Naomi Watts cast as Jackie Kennedy in JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette series from Ryan Murphy
For most of the world, they’ll never forget the image of John F. Kennedy Jr as a three-year-old, standing behind his father’s coffin and saluting the slain president.
Over the next 35 years, all eyes were on the Kennedy scion as he came of age via years spent on Aristotle Onassis’s private island, elite schools such as Phillips and Brown, a summer wrangling on a ranch in Wyoming and meeting Mother Theresa during a trip to India.
The world never forgot John F. Kennedy Jr but by the end of the 1980s, he was well and truly back in the public eye. People magazine declared him 1988’s sexiest man alive, thanks to those patrician good looks inherited from both of his parents.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.He served as a prosecutor in New York City and in 1995, launched a magazine called George, a glossy monthly that blended politics, fashion and lifestyle.
The eligible bachelor was linked to a string of famous paramours, including Brooke Shields, Sarah Jessica Parker and Daryl Hannah.
But it was his romance with Carolyn Bessette, a publicist for Calvin Klein, who would set the paparazzi off in a frenzy. A classical beauty known for her poise and grace, Bessette started dating Kennedy in 1994 and the two married in 1996 with many prominent Kennedy members in the wedding party, including Caroline Kennedy and her kids.
The relationship was marked by intensive media intrusion as the public voraciously consumed every tabloid titbit about the A-list couple, looking to them to continue the legacy of the Kennedy dynasty and the Camelot myth that surrounded JFK’s shortened presidency.
When Kennedy and Bessette, and Bessette’s sister Lauren, died in a plane crash in 1999, it was another tragedy in a family that seemed cursed.
The Kennedy-Bessette romance will the subject of a new anthology series from Ryan Murphy’s production banner, which will track the doomed couple’s relationship.
It will be released under the title of American Love Story, adding to the Murphy slate of American Horror Story, American Crime Story, which has housed the O.J. Simpson and Gianni Versace miniseries, and American Sport Story, with told the Aaron Hernandez drama.
According to social media personality Evan Ross Katz, Naomi Watts has been cast as Jackie Kennedy in the series. Kennedy died in 1994 at the start of her son’s courtship with Bessette, so she may not be in the show for long.
Watts has an existing relationship with Murphy after starring as Babe Paley in Feud: Capote vs the Swans. For her performance, she was nominated for an Emmy.
The young lovers will be played by Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon. Kelly is a newcomer who seems to have worked primarily in theatre, while Pidgeon has been in the TV shows Tiny Beautiful Things and The Wild as well as the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel and Watts movie The Friend.
