FX’s new drama about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette has reopened a familiar quarrel: how far should television go when it reimagines real lives? Based on Elizabeth Beller’s Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the series traces the couple’s courtship, their social circles and the pressures that shadowed them—ultimately ending with the July 16, 1999 plane crash. Along the way, it pulls in reported episodes from the past, including an alleged earlier connection between Kennedy and actress Daryl Hannah, and that choice has become one of the show’s most contested elements.
Why the debate flares up now is easy to see. The show’s creators leaned heavily on Beller’s book, archival reporting and dramatized reconstructions, but deliberately avoided reaching out to the real people depicted. Executive producer Nina Jacobson and the team say that distance preserved their ability to shape characters and story arcs without competing agendas or legal entanglements. Critics — including family members and observers — see that decision differently. They argue that excluding those closest to the events risks factual errors, flattens nuance and causes real hurt to people whose lives are being mined for entertainment.
Casting choices stoke the controversy further. Dree Hemingway plays Daryl Hannah in a role the series frames as formative in Kennedy’s younger life, set against Carolyn Bessette’s very different temperament. The producers insist the portrayal aims for complexity rather than caricature, yet some viewers and relatives feel the dramatization simplifies motives or amplifies friction to heighten drama. That tension gets at a broader question: when does a screen character stop serving the story and start reshaping a real person’s public image?
Different filmmakers handle this problem in different ways. Some invite interviews, fact-checks and collaboration agreements with families and subjects; others treat public records and reporting as the only permissible source material. From the makers’ perspective, leaning on documented sources protects creative freedom and offers a defensible factual backbone. From the families’ perspective, however, lack of consultation can feel like erasure — an omission that strips context and silences competing memories.
There are also practical risks. Recognizable portrayals can raise defamation and reputational concerns even when scenes are drawn from public reporting, and ethicists note that consultation can reduce harm and clarify motives in sensitive reconstructions. Critics have urged clearer signals when scenes are fictionalized — from on-screen disclaimers to companion pieces that map moments in the drama to source materials — so viewers know where the show ends and documented history begins.
Some relatives have spoken out. Jack Schlossberg and others have accused the series of commodifying family history, underscoring why dramatizing recent, painful events often provokes strong reactions. The production pushes back that this is a research-based dramatization rooted in archives and reportage, and that they handled the characters with care. Still, dramatic imperatives—compressing timelines, inventing private conversations, sharpening conflicts—inevitably reshape motive and feeling in ways that matter to people portrayed onscreen.
What should viewers take away? Treat the series as interpretation, not the last word. If you care about historical accuracy, use the show as a jumping-off point: read primary sources, biographies and contemporary reporting to fill in missing context. If you’re there for emotional storytelling, accept that the writers’ goal is to humanize public figures and craft a compelling arc, which sometimes means inventing scenes that feel true even if they aren’t strictly documented.
At stake is more than one TV show. These dramatizations help shape public memory — who we remember, and how — so the choices producers make about sourcing, casting and consultation have consequences beyond ratings. The debate this series has sparked is less about a single portrayal and more about who gets to tell other people’s stories, and on whose terms.