‘Love Story’ Brings the Emmy Race Back to the ’90s
Breakout stars, buzzy controversy and Naomi Watts’ Jackie O — why the FX series could be a major contender this spring
I have to say, it is really nice for the moviegoing vibes to be this good so soon after the Oscars. As you heard on this week’s podcast, I’m all in on Project Hail Mary, and I even indulged in some way-too-early speculation about how it might fare in what will be a blockbuster-heavy Oscar race. If that’s your thing — and why isn’t it? — hear much more informed speculation on the race ahead during next week’s episode of the podcast (subscribe here), when I bring together my colleague Christopher Rosen and This Had Oscar Buzz co-hosts Joe Reid and Chris Feil for our long-awaited stab at 2027 Oscar predictions (which will, of course, be 100 percent correct).
So yes, it’s fun to get excited about movies right now, particularly with a whole bunch of intriguing titles both smaller (A24’s The Drama and Mother Mary) and large (I’m excited for Super Mario Galaxy, sue me!) looming right over the horizon. But as you may know, if you’ve been here for a while, it’s also Emmy season! Some of the biggest TV shows of the year are premiering in the coming weeks, and with the Emmy eligibility window closing at the end of May, now’s the time to build buzz and figure out which shows are actually ready to go the distance.
For the next few weeks in this newsletter, I’ll take a closer look at some of those series as they air, diving deep into what’s made them hit with audiences (if they have) and how they might fare in the crowded Emmy fields. First up today: FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, which airs its final episode tonight.
Falling In Love
For as much as the winter awards shows can feel like an Emmys rerun when it comes to the TV categories, there are usually some new discoveries, too. Sometimes they’re onstage, like a visibly shocked Rhea Seehorn winning a Golden Globe for the debut season of Apple TV’s Pluribus; sometimes it’s just about who you see in the room. Who wasn’t at the Emmys just a few months ago? Who might have been there because the Emmys are in their future?
The most obvious TV discoveries of the year, the stars of Heated Rivalry, are sadly not headed to the Emmys, regardless of how hard some of us tried. Which brings me to the other two breakout stars to emerge from the small screen this winter: Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly, who play, respectively, Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. on the FX series Love Story. Like Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, Pidgeon and especially Kelly were largely unknown to the general public this time last year. Now, they’re famous enough to have walked the carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscar party last weekend.
A spinoff from Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story franchise that has yielded major successes (The People v. O.J. Simpson) as well as disappointments (Impeachment) over the past decade, Love Story premiered in January with plenty of built-in, ripped-from-the-headlines appeal. It takes major fictional liberties to dramatize the relationship between Kennedy, the only son of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Bessette, who never gave a formal interview and fiercely protected her privacy between the start of her relationship with Kennedy in the early ’90s and their death in a plane crash in 1999. The media was eager to turn her into the American Princess Diana (a parallel heavily outlined in the show’s eighth episode), but Bessette died at the age of 33, before she really had any opportunity to define herself in the public eye.
Love Story’s attempt to tell its own version of this story has inevitably been met with some pushback. Before it even aired, the series caught hell for its costumes and wig choices. Jack Schlossberg, who was 6 when his Uncle John and Aunt Carolyn died, has accused the series of profiting off his uncle’s legacy “in a grotesque way.” Daryl Hannah, who dated John F. Kennedy Jr. before Carolyn, is probably rightly pissed that the show depicts her as a drug-addled narcissist. (“Bird cage liners biodegrade. Online lies endure,” she wrote in an op-ed about the show for the New York Times. “May love and truth prevail.”) Perhaps even worse than the controversy, some critics found the take on a famously doomed romance “strangely ordinary.”
But Love Story, created by first-time showrunner Connor Hines, has also clearly struck a nerve, with solid streaming numbers and an internet’s worth of influencers clamoring after Bessette’s “iconic ’90s look.” It’s not reaching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives numbers, but in the world of prestige limited series, Love Story seems to have hit its mark.
Story of Our Time
I joined my friend and former colleague Joanna Robinson to discuss the first three episodes of the series on The Ringer’s Prestige TV podcast last month, and couldn’t help but reflect on the many hours we’d spent together covering The People v. O.J. Simpson back in 2016.
