Why the TV industry keeps falling in love with Kennedys

Katie Rosseinsky, The Independent

He was “America’s Prince”. She was the States’ answer to Diana, a strikingly beautiful style icon in the making who would complete the fairytale, until that fantasy metamorphosised into tragedy. Together, they were photogenic, aspirational, achingly cool — and doomed to heartbreakingly untimely deaths. It is a surprise that prestige TV has taken this long to tackle the devastating story of John F Kennedy Jr and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, with all its elements of glamour and real-life misfortune.

That task has fallen to Ryan Murphy, the prolific showrunner who has previously taken on tales from America’s collective consciousness such as the OJ Simpson trial and Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, now airing on Disney+, charts the romance and eventual marriage between JFK’s handsome son (who, in 1988, was crowned People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”) and the fashion PR executive who defined a generation’s style.

It also reckons with how they navigated the sense of expectation that came with JFK Jr’s status as the heir apparent to his late father’s political legacy, and tackles the 1999 plane crash that killed the couple along with Bessette’s sister Lauren. That horrifying accident only seemed to compound the sense of a so-called “Kennedy curse” that has long shadowed this political dynasty.

Public service, private tragedy, photogenic leads, and an overwhelming sense of thwarted potential and might-have-beens: each chapter of the Kennedy story somehow feels made for television, that most American of mediums. Indeed, late last year, Netflix announced a project of its own based on this famous family’s story, conceived as an American answer to The Crown, with different seasons covering different generations.

Michael Fassbender will star as patriarch Joseph Kennedy Sr, the self-made millionaire, Hollywood filmmaking, stock investing and, eventually, politics and diplomacy, becoming the US ambassador to the United Kingdom during the early stages of World War II. The first season will also focus on the early lives of Joe and his wife Rose’s nine children, including “rebellious second son” John, who would go on to live out his father’s ambitions most comprehensively by ending up in the White House in 1961.

Sam Shaw, the show’s executive producer, seemed to sum up the family’s ongoing allure (and its suitability for the television treatment) when he said that “the story of the Kennedys is the closest we have to American mythology — somewhere between Shakespeare and (US soap opera) The Bold and the Beautiful”. You could also throw in a few comparisons to Greek tragedy. Joseph Kennedy Sr inculcated his children with a sense of public duty, and the feeling that they were destined for some form of greatness (whether you believe this was motivated by sheer altruism or a hunger for personal power will probably depend on your level of cynicism).

His sons John and Robert, the US attorney general, seemed to offer a more charismatic and optimistic brand of politics. The Kennedys were arguably the first political family to use television to tell their story and sell their dream; when tragedy struck, television would document their grief. It is perhaps worth noting that when Dwight D Eisenhower was elected president in 1952, only 20 per cent of Americans had TVs in their homes; by the time JFK was elected eight years later, that had risen to 80 per cent.

All of them would have to become skilled media operators; the brothers in particular were experts at crafting political narratives, and leveraging the charm of their photogenic young families as symbols of a middle-class American dream. The reality was far more complicated; John was particularly notorious for his affairs — including a rumoured romance with Marilyn Monroe. This propensity would rattle his seemingly picture-perfect marriage to Jacqueline (another Kennedy style icon, in her pastel suits and pillbox hats).

But both brothers were cut off in their prime by assassination, their deaths prompting national heartbreak with their young families as the avatars of that sadness. The fact that this was all playing out in the nation’s homes on television screens only heightened the emotion. Dazzling highs, harrowing lows, and behind-the-scenes turmoil: in an era when pop culture seems obsessed with deconstructing glossy images of wealth and privilege, and showing us the messy emotions that still underpin them, it’s hardly surprising that we are experiencing something of a televisual Kennedy resurgence.

The family’s good looks and their all-American style have also helped lend them longevity in our collective imagination; there’s a timelessness to their aesthetic, particularly their “off duty” image while holidaying in the family compound in Hyannis Port, Cape Cod. Love Story is the sort of series that makes you want to overhaul your wardrobe immediately. Bessette worked in PR for Calvin Klein and became something of an in-house muse for the designer; her pared-back approach to personal style embodied Klein’s minimalist aesthetic.

While playing her on screen, actor Sarah Pidgeon wears an enviable array of simple slip dresses, bias-cut silk skirts and bootcut Levi’s, accessorised with tiny sunglasses and that sheet of buttery blonde hair; it’s the epitome of the “quiet luxury” trend that has dominated the fashion landscape over the last few years.