Throughout Love Story: John F. Kennedy, Jr. & Carolyn Bessette’s nine-episode run, there were plenty of moments that were re-created precisely as they happened in the mid to late ’90s. From John and Carolyn’s romantic getaway on a speedboat to their Cumberland Island wedding, it became imperative for the producers and the crew to get as many details as accurately as possible.
“Especially when we were shooting around N. Moore Street, where they lived, or restaurants like Odeon or Indochine, we were in these real-life places [with these sort of] lipstick traces of people who were there before,” Love Story executive producer Brad Simpson tells Glamour. “I believe there’s a haunt-ology of places and that time is elastic, and you could feel it sometimes for the actors. It became very intense when they sat in the same booth at Indochine that Carolyn had sat in, or when they walked the same streets. Everyone felt the weight of that.”
But it wasn’t until the final episode—titled “Search and Recovery”—that Simpson says he experienced possibly the most eerie moment of the entire shoot.
In the days after John, Carolyn, and Lauren’s remains were discovered following their tragic plane crash, Caroline (Grace Gummer) ends up having an impromptu conversation with Ann (Constance Zimmer), Carolyn and Lauren’s mom, at John and Carolyn’s apartment, in which the two women are able to finally be honest about the depths of their grief.
Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy
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After, Caroline is seen walking out of John and Carolyn’s apartment on 20 N. Moore Street, where hundreds of mourners have lined up to pay their respects. As she leaves to get into a waiting car, the crowd quietly parts to allow Caroline easy access to the vehicle. Once inside, she sobs. It’s a somber reminder that her sister-in-law, Carolyn, was never afforded the same respect by waiting paparazzi.
“When Caroline walks out of the apartment, where all these mourners have put a shrine up the way they did for Princess Diana, and they all just part for her reverentially, and she gets in the car…that was incredibly eerie because we knew that Caroline may have walked in those same footsteps,” Simpson says. “Literally we shot the place in those same footsteps. The memorial had been there. We felt like we were surrounded by ghosts.”
The memorials outside the home of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in the days following their passing.
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While there are no public photographs of Caroline leaving John and Carolyn’s apartment in the aftermath of their death, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s also hard to imagine that given the large gathering of people, someone wouldn’t have captured an image. There are photographs, however, of Ann and her second husband, Richard Freeman, leaving the apartment, including a particularly poignant one of Mr. Freeman carrying photographs of John and Carolyn.
Regardless of whether Caroline Kennedy visited the apartment or not, the moment that Simpson describes is more reflective of the finality of the couple’s complicated love story and knowing that they’d never set foot on that street again. That’s why, perhaps, the decision to end this iteration of Love Story with John and Carolyn peacefully embracing each other on a sandy dune as they look out at the water was the real ending they deserved. They were finally free.
For additional Love Story coverage, you can read more here.
