Recommendations of the Editorial team
Since Ryan Murphy’s Love Story dramatized Daryl Hannah’s relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr., the actress says she has received hostile and threatening messages from viewers who don’t know how to distinguish the show’s fiction from Hannah’s real life. Hannah dated Kennedy for about five years starting in the late 1980s before he married Carolyn Bessette. In order to correct many of the series’ untruths, she wrote a guest article for the New York Times, which appeared on Friday.
“The character ‘Daryl Hannah’ portrayed on the show is not even close to an accurate representation of my life, my behavior, or my relationship with John,” she wrote. “The actions and behavior attributed to me are untrue. I have never used cocaine or thrown cocaine-fueled parties in my life. I have never pressured anyone to marry me. And I have never desecrated a family heirloom or attended a private memorial service uninvited. I have never leaked a story to the press. I have never compared the death of Jacqueline Onassis to that of a dog. It is anathema to me that I would even defend myself against a television series must.”
In the essay, Hannah referenced an interview with executive producer Nina Jacobson that appeared on Gold Derby, in which Jacobson described Hannah as a dramatic device. “Since we’re rooting for John and Carolyn so much, Darrell is taking it [sic] Hannah has a role in which she becomes a narrative antagonist that you don’t want as the story progresses,” said the producer.
Against misogyny and fiction
“A real, living person is not a narrative device,” Hannah wrote in her Times op-ed. “There’s a gendered dimension to this way of thinking, too. Pop culture has long elevated certain women by portraying others as rivals, obstacles, or villains. Isn’t tearing down one woman to build up another a textbook example of misogyny?”
Elsewhere in the essay, Hannah explained that she used to ignore sensational and untrue articles about herself because she assumed they would go away. Since the Internet now permanently preserves untruths, she now felt compelled to speak out. She always respected the Kennedy family’s protected privacy, but felt obliged to speak for herself.
“Many people believe what they see on television and do not distinguish between dramatization and proven facts – and the implications are not abstract,” Hannah wrote. “In the digital age, entertainment often becomes a part of collective memory. Real names are not fictional tools. They belong to real lives.”
Criticism from the Kennedy family
The miniseries “Love Story” premiered on FX on February 12 and stars Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr. and Dree Hemingway as Hannah. The producers did not consult Hannah or the Kennedy family about her on-screen portrayal. “As a writer, it’s healthier and more effective to have some distance from the subject,” showrunner Connor Hines told Variety.
Jack Schlossberg Jr., JFK Jr.’s nephew who is running for a congressional seat, also criticized the series in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning. “If you want to meet someone who has never met anyone in my family and doesn’t know anything about us, talk to Ryan Murphy,” he said, according to Vanity Fair. “I just wish that people who watch the show view it with one letter in their head – a capital F for fiction. The man has no idea what he’s talking about and he’s making a fortune off the grotesque display of someone else’s life.”
