In the weeks since Ryan Murphy’s Love Story dramatized Daryl Hannah‘s relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr., the actress says she has received hostile and threatening messages from viewers who can’t differentiate the fiction of the series with Hannah’s real life. Hannah dated Kennedy for about five years beginning in the late Eighties before he married Carolyn Bessette. To clear up numerous falsehoods in the series, she penned an op-ed for The New York Times, published today.
“The character ‘Daryl Hannah’ portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John,” she wrote. “The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue. I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s. It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show.”
In the essay, Hannah cited an interview with executive producer Nina Jacobson, published on Gold Derby, in which Jacobson described Hannah as a storytelling device. “Given how much we’re rooting for John and Carolyn, Darrell [sic] Hannah occupies a space where she’s an adversary to what you want narratively in the story,” the producer said.
“A real, living person is not a narrative device,” Hannah wrote in her Times op-ed. “There is also a gendered dimension to this thinking. Popular culture has long elevated certain women by portraying others as rivals, obstacles or villains. Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?”
Elsewhere in the essay, Hannah explained that she previously ignored salacious and untrue articles about her believing that they would go away. But now that the internet allows falsehoods to exist in perpetuity, she felt she needed to speak out. She has honored the Kennedy family’s cloistered privacy but felt she needed to speak on her own behalf.
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“Many people believe what they see on TV and do not distinguish between dramatization and documented fact — and the impact is not abstract,” Hannah wrote. “In a digital era, entertainment often becomes collective memory. Real names are not fictional tools. They belong to real lives.”
The miniseries Love Story premiered Feb. 12 on FX and features Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr. and Dree Hemingway as Hannah. The producers did not consult with Hannah or the Kennedy family about their representations onscreen. “As a writer, it’s more healthy and effective to have some distance from the subject matter,” showrunner Connor Hines told Variety.
Jack Schlossberg Jr., JFK Jr.’s nephew who is running for Congress, also blasted the series in a CBS Sunday Morning interview. “Well, if you want to know someone who’s never met anyone in my family, knows nothing about us, talk to Ryan Murphy,” he said, according to Vanity Fair. “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.”
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Speaking to Rolling Stone last year, Hannah discussed how she felt speaking out against Harvey Weinstein hampered her career. “[Kill Bill] was my last real movie. I mean, I’m fine with it. But I never really got any offers after that either. I was offered one other movie that was not a very good part, but that was [makes a sound like a car stopping]. I think some of it definitely had to do with Harvey, because he was like, ‘Oh, she’s difficult,’ or whatever he said.
“I’ve never been comfortable with being a known personality,” she added. “I put my creative energies elsewhere, and I’ve been directing for years now, and I love it. At least I’m still making films, but it doesn’t have to be about me.”