From much of the same team now behind Love Story — primarily executive producers Murphy, Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson — People v. O.J. Simpson was a genuine cultural phenomenon, minting Sterling K. Brown as a star, vaulting Sarah Paulson into a new level of TV stardom and breathing new life into the careers of Cuba Gooding Jr., David Schwimmer and John Travolta.
Back then, the show had us all reliving the ’90s, relitigating old debates, even tracing the Kardashian family’s origins back to the O.J. Simpson trial. In what was still a relatively new streaming ecosystem, the viewership of the FX series was primarily traced through old-fashioned ratings — it was cable’s most-watched new series of 2016, and 3.3. million people watched the finale, making it “second on cable only to The Kelly File,” a phrase that now feels as relevant as ancient hieroglyphics. Trying to compare any of these numbers to the 52 million hours people spent streaming Love Story on Disney+ and Hulu so far (at least according to Disney) makes me feel insane. But having been around in 2016, I can confidently say that The People v. O.J. at least felt bigger.
The same thing will most likely happen at the Emmys. The People v. O.J. had the benefit of being at the vanguard of the limited series format that has since become such an Emmy season juggernaut, competing in 2016 against the second season of FX’s own Fargo, the similarly titled but less impactful American Crime (still, props to Regina King for those Emmy wins) and a remake of Roots that’s been entirely forgotten. Love Story, meanwhile, will be up against heavy-hitters from HBO and Netflix, which my colleague Lesley Goldberg recently reported are engaged in their own battle of “prestige envy” — meaning they’re willing to fight hard for those Emmys.
The biggest competition in the limited series space right now is almost certainly Beef. Netflix will launch the second installment of the anthology series on April 16, and hopes to capitalize on the goodwill from the first season (a winner of a whopping eight Emmys) with a starry new cast led by Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton. Its release date alone tells you how much faith Netflix has in it — the streamer has won the limited series category for three years in a row, with the first season of Beef, Baby Reindeer and Adolescence all premiering in either March or April. From what I’ve seen from the new season, the latest version of Beef stands a very good chance of being just as buzzy and acclaimed as the first go-round.
Still, I think Love Story has a fighting chance, particularly with its cast of breakout stars and veterans alike. Sarah Pidgeon wasn’t exactly an unknown going into the series — she earned a Tony nomination for Stereophonic and had a major role on Amazon’s pulpy, short-lived The Wilds — but she has been a true revelation on Love Story, building Carolyn Bessette as a complex, fascinating woman far beyond the cipher who had lingered for so long in pop culture. Paul Anthony Kelly, in his first onscreen role, feels slightly less sharp as John F. Kennedy Jr., but he successfully finds the vulnerable person behind the extensively photographed American icon that Kennedy was forced to become since literally the moment he was born.
Finding a real person behind the iconography is an even bigger challenge for Naomi Watts, who plays Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the show’s first three episodes, a twice-widowed woman in failing health by the time the show begins. An Emmy nominee for her role as Babe Paley on the Ryan Murphy-produced Feud: Truman Capote vs. the Swans, Watts is back in familiar territory as Jackie in her fading socialite era, though she’s inevitably in the shadow of Natalie Portman’s Oscar-nominated performance from a decade ago. (The baffling choice to also have Watts’ Jackie dance around an empty room listening to Camelot sure doesn’t help!) But as a powerful but affectionate mother, Watts finds new shades to play as well; it’s a bit of a relief when John can step into his own after her death, but you miss her when she’s gone as well.
There are many other supporting players who get a handful of standout moments across the season, particularly Constance Zimmer as Carolyn’s worried mother and Alessandro Nivola as Carolyn’s boss and mentor, Calvin Klein. Unfortunately, there’s no guest acting category for limited series, which means these smaller supporting players have to contend with actors who are in every single episode — a tough break, and something I wouldn’t mind seeing an Emmy rule change to address going forward.
Everything, I suppose, depends on Love Story nailing its ending, no small task when the series has to depict John and Carolyn’s death in a small plane crash as well as the aftermath. But I have faith based on what I’ve seen so far and the sustained buzz the show has generated week after week. Sure, the influencers dressing like Carolyn Bessette probably aren’t also voting for Emmys, but Love Story’s place in the zeitgeist can only help it stand out in a still-crowded prestige TV field.