It’s one of 2026’s biggest shows so far, but does Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette get it right? There’s always dangers when making shows about real life people and real life events, particularly when you’re trying to write scripts about moments that happened entirely behind closed doors. So, does Love Story accurately portray the lives of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette? Here’s what those who knew them best have to say…
It has been one of the most controversial TV series ever brought to screens, in part because it depicts real people who died in tragic circumstances.
The eight-part series, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, concluded this week with a final episode dramatising their final days, their death in a plane crash and its aftermath.
And while plenty of people have spoken out, including JFK Jr’s nephew, Jack Schlossberg, who recently labelled the show “grotesque”, few of the couple’s inner circle have shared their thoughts until now.
Love Story is a dramatisation by writer and director Ryan Murphy which traced the relationship of John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette from their first meeting until their untimely death, along with her sister Lauren, in a plane crash on July 16, 1999.
While characters were based on real people, and some events closely resembled real life, the series was of course largely fiction.
Even the disclaimer at the start of each episode admitted as much, saying the series was “inspired by actual events but includes fictional elements” and “certain depictions of people and events have been dramatised or fictionalized for storytelling purposes”.
Now friends of the couple have spoken out about the show, and their reactions are mixed.
People reported that while some had not been able to bring themselves to watch the series, others had, with mixed results.
One friend told People that seeing their own children’s generation “not only discover them but become so mesmerised by them and what they represented” was surreal.
However, another ‘confidant’ of the couple was upset by the way they were depicted.
“They are not here to defend themselves,” they said.
RoseMarie Terenzio was JFK Jr’s executive assistant at the time of his death and close to the couple.
She wrote Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss, and co-authored another book on the couple JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography.
She only watched snippets of the series and said that while it mostly “makes me miss them”, she found it inaccurate.
“From what I’ve seen, I don’t recognise them, even if it’s fiction,” she said.
She singled out the depiction of Michael Berman, who co-founded the magazine George with JFK Jr and was “my boss for two years”.
“That’s not him at all. John and Michael were equal partners in George. And by the way, Michael was just as tall as John,” she said.
George creative director, Matt Berman, who is no relation of Michael, authored JFK Jr, George, & Me. He said the actors who played the couple didn’t capture the “millions of quirky nuances and subtleties of the two people I knew”.
“They took broad strokes from books but I think it’s missing the things that make a person ‘real’,” he said.
Another unnamed friend said the show captured the “certain freedom” they had in the 90s, without mobile phones.
However, he said having only seen the show’s trailer, he was “p—-ed off about the way certain people were portrayed”.
Others, such as Carolyn’s friend, Guy Clark, said the depiction of her refusing to leave their home was untrue.
“[It] was horrible, because it was totally untrue. She didn’t hide for a year. I was running around with her. We were at her apartment, we went out to lunch and went to George together,” he said, adding she was “kind, generous of spirit, soulful, a great friend”.
“I don’t think they ever talked to anybody that knew them.”
He also admitted he “cried and shook uncontrollably” after watching the final episode “because I kind of had to live through the trauma again”.
“I tried so hard to protect her when she was alive and protect her after they died.”
He believed that had they lived, their marital difficulties “would’ve been just a blip, a moment in time that everyone would’ve forgotten, just like any other fight or quarrel in someone’s marriage”.
“Think of what they could have achieved. I know that Carolyn would’ve been the backbone behind him, whatever he did.”
Another close friend told People that the decision to reenact their final moments in the ill-fated plane before it crashed was “reckless, tasteless and cruel to both families”.
This article was reproduced with permission from 9Honey. To read the original article, click here.
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