The FX show Love Story, which depicts a fictional version of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s romance, has created a frenzy of internet nostalgia. JFK Jr. and CBK affiliate slop is all over the internet. And TikTokers are making over their boyfriends to look like JFK Jr. Yet, he was never a style icon to those who knew him. “He would have loved it and thought it was hilarious,” RoseMarie Terenzio, his executive assistant at George magazine in the nineties, told me on the Back Row podcast. “When they first started dating, from Carolyn's perspective, he had no style. She was like, ‘What are you wearing? Those pants have to go.’”

Terenzio and People editor Liz McNeil collaborated on JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography, which came out in 2024 and features memories from more than 150 people who knew their subject. “All of John's friends razzed him about his lack of style,” said McNeil. “Like, ‘That shirt doesn't go with that pant.’ There's that the famous brown jacket that all of his friends wanted him to get rid of. And he wore it on the [WNYC-TV series he hosted, Heart of the City]. They were like, ‘Don't wear the brown jacket.’”

We recorded this episode before Daryl Hannah published an opinion piece in the New York Times disputing her portrayal in Love Story as grossly inaccurate (a producer of the show previously told Gold Derby they did not consult Hannah). Hannah wrote:

I talked to Terenzio and McNeil, who covered JFK Jr. in the nineties for People, about what they think of the show, how the Kennedy family deals with the press, and what they made of Jack Schlossberg’s comments denouncing Ryan Murphy.

RoseMarie, you're depicted in the show. Were you consulted about that at all?

Rose: No. I haven't seen that episode yet. But I did meet Paul Kelly [who plays John] twice. He's lovely. Those are big shoes to fill. I think he did a great job.

Carolyn didn’t view John as stylish – but did John view Carolyn as stylish?

Rose: Absolutely, but I think also he saw her and the 90s girls as like, “Why do you girls wear black all the time?” I remember he bought me, for Christmas one year, a Moncler ski jacket in bright blue. I thought, This is him saying stop wearing black. At our last Christmas party for George, he said, “I'm going to throw you guys a bash. You can invite whoever you want. There's one rule — you cannot wear black.” And of course, Carolyn wore black. I said to her, we weren't supposed to wear black. She's like, “Well, I don't work at George.”

Hasn’t there been reporting that she liked to wear black because she felt like it maybe deflected some of the attention from her?

Rose: No, I think on some level she felt that if she dressed similarly she would deflect the paparazzi because they wouldn't feel like they were getting a new photo. But I think it was actually her style.

Why are we still so fascinated by this couple?

Liz: Back then reporting on them, you could only get so much. John's friends didn't talk at all. Now we know so much more. Books have been written about them, friends have spoken, we wrote our book. We really didn't know [who they were] back then. He has this fame that's on the level of Princess Diana, but at the same time he's living at 20 North Moore Street. No doorman, no publicist. They were just such an interesting mix of kind of like us, but then not [like us] at all at the same time.

So they had their social circle locked down. Was that because of NDAs or loyalty?

Rose: No NDAs

Liz: Loyalty. Nobody was nicer than John's friends at saying no to me.

Brian Steele, who worked at the DA's office with John before he started George, told you that John told him to find out everything he could about Carolyn Bessette after they had gone on a date or two together. Steele said, “I found out as much as I could about her, and not all of it was good. I told him all of it. She was a club girl, and she dated a lot of people.” What exactly was he screening for?

Liz: I actually just asked Steve Gillon this question. [He] was John’s assistant history professor at Brown and wrote a really great biography of John. He said up until then, John always knew the people he was dating. Jenny Christian [who he knew from prep school], Christina Haag [who he knew from Brown]. Daryl Hannah — their families knew each other. They were part of the sort of elite Democratic world. Carolyn came from the outside. He said when you think about who John was and the way up until then he had met women he dated, there was some logic there.

Rose: I think he was also trying to figure out what made her tick because he couldn't figure it out in the beginning.

There have been some viral testimonials on social media from people talking about how they worked at Calvin Klein in the 90s and knew Carolyn and “here’s what she was really like.” One that I watched described Carolyn as a woman of few words who was private and hard to get to know and I want to know if you think that's right.

Rose: I didn't find that. I don't think a lot of people did. She met friends of mine and she'd be like, “Hi, sweetie, how are you? I love your coat, that's so cute. Where do you live and what do you do?” To me, she was always warm, very outgoing and chatty. She was a girl's girl.

Was she a fashion icon back then?

Rose: I didn't see her that way. I saw her as just like this five-foot-ten, gorgeous woman who had great clothes. But I don't think she thought of herself that way. I think we take her fashion way more seriously than she did.

Carolyn was very methodical about how she shopped. She shopped seasonally. She did not overconsume. Shopping with her was like a treasure hunt. Like, what are we going to find today? Not “we need five of this” and bags and bags of stuff.

She did not want to be in the press, right? She never gave an interview to Vogue or any of those magazines despite enormous interest.

Rose: I think [she and John] both had the same idea, like, What am I doing it for? For John it was, “I'm promoting my magazine,” or “I'm promoting a book,” or, “I'm helping a charity,” and I think Carolyn felt the same way. Just [being] out there wasn't their thing. She never gave an interview. Her friend Joe [McKenna published Joe’s Magazine] that he would send out to [around] a hundred people every year. He asked her to pose for it and she did. Bruce Weber took the photos [which ran in Vanity Fair after her death]. Those are probably the only photos I've ever seen of her that look so much like her. Herb Ritts took photos of her, but they were private.

Based on reading that I've done on her, it sounds like she struggled with the press. She was a publicist, so I guess she had that going for her. But how did she feel about all the attention?

Rose: I think it's different being a publicist for a brand or a person, and people calling you incessantly because you represent someone famous. I think when you're walking down the street as a woman alone, in the middle of New York City, it's a lot different when you have paparazzi jumping out at you, screaming at you, trying to get a reaction to get a photo. That's a totally different world than being a publicist. When John was with her, they didn't behave that way. They were way more respectful. When he wasn't there, it was a free for all. 

Were you with her in those moments?

Rose: Sometimes. Mostly when I was with her, it was outside the apartment. It's intimidating when you have 10 or 12 photographers, most of them men, with cameras pointing at you. They would walk backwards. She was afraid she was going to fall. She was afraid of being run into traffic. I don't think it was necessarily, Please don't take my picture ever. It was, Don’t be intimidating. 

How did you find out, Liz, as a journalist, that they were engaged? Because you talk in the book about how they kept their relationship pretty under wraps up to that point.

Liz: There were the famous photographs on the boat and she was identified. Then we started to try to find out a little bit about her. There's a famous photo of the ring that lands in on the front page of the New York Daily News. But it was really crumbs back then. We didn't know who Narciso Rodriguez was when that famous photo of them in Paris landed. I remember when news broke of their wedding, we're like, Where's Cumberland Island?

Rodriguez designed her famous minimalist wedding dress and they met at Calvin Klein. Was there speculation about what she would wear for the wedding?

Rose: I don't think people were wondering because no one really knew they were getting married. Those [wedding] images were absolutely stunning and iconic and at the same time, so sweet and romantic. I think the dress was a reflection of her style. She loved a bias cut. She and Narciso collaborated and took her style, what she felt comfortable in, and modeled the dress off of some of the things that she always wore. Carolyn liked to be comfortable. She liked to be able to flop on the couch in whatever dress she was wearing back at the hotel after a gala and order a cheeseburger and hang out and laugh and rehash the night. I think that dress is that — comfort.

The last episode I watched before this interview depicted their infamous fight in the park. What was the fight about?