Gordon Henderson says the new series Love Story got Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. wrong from the start, and he did not need more than half of the first episode to make up his mind. Henderson, who once knew Bessette well and was later asked by Kennedy Jr. to design his wedding suit, said the actors playing the couple were not as good-looking as the real pair and that Bessette looked very different on screen.
“When you look at Carolyn in real life, she’s incredibly beautiful. She looked very different in the series. It’s weird,” Henderson said, adding that the portrayal of the couple missed the mark. He also said the actors “were closer with John, but … those two were really good looking people,” and described the show as something he stopped watching almost immediately. “I just thought it was not done well. I only watched one half of the first episode and said, ‘It’s not going to be good,’” he said.
The criticism lands as interest in Carolyn Bessette Kennedy continues to resurface in new dramatizations, including a separate project that has prompted attention on Sarah Pidgeon’s role in the part. Henderson’s complaint is less about nostalgia than precision. He said he does not like watching stories about John and Carolyn because, in his view, they keep getting the details wrong.
That point matters because Henderson was not a distant observer. He first met Bessette through her on-and-off boyfriend Will Regan, who owned the Manhattan nightclub Rex, and the two later became close friends. Bessette often visited Henderson’s West Village apartment on 11th and West Fourth Street, placing him in the orbit of a couple whose style and privacy became part of their public mythology.
He also pushed back on one of the series’ central workplace details. The show depicted Bessette and Henderson working at Calvin Klein at the same time, but Henderson said that never happened. In the 1980s, after graduating from the Parsons School of Design, Henderson worked at Calvin Klein. He later launched his own label, and only after that did Kennedy Jr. ask him to design his wedding suit.
Henderson said Kennedy Jr. could have gone to any designer, but chose him because the couple wanted to keep the wedding secret. He said the suit was navy blue throughout because Kennedy Jr. wanted to honor his father’s favorite color. “That’s why everything was navy blue. That was very important to him,” Henderson said.
Henderson was portrayed by Omari K. Chancellor in the FX and Hulu series, but he said he did not watch enough of the show to see that for himself. That leaves his view of the production rooted in memory and firsthand experience, and by his account, the gap between the real couple and the screen version is the problem. For Henderson, the verdict is already set: the new telling may have borrowed the names, but it did not capture the people.
