Jack Schlossberg, the nephew of the late John F. Kennedy Jr., has slammed Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series, American Love Story, which will chronicle the relationship and untimely deaths of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
Expected to release Valentine’s Day week of 2026, the first season will star Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon as JFK Jr. and Bessette, who both died in 1999 after the plane Kennedy was piloting crashed into the ocean near Martha’s Vineyard.
It will also star Naomi Watts as Jackie Kennedy; Alessandro Nivola as Bessette’s longtime employer, Calvin Klein; Grace Gummer as Schlossberg’s mother, Caroline Kennedy; and Sydney Lemmon as Bessette’s sister, Lauren, who was also onboard the plane and died.
In an Instagram video posted Thursday, Schlossberg spoke out against the forthcoming series.
“Lately, my news feed has been filled with pictures of my uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., a great man,” the political journalist said. “For those wondering whether his family was ever consulted, or has anything to do with the new show being made about him, the answer is no, and there’s really not much we can do.”
He explained: “The right to privacy, which includes the ability to control your own name, image, and likeness, doesn’t survive death in the state of New York. And for that matter, he’s considered a public figure, so there’s not much we can do.”
Schlossberg said he hopes the show’s creators “take seriously what he stood for in his life, all that he achieved in it,” further imploring “that they donate some of the profits [from] what they’re making to the John F. Kennedy Library.”
While he thinks “admiration for my uncle John is great,” he clarified, “What I don’t think is great is profiting off of it in a grotesque way.”
The Independent has contacted FX and Murphy’s representative for comment.
Addressing Schlossberg’s concern in a new interview with Variety, Murphy said: “I am going to donate,” noting, “I also like Jack’s Instagram when he just lip syncs to ’90s girl groups stuff. I want more of that. But I think it would be really hard if your relatives are always in the media.”
Recent camera test images shared by Murphy of Pidgeon in costume as Bessette have faced significant backlash from fashion critics, who have nitpicked every element of her outfit.
“There were comments like, ‘I hate that coat, Carolyn would never have worn that,’” Murphy recalled. “That was just a coat we threw on for color. People were writing, ‘How dare you use the No. 35 Birkin bag? She wore a 40!’ Yes, we have a 40 but we just threw on a bag from another costume department because that was the sound stage we were on.”
Acknowledging that “Carolyn Bessette is cleary a religious figure and it’s a religion of her own,” he said: “It’s very interesting that people become so inflammatory.
“We’re writing a story about a person — an unknown person — who falls in love with the most famous man in the world and suddenly she can’t leave her house,” Murphy continued.
“She was constantly being photographed, being called a c*** by the paparazzi,” he added.
“They’re doing to our Carolyn, what they did to the real-life Carolyn,” he said. “It’s not fair.”
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