The first time I met Paul Anthony Kelly, it was at a Hulu Mix & Mingle event in Hollywood. Tall, dark-haired and still adjusting to his newfound attention, the 37-year-old star of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette told me it was the first event of its kind he had ever attended.
He was relaxed and unassuming as we talked about what was, remarkably, his first major acting role. “I was a model and went to many auditions throughout the years until I got this role,” he said.
The journey sounded simple when he put it that way. It was anything but.
Kelly had spent years modeling while trying to break into acting. By the time the opportunity to portray John F. Kennedy Jr. came along, he was beginning to wonder whether an acting career would ever happen.
Just one week before landing the role, he said, he told his wife he was prepared to give up and return to Canada. Then came the email that changed everything.
Kelly was invited to audition for Love Story and submitted tapes of two scenes. Months later, he was called back and eventually met Sarah Pidgeon, 30, who had already been cast as Carolyn Bessette. The two performed a chemistry read and later a screen test.
The next day, Kelly learned he had the role. He had been chosen from close to 1,000 actors considered to play JFK Jr., turning Love Story into his breakthrough.
Even after the series premiered, Kelly appeared stunned by the speed of his transformation. “I still can’t believe it’s me,” he told British Vogue.
When I met him again several months later, the circumstances were very different. It was August, on the rooftop of the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, and this time we were seated at a dinner celebrating a series that had become one of television’s most talked-about productions.
The show had received seven Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Casting and an Outstanding Lead Actress nomination for Pidgeon.
Sitting beside me, Pidgeon said she knew almost immediately that Kelly was right for the part. “Just look at him, he looks like John F. Kennedy Jr.,” she said. “It was so clear to me that he was perfect for the role.”
Sarah Pidgeon. “When I got the role, the weight of that responsibility was always in the back of my mind”
(Photo: Kate Jones)
After their screen test, Pidgeon went to producer Ryan Murphy and told him they had found their “Prince of Camelot.” Murphy then gave her an unusual assignment: She would be the one to tell Kelly he had gotten the role.
She was delighted.
For Pidgeon, being cast as Carolyn was equally surreal. “I was very calm when I got the phone call, but it hit me like a deer caught in headlights,” she said.
She was already familiar with Bessette and her public image, but playing a real woman whose appearance, marriage and private life had been subjected to extraordinary scrutiny carried a different kind of weight.
“When I got the role, the weight of that responsibility was always in the back of my mind,” Pidgeon said.
Suddenly, they were the ones being watched
The series has transformed both actors’ lives. Kelly went from a little-known actor considering abandoning the profession to the face of a high-profile TV series. Pidgeon, too, has entered a new level of public recognition, culminating in her Emmy nomination.
Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon
(Photo: Kate Jones)
There is an irony neither actor has missed. They portray a couple who were relentlessly pursued by photographers and whose marriage unfolded beneath constant public scrutiny. Now Kelly and Pidgeon are themselves being recognized in public and followed by cameras.
While filming in New York, paparazzi sometimes tracked the actors, and Pidgeon said the experience made her increasingly aware of what it means to be watched. “It definitely felt like there was an extra character in the scene whenever we were shooting outside,” she said.
They were portraying two people whose private lives had effectively become public property while, in a much smaller way, experiencing their own sudden exposure to public fascination.
Does the attention bother you, or do you enjoy being recognized?
“I do enjoy it.”
People now approach Kelly to tell him how much they enjoyed the series, though some hesitate because he looks different from his onscreen character, with a mustache and stubble. “Hi, are you the guy from that series?” they ask. Kelly smiles and tells them: “Yes, it’s me.”
For someone who spent years auditioning and wondering whether his career would ever take off, the change is remarkable.
The couple America could not stop watching
The fifth installment in Ryan Murphy’s American Story anthology franchise, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette chronicles the romance, marriage and turbulent relationship of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
The nine-episode limited series follows them from their courtship through a marriage lived under relentless media attention.
Kennedy, the son of President John F. Kennedy, was among America’s most recognizable bachelors. A lawyer, he later co-founded George magazine and served as its editor-in-chief.
Bessette, a former Calvin Klein publicist, became an enduring fashion icon known for her minimalist style.
Their relationship fascinated the public, but the same attention placed enormous pressure on their marriage.
The ending, of course, is already known. Kennedy, Bessette and her sister Lauren Bessette were killed in July 1999 when the plane Kennedy was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard.
Yet knowing the outcome does little to diminish the drama. The series turns their story into one about love, ambition, celebrity and the cost of trying to maintain a private life when the public believes it owns a piece of it.
Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon
(Kate Jones)
For Pidgeon, preparing to portray Carolyn created a particular challenge. Unlike Kennedy, who had been photographed and filmed throughout his life, Carolyn was intensely private. She lived before social media transformed celebrity lives into a nearly continuous public archive, leaving Pidgeon with comparatively limited material to study.
“When I got the role, I was very aware of the responsibility that came with it,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that my portrayal was as honest and respectful as possible, especially because there wasn’t a huge amount of material to draw from.”
Kelly faced almost the opposite problem. John F. Kennedy Jr. had been famous from childhood and left behind decades of photographs, interviews and television appearances. But Kelly said he was less interested in reproducing Kennedy’s mannerisms than in understanding the person behind the public image.
“I approached him largely through the way I had always seen him carry himself,” Kelly said. He paid particular attention to moments when Kennedy appeared able to lower his guard and reveal a more playful, kind and self-deprecating side.
At the same time, Kelly saw a man with natural confidence and presence. “He really just wanted to be a normal guy, but when you’re a Kennedy, you can never completely escape that reality,” he said.
Why John and Carolyn still fascinate
Asked why people remain so captivated by Kennedy and Bessette nearly three decades after their deaths, Kelly said the answer lies beneath the glamour.
“They lived extraordinary lives, but at the heart of it, they were two people trying to make their relationship work,” he said. “They fight, they love, they go all in. There’s so much passion between them, and I think that’s something everyone desires at their core.”
Pidgeon knew something about Bessette before accepting the role, although she was very young when the couple died. “I knew Carolyn had worked at Calvin Klein and that they were married, and of course I knew how their story ended,” she said.
“But they represented something bigger in the culture at the time. They were young, modern and seemed to challenge some of the traditional expectations surrounding the Kennedy family. There was a sense of hope and possibility attached to them.”
Kelly, who grew up in Canada, was also familiar with Kennedy, though he said John and Carolyn did not occupy quite the same cultural space there as they did in the United States.
Before the series, had anyone ever told you that you looked like John F. Kennedy Jr.?
“I was. At first, I thought people meant President Kennedy himself. Then I realized they meant his son, so I started looking more closely at John Jr. And then I thought, ‘OK, maybe I do look a little bit like him.’”
Months after production ended, Kelly said something of the man he portrayed has remained with him. Now facing his own sudden arrival in the spotlight, he sometimes finds himself drawing on what he learned from Kennedy.
“He was someone who was able to remain calm under pressure,” Kelly said. “He was a very relaxed individual, even in extremely stressful situations. I carry some of that with me. I try to approach new experiences with confidence, charisma and a sense of fun, without sweating the small stuff.”