How Love Story recreated JFK Jr., Carolyn…
Wedding bells are ringing.
The hit FX sequence “Love Story,” dramatizing John F. Kennedy Jr’s (Paul Anthony Kelly) relationship with Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon), finally noticed the couple make it to the altar in Thursday’s episode, “The Wedding.”
“We built the church. It is exactly that perfect replica,” director Gillian Robespierre solely told The Post.
Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette and Paul Kelly as JFK Jr. in “Love Story.” FX
The church on Cumberland Island where they bought married. Shutterstock / Nomad’s Lens
Produced by Ryan Murphy, the show is a dramatized account of the connection between Kennedy and Bessette, who married in 1996, and died in a 1999 aircraft crash, with Kennedy in the pilot seat. The son of former President Kennedy was 38, Carolyn was 33, and her sister Lauren, who died with them, was 34.
The real couple married on Georgia’s exclusive Cumberland Island. It was a personal ceremony with only around 40 friends, at the First African Baptists Church, a humble one-room construction.
On the show, they filmed the sequence on a farm in Spring Valley, New York, and it took twelve days.
The duplicate of the church they constructed, “was a very small chapel, probably the size of a studio apartment,” Robespierre said.
“There was no electricity. Everything was illuminated by candles or flashlights. The production designer did a lot of research and pulled as many photos as he could find. There weren’t actually many photos [of the real event].”
She recalled asking the manufacturing designer if they might make the church “a little bit bigger” to accommodate the cameras and tools for filming.
Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. on March 9, 1999. Getty Images
Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon in “Love Story.” FX
But in the end, “we decided not to. It actually worked out perfectly. It was so great that it was exactly that size. It forced us to be really intimate.”
Robespierre, who also directed episodes of “And Just Like That” and “Only unlawful killings in the Building,” said that because the real couple’s marriage ceremony was so personal – and there was no social media back then to doc it – she targeted more on temper moderately than immediately capturing actuality.
“We have no idea what went on in that tiny little chapel. We really wanted to capture the essence of their romance [and] of this specific wedding. They’re royalty in some ways, and yet they had a very DIY wedding.”
Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Kelly in “Love Story.” FX
Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon in “Love Story.” FX
The manufacturing even added some shocking bells and whistles that didn’t occur in real life.
For occasion, she explained, at the reception after John and Carolyn marry the script said, “the golden couple levitates onto the dance floor.”
Robespierre said it was only supposed to be a flip of phrase, but she got here up with the concept “to actually levitate our actors.”
Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Kelly in “Love Story.” FX
The inside of the First African Baptist Church on Cumberland Island. Getty Images
She famous that it was “very subtle. It’s not like they were flying in the sky, but [it happened] ever so slightly.”
To accomplish that, “we dug a hole in the ground of the lawn that we shot on, and we put in a hydraulic lift with a spinning disc on it. And our actors, Sarah and Paul, got on top of that, and we raised them up.”
They had been boosted about 4 to 5 toes off the ground.
Kelly and Pidgeon had been both “so game” to do it, the director famous.
Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon in “Love Story.” FX
Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon in “Love Story.” FX
“It’s supposed to be their best day ever, their most magical moment. And they’re feeling very close to each other, but they’re also elated and feeling higher than everyone else. So, we levitated them.”
For the reception, which was under a tent, they did use some real photographs for reference.
“But we were just trying to build something that felt like it was just the two of them, and everyone else was just sort of fuzzy feeling around them.”
In addition to the “levitation mechanism,” they also had “a circular dolly track around them.”
“So the camera was a foot away from them while they were dancing and talking, and we were just circling them, capturing them.”
“Love Story” airs on FX and weekly on Thursdays (9 p.m.) and Fridays on Hulu.
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