Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly spent months playing two of the most photographed people in the world. Now the cameras are on them.
In FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, from creator Connor Hines, Pidgeon plays Carolyn Bessette and Kelly plays John F. Kennedy Jr., charting the couple’s romance and marriage. Pidgeon and Kelly spoke with BLKCinema.com exclusively in an awards season/FYC interview about capturing Carolyn’s growth, the scenes and songs that shaped the series and handling their own sudden spotlight.
Sarah Pidgeon on charting Carolyn’s growth
Pidgeon said the challenge was fitting years of the couple’s history into a single season.
“What was so interesting and satisfying as an actor in the series was to play with so much time. It was about six and a half, seven years that we fit into nine episodes, so there’s so many highs and so many lows of their history that we packed in,” Pidgeon said. “It was really exciting and challenging to form this character based off a woman that was quite mysterious and enigmatic, and chart that growth with the understanding of all these different places that she was going to go.”
She said she related to Carolyn’s place in life.
“When she’s turning 29, she gets engaged and married to John, and I just turned 30, and there’s still so much development that I certainly feel like I need,” she continued. “Carolyn has these huge life moments of falling in love, getting married, becoming incredibly well known, photographed morning, noon and night. There were so many different elements to play with that were so interesting as someone to learn about her, and then very satisfying, challenging and thrilling to play as an actor.”
Pidgeon also looked back on her breakout role in Prime Video’s The Wilds, and said she’d welcome a reunion.
“It was my first big job, and I think it really shaped my experience of this industry. I worked with so many amazing women in front of the camera and behind the camera. We were all on these islands without any cell service, and we just formed these incredible bonds,” Pidgeon said. “It was so different from Love Story. I was caked in mud and blood in the same pair of jeans and sweater, and now I’m wearing Prada.”
Paul Anthony Kelly on building John’s emotional moments
Asked about how episodes like “I Love You” and “Battery Park” let the camera linger on the couple, Kelly credited the scripts and directors.
“I got to work with incredible directors, and it was a very collaborative effort. Luckily, the scripts were just fantastic. It was mostly Connor Hines, phenomenal words, and it was all really on the page,” Kelly said. “But then in rehearsals, we would do things and be like, oh, that’s interesting, and then they would hang on that. The processing of what was happening in the moment really became an electrifying part of it all.”
He said the soundtrack took the series to another level, singling out the song that introduces John in the premiere.
“The music supervisor did such a bang-up job. My favorite song from the whole series is actually when we’re introduced to John in the first episode, and it’s a song by Talk Talk. I love Talk Talk already, so when that was chosen for it, it really resonated with me,” Kelly said. “When we all watched the series for the first time, and all the music was in there, it just brought a whole other level to it. It’s nostalgic and memorable.”
Paul Anthony Kelly on life in the spotlight
Kelly said the attention the series has brought them mirrors the story they told.
“I hate this term, but it is kind of a really meta experience, where we’re playing these two individuals that are in the public eye, and now we’re in the public eye. It’s odd, the parallels between the two,” Kelly said. “But going through this with Sarah, I couldn’t have a better partner in any of it. She’s so wonderful, and I hope that she says the same about me.”
“I think we learned a lot from John and Carolyn about how to handle ourselves within this,” he added.
Featured image photo credit: FX
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