Ryan Murphy has found his Kennedys after an intensive casting search for the first installment of his new FX anthology series, American Love Story.
Pop culture journalist Evan Ross Katz broke the news on Tuesday, May 13, that the producer had at long last cast Naomi Watts to play Jackie Kennedy, Paul Kelly to play John F. Kennedy Jr. and Sarah Pidgeon to play Carolyn Bessette.
American Love Story will focus on the whirlwind romance between JFK Jr. — son of President John F. Kennedy and Jackie — and Bessette, a fashion publicist. The couple first met in 1992 when Bessette was working for Calvin Klein and was assigned the task of giving Kennedy a private tour and fitting.
After a two year courtship, the couple married in September 1996 in a private ceremony on Cumberland Island, Ga., with a few members of the famous Kennedy family in attendance.
Three years later, on July 16, 1999, the couple died in a plane crash when JFK Jr. was flying his wife, and her sister, Lauren, from New Jersey en route to Martha’s Vineyard.
Getty; Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty
Jackie Kennedy will be portrayed by Naomi Watts in ‘American Love Story’
The upcoming series will be yet another reunion for Watts, 56, and Murphy, 59, who have previously worked together on Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans, The Watcher, and the upcoming legal drama All’s Fair.
Feud even depicted another member of the extended Kennedy family, Jackie’s younger sister, Lee Radziwill, played by Calista Flockhart.
Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty; Paul Kelly/Instagram
John F. Kennedy Jr. will be portrayed by newcomer Paul Kelly in ‘American Love Story’
The search for an actor who could embody national heartthrob JFK Jr. was reportedly a difficult one, and the casting team ultimately decided to go with a lesser-known name to play PEOPLE’s 1988 Sexiest Man Alive.
Kelly is a relative Hollywood newcomer with previous experience in theater and modeling. According to Katz, he beat out nearly a thousand actors for the role of the Kennedy heir.
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Carolyn Bessette will be portrayed by Sarah Pidgeon in ‘American Love Story’
JFK Jr.’s wife will be played by Pidgeon, a Tony nominee for her work in the Broadway musical Stereophonic. The 28-year-old previously appeared in streaming series The Wilds and Tiny Beautiful Things and stars in the upcoming reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
American Love Story is the latest of Murphy’s American Story anthology series, following American Horror Story, American Crime Story and American Sports Story.
JFK Jr.’s roller coaster romance with Bessette was documented in the 2024 biography Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller. In an exclusive excerpt shared with PEOPLE, the author wrote how a major sticking point of the couple’s early relationship was Kennedy’s reticence to introduce Bessette to his mother.
“Carolyn became increasingly irked that he wouldn’t introduce her to his mother,” the book reads. “‘I took him to meet my mom,’ Carolyn told a friend.”
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Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the book’s launch in 2024, Beller said that, at the time, JFK Jr. may have been preoccupied with launching his political magazine, George.
“I think it was hard for him to take anything other than his work too seriously at that moment,” Beller said. “If Carolyn met Jackie, I think he knew that that would sort of become a life of its own. And maybe he wasn’t quite ready for that.”
“I know that he did regret it,” Beller continued. “That’s one of the things that he said to several friends, one of his main regrets was not introducing the two of them.”
Read the original article on People
