The same is true for the part of Jackie, Bessette-Kennedy’s mother-in-law, which will be taken by none other than Naomi Watts. (Coincidentally, Watts and Pidgeon have already worked together on Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s 2024 drama The Friend.) A veteran of the Ryan Murphy televisual universe, who starred in Netflix’s The Watcher and received both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for her recent portrayal of Babe Paley in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Watts is a natural fit to play Paley’s fellow socialite and New York stalwart. She joins a long list of famous faces who have taken on different eras of the former first lady’s life, from Katie Holmes in the 2011 miniseries The Kennedys to Natalie Portman in 2016’s Jackie.
And what about John F. Kennedy Jr.?
The show’s central trio was completed with newcomer Paul Kelly, who plays John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of JFK and Jackie and the husband of Carolyn. Murphy and his casting team reportedly auditioned more than 1,000 actors before selecting Kelly.
Photo: FX
Who else will be in the cast of Love Story?
Deadline broke more casting news on June 6, 2025, revealing that Grace Gummer would play JFK Jr.’s older sister, Caroline Kennedy; Sydney Lemmon, known for her roles on television (in Helstrom and Fear the Walking Dead) and on Broadway (in Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job), would play Carolyn’s sister, Lauren Bessette; and Alessandro Nivola would play Carolyn’s longtime employer, Calvin Klein.
What, exactly, will be the plot of Love Story?
Carolyn Bessette, born in upstate New York and raised in Connecticut, was a fashion publicist who worked at Calvin Klein, and met John F. Kennedy Jr., then an attorney and prominent publisher, in 1992, when he was still dating Splash star Daryl Hannah. He and Bessette got together two years later, were engaged by 1995, and for their secret 1996 wedding, she chose a minimalist white slip dress by Narciso Rodriguez, her friend and colleague at Calvin Klein, making the designer a household name overnight.
Once Carolyn and John were married, the media maelstrom around them intensified, with the paparazzi trailing them at every turn. Within a few years, rumors began to take hold that their union was rocky and a divorce could be on the horizon. Then, in 1999, John, Carolyn, and her older sister, Lauren, died following a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard after John, who was piloting the aircraft, lost control of it. Carolyn and John were only 33 and 38, respectively.
Per Deadline, the John and Carolyn-focused first season of Love Story—loosely based on the 2024 book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller—will see “what started out as a beautiful union for the young couple, widely regarded as American royalty, [begin] to fray under the stress of the relentless microscope and navel gaze of tabloid media. The pressures of their careers and rumored family discord ended with their tragic deaths when his private plane crashed into the ocean on a hazy summer night off the coast of Massachusetts.”