Carole Radziwill isn’t featured in “Love Story” because the showrunners wanted to highlight Carolyn Bessette’s close relationship with her sister, Lauren Bessette.
“There were tons of people in their lives that we weren’t able to include, including some of John’s closest friends, but we decided to make Lauren [Carolyn’s] closest confidant, and then Anthony [John F. Kennedy Jr.’s] closest confidant,” producer Brad Simpson told TV Insider Monday.
“You know, we’re trying to pack a lot into 43 minutes,” he added. “People’s lives are full and rich. There’s tons of people in them, and you have to make decisions.”
The “Real Housewives of New York” star was married to Kennedy Jr.’s late cousin Anthony Radziwill from 1994 until 1999, when he died of cancer — just three weeks after the tragic plane crash that killed Kennedy Jr., Carolyn and Lauren.
Anthony, portrayed by Erich Bergen, is heavily featured in the Hulu series and seen as Kennedy Jr.’s right hand man. In real life, he and Carole were both very close with Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn but she was excluded from the series to “really focus” on building Lauren’s character.
Simpson further told the outlet that they made the decision to focus on Lauren because she is “often an afterthought in all of this.”
After the series — which stars Paul Anthony Kelly as Kennedy Jr. and Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn — premiered last month, Carole confirmed on her Substack that she wouldn’t be watching the show, but said others should tune in to “fall in love with” Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn “the way we all did back then.”
She did throw some shade at the show as well, however, writing, “And yet the story keeps being told. Reinvented. Embroidered. Filled with details no one could possibly know, by people who weren’t there and don’t care about the truth.”
And Carole, 62, isn’t the only one who has slammed the series for its inaccurate portrayals.
Kennedy Jr.’s ex girlfriend Daryl Hannah wrote a scathing essay for the New York Times, blasting the Ryan Murphy-produced show, which highlights her romance with Kennedy Jr. before he fell in love with Carolyn.
“I have long believed that engaging with distortion often amplifies it,” she began. “But a recent tragedy-exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and presents her as me.”
“The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident.”
Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy Jr.’s nephew, called the series “grotesque” in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” earlier this month.
“If you want to know someone who’s never met anyone in my family, knows nothing about us, talk to Ryan Murphy,” Schlossberg said when asked about the show.
“The guy knows nothing about what he’s talking about, and he’s making a ton of money on a grotesque display of someone else’s life.”
“Love Story” airs weekly on Thursdays (9 p.m. ET) on FX and Fridays on Hulu.
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