By Anne T. Donahue
As I was scrolling through various celebrity news sites instead of doing any of the reading or work I should be doing, I noticed a shocking headline: “American Love Story to Follow John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s Tragic Romance.” The man behind it? Ryan Murphy.
Said executive producers Nina Jacobson, “We have great scripts on that. We’re trying to figure out when it will land.” She continued: “It’s a story that really resonates right now. It’s amazing. A lot of younger women are looking to her as a sort of representational icon of a certain period of time that’s really fascinating, and hopefully, we’ll be able to bring that to screen soon.”
To start, she isn’t wrong: Carolyn Bessette lore has been ramping up via TikTok and social media, particularly in terms of her style (it’s timeless!), her persona (the woman was seen, not heard), and the tragedy of her untimely death. Culture loves the allure of a woman – and her husband – who was taken far too soon.
But on the flip side, there’s a jump between admiring a woman’s style and feeding the mythos that’s come to define her as a person. Little is known about Bessette, and I don’t mean that in the “not a lot has been written about her” sense of the word. The woman, despite her fame, didn’t speak to the media. In fact, her voice is so absent from her own narrative that it was news when a few snippets of conversation were released via YouTube earlier this year. We know the basics of her biography, but we were never privy to her own examination of it. Carolyn Bessette is canvas onto which we’ve come to project the person we imagine her to be, and she can’t add colour to any of it.
And that happens! I get it! Bessette and JFK Jr. launched their relationship just before the internet made privacy impossible. Their story seemed glamorous and storied and dramatic! (Lest we forget about “the fight” footage that’s spurred even more lore.) Bessette embodied the possibility of who you could be in New York: a Calvin Klein professional! A style icon! A person so intriguing they become Camelot-adjacent!
But at the same time, the reality of Bessette and JFK Jr. is more than whatever American Love Story can give us. To start, I personally think Ryan Murphy needs to take a step back and let somebody else interpret various avenues of popular culture. (I also think American Horror Story is straight-up terrible now, and I don’t know why we, as a people, are allowing it to soldier on.) Yet most importantly, I think our tendency to sensationalize and dramatize the lived experiences of famous people who’ve died needs a rest, especially since contemporary history is still largely marinating. We all saw what happened in the last few seasons of The Crown. We do not need more ghosts confronting the living to bring closure that will never actually come.
Not to mention: what is there to dramatize that’s any of our business? True crime in itself has ballooned into a cottage industry (and lord knows we need no more of it), but does untimely death deserve exploitation in the same vein? The tragedy of Carolyn and John Jr. is that as very young people with so much more left to do, they died. This, obviously, was tethered to Kennedy’s own familial legacy of heartbreak, but their deaths also reflected the way nobody is immune to The End; that despite being beautiful and famous and adored and brilliant and, and, and, your story can simply cease.
I don’t think I want – or need – a Murphy-made interpretation of two strangers’ lives, especially since once’s voice remained mute in the public until January of this year. I don’t need stunt casting to populate a narrative that should be excavated by historians or biographers or (most importantly) the couple’s family and friends. And I certainly don’t need any more American Whatever Story for about 16 years. America has an abundance of stories to be told. Let’s choose them – and who tells them – wisely.
Need a little more Anne? Read more from Anne T. Donahue right here! To read the history of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s famous Narciso Rodriguez wedding gown click right here.
