Daryl Hannah Slams Portrayal of Her JFK Jr. Romance in ‘Love Story’

Daryl Hannah is speaking out in criticism of her portrayal in Ryan Murphy’s new FX series Love Story.

The Splash star, 65, published a scathing essay in The New York Times on Friday, calling out the series for painting her as an “adversary” in the fictionalized story of John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon).

The actress, who is portrayed by Dree Hemingway in the series, had a years-long on-again, off-again relationship with Kennedy, but claimed in her essay that Love Story is “not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John.”

“I have generally chosen not to respond to media coverage of me. I have long believed that engaging with distortion often amplifies it,” Hannah wrote. “But a recent tragedy-exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and presents her as me. The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident.”

Slamming portrayals of her drug use and funeral crashing, Hannah 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…” she continued. “These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”

Hannah continued that the way she’s been painted as an”adversary” in the love story of Kennedy and Bessette has resulted in “real-life consequences.”

“In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual,” she wrote. “Many people believe what they see on TV and do not distinguish between dramatization and documented fact — and the impact is not abstract. In a digital era, entertainment often becomes collective memory. Real names are not fictional tools. They belong to real lives.”

Hannah said in a message to readers, “Know that most (if not all) of those claiming to have any intimate knowledge of our personal lives are self-serving sensationalists trading in gossip, innuendo and speculation.”

“In the digital age, stories do not disappear, yesterday’s news isn’t tossed out with the morning paper, and lies live online forever,” she added. “They are archived, streamed, clipped, memed and resurfaced endlessly. A dramatized portrayal can become, for millions of viewers, the definitive version of a real person’s life.”

“Bird cage liners biodegrade. Online lies endure,” she concluded. “May love and truth prevail.”

Hannah is not the first person to decry Murphy’s portrayal of the real-life “it” couple, which was largely based on Elizabeth Beller’s 2024 book, Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

Kennedy’s nephew, Jack Schlossberg, called the story a “grotesque display of someone else’s life” in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, telling viewers to watch it “with one letter in mind, and that’s a capital F for fiction.”

“I would hope that Mr. Murphy would donate some of the millions of dollars of profits that he’s making to some of the causes that John championed throughout his life,” Schlossberg added. “Maybe he would donate some of that money to the JFK library to help keep President Kennedy’s memory alive, but he’s not. He’s making money. This is not a documentary. And I’ll leave it at that.”