Why Are People Still So Obsessed With Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy?

American Love Story, the latest addition to Ryan Murphy’s TV empire of soapy prestige, is set to tackle one of the most well-documented couplings of the 1990s. The marriage of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette enthralled the public and the tabloids for many years, inspiring wall-to-wall coverage well before the pair died tragically in a plane crash. More than 25 years later, the narrative of their romance has been mythologized, subverted, and appropriated multiple times over. Now, Murphy’s series looks set to add another layer, and the responses to the first costume tests of Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon in-character remind us that the legend remains hugely popular.

The first images of the new JFK Jr. and Bessette inspired much derision, largely because Carolyn’s clothes looked off. One of the most famous fashion icons of her time would not be dressed so cheaply, many argued. Even her former friend and hairdresser lambasted the colour of Pidgeon’s hair, noting how it simply didn’t match the oft-copied ice blonde of Bessette. Biopics often suffer from this instinctive need for viewers to nitpick the details, to note how the jacket isn’t right or the voice isn’t identical, because it’s the easiest way for us to tell if the production has done its job well. But the near-zealous devotion to recreating Bessette’s clothes isn’t just biopic-itis at work: it’s an attempt to strengthen the curious cultural legacy she possesses.

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Bessette was obsessed over in a way that few celebrities are. She found herself at the centre of a very modern fairy tale, one crafted in the bowels of American politics, 24-hour cable news, and It Girl mysteriousness. The press had crowned John F. Kennedy Jr. the nation’s king-in-waiting from the moment he, as a mere toddler, saluted his father’s casket. That he blossomed into a handsome charmer with that head of hair and an undeniable resemblance to his dad only furthered the frenzy. PEOPLE named him the sexiest man alive, the first time the honour had been bestowed upon a non-actor. He was a celebrity against his will, a wannabe actor forced into public service by his mother and the demands of the Kennedy lineage. He failed the New York bar exam twice, to the smug excitement of the tabloids, and he dated a bevy of beautiful actresses who were repeatedly derided as unworthy of the Kennedy crown. As he tried to find his identity under the harsh gaze of an expectant media, along came Carolyn.

She was seen as a breath of fresh air, the career woman who worked for Calvin Klein and had her own life outside of the cloistered elites who populated Kennedy’s world. She wasn’t an open book or known entity. Nobody even knew what she sounded like. What they did know was that she was gorgeous and she dressed very well. Her minimalist style — crisp white shirts, bootcut jeans, oval sunglasses, camel coats — was both very ’90s yet timeless. Find any photo of her from that era and the chances are she’s wearing something that would look very chic and expensive in 2025. Even her thin eyebrows are back in style. Her approachable yet clearly monied style endeared her to many and inspired a slew of copycats, as did her now-iconic Narciso Rodriguez wedding dress.

Really, and rather tragically, it’s Bessette-Kennedy’s style that has largely defined her legacy, more so than her words. Being in the public eye was, by all accounts, difficult for her. The paparazzi followed her every day from her home to wherever she was expected to be. Every detail of her life and marriage was speculated about, a matter exacerbated by the infamous public fights the pair had. While JFK Jr. started his own magazine, the fascinating but doomed George, Carolyn floundered. She was expected to be the next Jackie, the Kennedy Queen for the ’90s. The plane crash ended a lot of dreams surrounding that family.

Even now, Carolyn exists in this weird cultural space where she’s more a vessel for ideas and agendas than a person in her own right. A certain strain of QAnon nutters are committed to the conspiracy that both she and JFK Jr. are secretly alive and waiting to reemerge as a grand act of solidarity for Trump. Many books have been written about them that claim to tell the ‘true story,’ including assertions that she was addicted to drugs and engaged in extra-marital affairs. A recent biography promised a more sympathetic narrative, but its eagerness to course-correct a crooked history only sought to make Carolyn seem even less human. Was her marriage a glistening love story, the second generation of Camelot, or a disaster in the making, the latest victim of the Kennedys’ disdain for women? Both make for great books and TV specials, if nothing else.

This is partly what worries me about Ryan Murphy tackling the story. This is the sort of champagne fizzy low-stakes drama he thrives on — rich people problems with a hell of a lot of style. The second season of Feud, focused on Truman Capote and his so-called Swans, was one of my favourite Murphy-verse shows because it avoided heftier social issues in favour of a sly society satire (it also had minimal involvement from Murphy himself, which may further explain my feelings.) Shows like American Crime Story work best with the rigidity of history forcing Murphy not to rely on his worst habits. The JFK Jr./Carolyn Bessette story certainly has the potential for something both fun and deep: a tale of money and passion beset by crushing fame and the social hierarchy. It’s also ripe for salacious leering and forced camp, an issue with many a Murphy project. Frankly, I have questions over his, to put it kindly, inconsistent depictions of women, fictional or otherwise.

As with many celebrities who die tragically young, the fandom of Bessette-Kennedy is built more on possibility than history. It’s a perennial game of ‘What If?’, forever fascinated by the potential that never unfolded and our untainted preferences for their imagined lives. Such things are more palatable than the messy mundanities of real life, or the weary familiarity of yet another woman besieged by misogyny. That’s less fun to talk about than the pencil skirts.