If you’ve been seeing an increase in JFK Jr. TikTok edits or ‘90s Calvin Klein outfit inspo, that’ll probably be because everyone’s watching Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.
If the title wasn’t enough of a giveaway, the nine-episode FX series tracks the tumultuous relationship between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, the power couple of ’90s New York City.
After getting married in September 1996, the pair died together when their small plane, which John was piloting, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. Carolyn’s sister, Lauren, was also killed in the tragedy.
The show stars Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon as the titular couple, and it was written and created by Connor Hines. Ryan Murphy serves as an executive producer. The series has received mixed reviews from critics, though it’s certainly captured viewers’ hearts. And with four more episodes still left to go, Love Story is giving us plenty to talk about.
But, as has been the case with a number of past Ryan Murphy-produced projects inspired by real events, the living family members of the show’s subjects have voiced criticisms…
Jack Schlossberg is the 33-year-old nephew of JFK Jr., and his parents, Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, are depicted on the show. Jack was only six years old when John, Carolyn, and Lauren died in the crash, so his name hasn’t come up in the series so far, although he is portrayed very briefly by a child actor during an early scene where John is playing with his sister’s kids.
Jack has been critical of Love Story since the initial casting news broke last summer. “For those wondering whether his family was ever consulted, or has anything to do with, the new shows being made about him, the answer is no. And there’s really not much we can do,” he said on his Instagram Story in June 2025, accusing the show of “profiting off” his family.
At the time, Murphy snarkily responded to this during an appearance on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast, saying: “I thought it was an odd choice to be mad about your relative that you really don’t remember.”
Jack then hit back at Murphy by listing a number of details he recalls of his late uncle, like “being the ring bearer at his wedding” and him “picking me up from school.” “I remember Wyclef singing at his funeral,” he said.
For what it’s worth, the team behind Love Story has defended their decision not to consult John and Carolyn’s family members, with creator Connor Hines previously telling Variety that “it’s more healthy and effective to have some distance from the subject matter.”
“It allows you to be a lot more objective in how you approach the material,” he explained, “versus when you’re talking to people personally, you feel a sense of responsibility of relaying exactly what they’re telling you because they’ve given you their time.” Of the Kennedys specifically, he said: “It’s an incredibly large family… So if you were to talk about consulting them, where would you even begin?”
Well, with the show only gaining more popularity online, Jack has voiced his criticism of Love Story once again, specifically taking aim at the show’s famous executive producer.
“If you want to know someone who’s never met anyone in my family, knows nothing about us, talk to Ryan Murphy,” he said while discussing his congressional campaign on CBS Sunday Morning last week. “I would just want people who do watch the show to watch it with one letter in mind, and that’s a capital F for ‘fiction.’ 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.”
“I would hope that Mr. Murphy would donate some of the millions of dollars of profits that he’s making to maybe some of the causes that John championed throughout his life,” the 33-year-old continued. “Maybe he would donate some of that money to the JFK library to help keep President Kennedy’s memory alive, but he’s not. He’s making money. This is not a documentary.”
When asked if there was something “particular” about Love Story that he found troubling, Jack pointed towards the current state of the US — namely, the second Trump administration, and his uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was appointed US secretary of health and human services in 2025.
“I think in the last year, two years, three years, partly because of RFK Jr., but also partly because Donald Trump has used JFK as sort of a human punching bag, both by renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, by doing a false reinvestigation into the assassination and dismantling all the programs that he fought for, there’s a lot of misinformation now and iconography being used about the Kennedy family, my family, at a time when we really can’t afford to confuse people,” he said.
Concluding that people should be using “every breath that we have to try to make things better,” Jack gave a direct suggestion: “If Ryan Murphy really cares so much about the Kennedy family, my Uncle John, maybe he would try to do something about getting Trump out of power.”
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