(The Hill) — Actress Daryl Hannah sharply condemned her depiction in the John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-centered “Love Story” TV series, calling it “false” and “textbook misogyny” in a New York Times opinion piece published on Friday.
“It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show,” Hannah wrote in her op-ed. “These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”
The new Ryan Murphy-directed “Love Story” on FX follows Kennedy and Bessette, who married in 1996 and tragically died in a plane crash three years later.
One character in the show, played by Dree Hemingway, uses Hannah’s name and presents as the actress, who dated Kennedy between 1988 and 1994.
“The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue,” the real-life Hannah writes. “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 criticized that her portrayal in the show as “irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate,” saying it was both inaccurate and “no accident.” Nina Jacobson, one of the producers of the series, has argued that Hannah’s character is a necessary “adversary” to the main storyline of the romance between Bessette and Kennedy.
Hannah responded that she understands that “storytelling requires tension” but argued that “a real, living person is not a narrative device.”
“When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation,” she said.
“Popular culture has long elevated certain women by portraying others as rivals, obstacles or villains,” Hannah said. “Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?”
Though the show is inspired by Elizabeth Beller’s book, “Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy,” Hannah argued many people can’t distinguish fiction from fact, making them see her portrayal as a true representation of her real character.
Hannah said since the show premiered on Feb. 12, she has received a string of “hostile” and “even threatening” messages from viewers.
She said she was advised by Onassis before she died that while publications often sold “ridiculous lies” about public figures, few people continued caring about them the next day. Hannah said she found “great comfort and consolation in those words” but argued that they “no longer hold true” in the digital age where social media preserves and digs up stories from the past forever.
“A dramatized portrayal can become, for millions of viewers, the definitive version of a real person’s life,” she said
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