Daryl Hannah is known for her extensive film career—Splash, Roxanne, Steel Magnolias, among many others—but she’s about to be thrown back into the spotlight for another reason: her love life with John F. Kennedy, Jr. in the early ‘90s. Back then, the Hollywood starlet and the son of President John F. Kennedy were fodder for People magazine, Page Six, and the paparazzi who tracked their every move around New York City.
Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series, Love Story: John F. Kennedy, Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, may center on the romance between JFK, Jr. and his eventual wife, but the story can’t be told without also including Daryl Hannah. In part because she, as many have written, somewhat overlapped with the introduction of Bessette.
Hannah, now 65, has never spoken at length about her romance with JFK, Jr. Though she did tell Entertainment Weekly in 1993 that she, understandably, found it annoying to get asked about the relationship all the time. “This morning I call up my plumber, and even he asks me,” she said at the time. “Why can’t people talk about something else?” So, perhaps knowing she’d want to remain private, the Love Story producers did not reach out to her for this series.
However, now that the first three episodes of Love Story are streaming, Dree Hemingway—who plays Hannah in the anthology—is hoping she’ll be ready to talk, even if it’s in private.
“We’ve got to meet,” Hemingway tells me. “I just love her. I love her. I love her. I love her. One day. One day our paths will cross.”
Hemingway, who comes from her own famous dynasty (her mother is Oscar-nominated actor Mariel Hemingway; her great grandfather is Nobel Prize-winning author, Ernest Hemingway), says she gained a newfound respect for Hannah after studying her past interviews and learning more about the star.
“She’s very smart, she has a lot of love,” Hemingway says. “And she’s so cool. She’s made me rethink a lot of things.” (More on that soon.)
But for Hemingway, playing Hannah was also about proving to herself that she could take on such a meaty role. Although the actor studied classical theater at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and earned critical praise for her role in director Sean Baker’s 2012 Independent Spirit award-winning film Starlet, she’s been mostly known for her modeling career with Gucci, MiuMiu, Valentino, Tiffany & Co, Chloe, Ferragamo, and other luxury brands.