🎧 Sarah Pidgeon Never Thought About Hair So Much. Then Came ‘Love Story’

It’s not exactly fair to say that hair is everything when it comes to Sarah Pidgeon’s Emmy-nominated performance as Carolyn Bessette on FX’s Love Story. But when I told Pidgeon I was about to quote the great Fleabag while discussing her work on the show — “hair is everything” — she agreed before I even finished the thought.

Indeed, the first round of Love Story set photos sparked a backlash so severe the production stopped relying on a wig to turn Pidgeon into Carolyn, and instead started dyeing the actress’ real hair. It was that important: The transformation of Carolyn’s tresses over the course of the series — from wild curly locks that perfectly contrast her tailored Calvin Klein clothes to flat-ironed, ice-blond armor — says as much about her character’s evolution as any dialogue does. 

“I hadn’t completely understood how transformative it is for a character, just because the roles that I had played beforehand hadn’t asked that of me,” Pidgeon tells me on today’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast. “I have never spent as much time thinking about hair as I have this past year.”

Still, the hair is only one part of a performance so fully realized that Carolyn — who died alongside her husband, John F. Kennedy Jr., and her sister, Lauren Bessette, in a 1999 plane crash — has become a major cultural icon all over again. Pidgeon, previously a Tony nominee for Stereophonic, has emerged as a major star since Love Story first premiered in February — including joining Jake Gyllenhaal and Kevin Costner in Amazon MGM’s upcoming Honeymoon with Harry. Critics praised her performance on Love Story for bringing to life a woman who fiercely shielded herself from the public after her relationship with Kennedy made her a celebrity overnight. 

So in our conversation, Pidgeon digs deep not just on the hair, but all the other things she had to think a lot about to play Carolyn — from the “endurance” required of long production days (and very different from an intense Broadway schedule) to building out the parts of Carolyn’s personality that were kept private. 

“I remember when I got the audition, the character description was ‘not an ice queen as the paparazzi made her out to be,’” Pidgeon tells me. When it came time to film the first date scene between Carolyn and John — at the East Village Indian restaurant that has since become a tourist destination — the Michigan-born star says she found the chance she was looking for to explore.

“There were so many opportunities for sensitivity and guardedness and empathy, her humor and her wit,” Pidgeon, 30, says. “Everything that I had discovered really backed up this idea that she was so much more than this ice-cold blond woman from all these misogynistic headlines in the ’90s.”

Hear much more from Pidgeon — including what happens when you’ve spent so much time smoking fake cigarettes and why she loves striking up an on-set conversation — on today’s special bonus episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast. Watch us on YouTube too!