MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It feels like, at any given time, the internet is obsessed with someone, something, the main character, if you will. Well, NPR's Mia Venkat is here to talk about what the internet has been obsessed with recently. Hey, Mia.
MIA VENKAT, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: OK, so you do these main character segments for us regularly. I have to admit I'm usually lost. I've never...
VENKAT: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...Never - I feel like I'm on the internet all day long. I never knew who it is. I am all over your main character this week. Lay it on us.
VENKAT: So the main characters this week, and really of the last month, are John F. Kennedy Jr., better known as JFK Jr., and Carolyn Bessette.
KELLY: Indeed. And I guess, for him, he was the main character his whole life.
VENKAT: Yeah.
KELLY: I mean, his dad had already been elected president when he was born.
VENKAT: That's right.
KELLY: Carolyn Bessette, a little bit different. But they are back everywhere now because of a new TV show, "Love Story."
VENKAT: That's right. And it seems like the show, "Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette," has gotten a whole new generation of people obsessed with them. And according to FX, it's their most watched limited series ever on Hulu and Disney+.
KELLY: Wow.
VENKAT: It, of course, follows the story of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's relationship, and it premiered on February 12, and the finale airs tonight. And in it, we'll see how executive producer Ryan Murphy handles portraying the deaths of JFK Jr., Bessette and her sister in the plane crash where JFK Jr. was flying the plane.
KELLY: Oh, God. I remember that...
VENKAT: Yeah.
KELLY: ...So well. It was awful. It was - what? - summer of 19..
VENKAT: 1999.
KELLY: ...1999. How is the family responding to this TV show?
VENKAT: Yeah, so in an interview on CBS, JFK Jr.'s nephew, Jack Schlossberg, called the show a grotesque display of someone else's life.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JACK SCHLOSSBERG: If you want to know someone who's never met anyone in my family, knows nothing about us, talk to Ryan Murphy.
VENKAT: Ryan Murphy responded saying that he thought it was an odd choice to be mad about your relative that you don't really remember. Mary Louise, Schlossberg was 6 years old when JFK Jr. died, but Murphy's comment, unsurprisingly, was not received well.
KELLY: Yeah. I mean, two questions. One, is it clear that this is dramatized for TV, or does it seem like it's a documentary?
VENKAT: Yeah, I mean, every episode of the show starts by reminding the audience that the show is fictionalized but based on real characters.
KELLY: OK. The other thing I'm wondering is whether the appeal is in part because it feels like we are glimpsing behind the curtain of one of the most famous families in the world, one of the most famous political dynasties in the world.
VENKAT: I mean, I absolutely think so. And so it feels like you're getting let in on something you're not supposed to see. And I think another reason why the show is so popular is simply how cool it is. There seems to be this deep nostalgia for that whole era. Creator Dylan Carlino posted about this on TikTok.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DYLAN CARLINO: The fact that I wasn't 31 years old in the '90s - ah. No, this show has got me being like, I'm moving to New York City. I'm bleaching my hair blonde. I'm smoking cigarettes. Ooh.
VENKAT: (Laughter).
KELLY: Nostalgia for the '90s - I can't believe this is where we are. Were you even born in the '90s, Mia?
VENKAT: '96.
KELLY: Oh, God.
VENKAT: (Laughter).
KELLY: OK. So I was around New York in the '90s. There was a lot of smoking. There was - there were no cellphones. There were things about it that were great, things about it that were less great. You know, one of the things that I see with all this nostalgia around this particular duo, is their style.
VENKAT: Yeah.
KELLY: You know, we had all just survived the '80s, Mia.
VENKAT: I've heard about them.
KELLY: How to put it? Not the classiest, most tasteful decade.
VENKAT: (Laughter).
KELLY: And then along came, you know, Carolyn Bessette. Can we just...
VENKAT: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Talk about the fashion for a second?
VENKAT: Yeah.
KELLY: 'Cause it was her world. That was her background. She was the antithesis of that. It was clean. It was classic. It was cool girl.
VENKAT: You know, there - in the show, it shows her wearing this tortoiseshell headband. It's sold at the store in New York, C.O. Bigelow. And owner Alec Ginsberg told me that in the week since the show has aired, they've sold more hair accessories than in their 188-year history.
KELLY: What? A hundred and eighty-eight years.
VENKAT: (Laughter) Eighty-eight years, yeah. So people are trying to look like her. The show also shows Bessette's career at Calvin Klein, and data from the luxury resale site, The RealReal, shows that searches for vintage Calvin Klein are up over 900%.
KELLY: She always reminded me, Mia - she was a few years older than me, and it was like that cool girl at your high school. At everyone's high school, there was always a girl who was pretty and popular and actually kind of nice, so you couldn't even hate her for it.
VENKAT: (Laughter).
KELLY: I always felt like that was Carolyn Bessette.
VENKAT: Yeah, and you just wanted to be her in high school, and that's how people feel about Carolyn Bessette now. I called up Kristen Naiman, who's The RealReal's chief brand officer. And she's worked in the fashion industry for decades. So I asked her what it is specifically about Bessette's style that people want so bad.
KRISTEN NAIMAN: I think that her sense of personal style and the way that that intersects with a kind of purity - both purity of design, purity and clarity of her vision of herself and the world - I think that's very intoxicating for people.
VENKAT: She also says that it's not really even about the clothes, but it's how she used the clothes that she had.
NAIMAN: You know, there's like a scene in the TV show where she takes his shirt after she's slept over and, like, wears it. And Calvin's like, what's that? And you're like, that's style. It isn't like deciding to wear a white shirt wrapped that way because she did. It's having the irreverence, the authenticity and the sort of free will to pick a shirt up off the floor, wrap it in that way, and walk in somewhere and look like a million bucks. And that's what I wish this generation would take from her.
KELLY: Mia, it didn't hurt that it was JFK Jr.'s shirt. We'll just say that.
VENKAT: Yeah (laughter). It probably didn't.
KELLY: Probably didn't. All right, I'm going to tweak my tortoiseshell headband and say thank you.
VENKAT: (Laughter) You're welcome, Mary Louise.
KELLY: That's NPR's Mia Venkat bringing us, once again, our main character of the week. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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