are different. It’s not just that the World Trade Center is gone. It’s that there are all these glass towers everywhere, and the signage looks different. We really wanted to create that New York of the ’90s, which had elements of the ’70s and the ’80s still in it, but also take you to these places like Bubby’s, Indochine, and Odeon, which still exist and which are as hard to get into as ever.”
CASTING PAUL AND SARAH
Casting is is always something interesting to us, because it can make or break any production. In this case, I don’t think I have seen better casting than for this limited series. There has been so much talk about who was cast and why.
Jacobsen said, “Sarah came in, and with Sarah, we had the experience that you sometimes have of the person just coming in, stealing the part. No debate, comes in with an audition, and you realize very early on, it’s game over already. Her reps did her a solid too by sending us a Photoshop of her blonde because that is such a big difference in her. That really did help us to see how much she could embody the character. Even if they hadn’t, on her audition alone, she just was so very clearly the Carolyn we were looking for.”
There was a lot of online conversation about the casting of Paul Anthony Kelly and how hard it was to cast JFK Jr. Some reported that it came down to the alst minute and filming almost didn’t take place. She continued, “We thought that she was going to be impossible to find and that he would be the one that would jump out at you, but then for him, one of the biggest obstacles was that the type of handsome he is, this very manly handsome with hairy chest, fit but not cut, that kind of handsome, the George Clooney, Richard Gere, Tom Selleck, that kind of handsome is actually not the in kind of handsome these days. It’s virtually impossible to find an actor who has hair on his chest at this point.”
Nina continued, “Then you have to feel that that person feels like, yes, you would stop in your tracks if you notice that guy walking past you, but you also have to feel like he could belong at a table and hold his own at a table of dignitaries and politicians and belong in the world that Jackie raised him to be able to inhabit. Finding all of those qualities in one person turned out to be incredibly difficult. Ryan challenged us to go back into the pile, and he pulled Paul deep from the pile. We were like, ‘Yes, let’s have another look.'”
“We brought him back. He gave a great reading. I had a couple of guys read with Sarah. He had to go out that day and buy a suit because he hadn’t brought one for the audition. We thought that he and Sarah went to Zara together, and we were all high-fiving, but I think it turned out that they didn’t actually go there together. We were imagining that that’s what happened because they had read together, but then they were going to read for a proper old-fashioned camera test together, with him and the suit.” she said. The having to buy a suit made me laugh, but mostly because having to find anything in Zara is not an easy feet.
She continued, “He came back, and their chemistry was undeniable. He also is taller than her, which actually also turned out to be a very hard thing to find because she is a tall girl who towers over a lot of actors. They had incredible chemistry. It was very clear once we put them together that it was them and that they were our pair. They just felt so natural together. Ryan had her go and tell him that he got the part, which was really exciting.”
NOAH FEARNLEY
If you’re a fan of verticals or even if you’ve got TikTok and been served the ads for verticals, you know the name Noah Fearnley. He’s everywhere and seeing him in this was exciting for fans. We asked about his casting and told them how much we loved him for the role.
Brad said, “He didn’t know that he had all those verticals. We just cast him off of an audition, so it was a surprise to us that he had this huge-online fanbase that was already existing from all these verticals.”
I could give a list of verticals that they should watch, because Fearnley is great in a lot of them. But it turns out that we didn’t need to. Brad said, “I’ve watched a ton of them now, but at the time, it was just off an audition, and then we discovered that he had this massive fanbase from the verticals.”
THE BIG FIGHT
The famous fight that took place back in the day – where John and Carolyn did not know that they were filmed fighting. No one really knows what it was about, but watching the original video, people knew it was chaotic. Having to get this right, well that was a lot.
We had to ask about the importance of getting this fight right. Brad said, “It was critical. Kim Rosenstock, our writer in the writer’s room, sat there and analyzed that video. We knew where they were in their relationship. We knew that he had proposed and she had not accepted the proposal. There was tension over the ring. We knew that there was tension over the trips that they’d have with the family. We knew that she was really ambivalent about becoming Mrs. JFK Jr. We knew passions were running high and tensions were running high.”
And continued, “What Kim was able to do is bring all that knowledge and look at it frame by frame and script a fight. When they’re pulling the ring off, what does it mean? What has he said that made her so angry that she’s going to tackle him? What’s made them seem so depressed on the bench? What’s happened when they’re making up when they’re back by their house?” This fight took place over multiple periods of time as they walked around the city, not knowing they were being videotaped.”
But when it came to filming, I knew by watching it had been something that they worked so hard on, “Then, on the actual shoot, Crystal Robinson, the director, sat there studying it. We had somebody on set with it, so we were getting the hair exactly right, the motions exactly right, and they had to act as if it was a spontaneous choice, but also match the way you would a dancer doing a dance piece with the video. It got so tense that we actually had to pull the dog out of some of the shots because we were freaking out the dog so much, it felt so real. We shot it in order, and we ended up in that scene with them.”
And then the emotional part of the fight – not that all the fight wasn’t emotional – that made us cry. Her accepting the proposal.
He said, “The crew was also in tears as they made up and as she finally accepted his proposal. We wanted it to feel authentic, and we wanted to be able to say to ourselves, ‘We think this is a real version of what they were fighting about and what they were coming to.'”
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette airs Thursdays on FX.
