[This story contains spoilers from Love Story, episode five, “Battery Park.”]
While Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is, at its core, a romance, it doesn’t shy away from the couple’s most painful moments.
Thursday night’s episode, “Battery Park,” revisits one of their most infamous: the heated 1996 argument after they left their Tribeca apartment at 20 N. Moore St. and walked to Battery Park. Though the time period was before smartphones and viral TikTok videos, paparazzi captured the fight on camera, and the footage was featured on tabloid front pages.
In Love Story, the episode imagines what may have led to that very public unraveling. Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1995, John (Paul Anthony Kelly) proposes to Carolyn (Sarah Pidgeon) during a fishing trip on Martha’s Vineyard. She doesn’t immediately accept. Unsure whether she’s prepared to become Mrs. JFK Jr., Carolyn asks for time.
Her hesitation, exacerbated by relentless tabloid scrutiny and the pressures of sudden public attention, and her belief that John lets people walk all over him, begin to strain their relationship. When John issues a statement denying that he proposed, it worsens. The episode suggests that mistrust ultimately erupts into the now-famous Battery Park fight, where the pair are shown screaming at one another and John appearing to yank off Carolyn’s engagement ring before she lunges toward him — all of it caught on video.
Still, Pidgeon acknowledges that viewers should take the recreated dialogue with a grain of salt.
“You know, who knows what they really said in these moments,” Pidgeon tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That certainly was a private moment that, unfortunately, was captured on film.”
Regardless of the scene’s exact accuracy, Pidgeon describes filming it as a rewarding challenge.
“It was quite exciting as an actor, especially approaching Carolyn, where there is so much mystery in how she sounds and how she walks when she knows she’s not being filmed in the photos taken by a friend versus a paparazzo,” she says. “Having a few moments where we actually had video footage — whether it be Battery Park or their first public photo as a couple when they come out of North Moore [Street] — it was really exciting to come at the scene through her physicality.”
After moving from the park to a bench and eventually to a nearby street curb, the episode shows the couple talking through the fractures in their relationship. An emotional John pleads, “Why can’t we just love each other? Why does it have to be so hard?”
They ultimately confront what each needs to make the relationship work. Carolyn struggles to adjust to life in the public eye, while John insists he doesn’t want to change her.
“I don’t want to bring you into my world. I want you to pull me out of it. I want you to be my family,” he tells her.
When Carolyn receives reassurance that John has no desire to follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue the presidency, she experiences a breakthrough. Though she never imagined herself as someone’s wife, she realizes she wants that future — because it’s with him. The episode ends with Carolyn accepting his proposal and crying in his arms, mirroring another iconic image of the couple.
Speaking with THR ahead of the series premiere, Pidgeon reflected on filming both the emotional lows — like the Battery Park argument — and the joyful highs, including the wedding depicted in next week’s episode.
“I think high, energetic, joyful scenes can be just as difficult as the emotionally taxing crying — the lowest points,” she says. “The extremes of emotion can be hard. It’s quite vulnerable to be completely joyous. Because when you’re joyous, you’re not watching yourself when you really smile. It’s different from when you’re putting on a smile.”
Executive producer Brad Simpson also noted an unexpected parallel between the actors’ experience and the real-life scrutiny Carolyn and John faced. Even during filming, paparazzi surrounded the production.
“It was really hard on our actors, because they were in a situation where we were being stalked by paparazzi, just like Carolyn was. We had 17 paparazzi out in front of us,” he says. “When you see a scene of their first date in the first episode, you should know that seven feet away, there are photographers outside our barrier, snapping pictures like crazy. It was a lot for her to go through, and, weirdly, it mirrored Carolyn Bessette’s journey — from being unknown to suddenly being criticized for her every move.”