‘Love Story’ Recreates Carolyn’s Tense Dinner With Ethel Kennedy
Spoilers ahead. In the February 26 episode of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, Carolyn (Sarah Pidgeon) makes her first trip to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port and is put on the spot by ethel kennedy at a famously exacting family dinner — a scene the show’s producers and its actress playing Ethel say was carefully researched and deliberately staged.
Ethel Kennedy commands the table
John (Paul Anthony Kelly) lightly warns Carolyn to call his aunt “Mrs. Kennedy” rather than by her first name before the meal. At the table, Ethel (Jessica Harper), described in the series as Robert F. Kennedy’s longtime widow and the family’s “undisputed matriarch” after Jackie’s death, zeroes in on the new guest: she first calls out the shawl Carolyn is wearing, then quizzes her on current events including trade embargoes and senate seats. Carolyn, a Calvin Klein publicist, is adrift in those conversations and John does not step in to help.
Rules of Hyannis Port and the family’s expectations
Executive producer Brad Simpson said the team knew Carolyn’s relationship with the Kennedy compound was “complicated. ” He said the compound “had a very specific set of rules” and everyone was jockeying to make a good impression. Simpson noted that on her early visits Carolyn “really didn’t feel well prepared”: she wasn’t told that Ethel moved bags so couples might not sleep in the same room, that there was a sign-up for breakfast every day, or that guests were expected to be ready to answer sharp questions at dinner.
How the scene was shaped for the series
Simpson said the dynamic is shown again in Episode 8, when the characters actually fight about the rules. He described John as someone who “had lived a charmed life” and who didn’t fully prepare Carolyn for life inside the compound. Simpson called Ethel “benevolent” with “certain ideas of how people should do stuff, ” and praised Jessica Harper: “She was the ultimate matriarch of the family, played so beautifully by Jessica Harper. We’re so happy to get her. ”
Jessica Harper on becoming Ethel Kennedy
Harper said she received the offer to play Ethel while on Cape Cod, a short ride from Hyannis Port, and that the timing felt like “good karma. ” Drawing on a long career that includes Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise and Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Harper said she studied the 2012 documentary Ethel by Rory Kennedy to capture the real woman’s posture and voice. She pointed to long stretches in the documentary where Ethel sits and speaks about herself as especially useful for learning “what she sounded like, what her bearing was, how she presented herself. ”
What Carolyn faces and how she responds
The family weekend does not get easier for Carolyn: after the dinner she is caught off guard when John asks her to marry him on a fishing boat. Carolyn does not immediately accept, telling him they need to work out how their lives “really fit together” before taking that leap. Her hesitation follows what she has experienced with John’s family and the added fame that comes with being a Kennedy.
Harper noted a personal connection to the family’s public resonance: she remembers where she was when President Kennedy was shot and said she was “only 12 or 11 at the time, ” a moment that “shook me profoundly. ” Harper suggested that younger viewers may learn the family’s tragic through line through the show, and that Ethel’s role often helps reveal that history. She described a parallel between Ethel and Carolyn: both were non-Kenneys in a family that was lionized by the public, a common ground that draws the characters together.
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette airs Thursdays on FX and Hulu. The series will revisit the compound’s rules and the couple’s tensions in Episode 8, and Jessica Harper’s portrayal of Ethel remains central to those scenes.
