‘American Love Story’ Star Sarah Pidgeon on Carolyn Bessette Hair and Fashion Backlash: ‘I Understand How Beloved She Is’

“American Love Story” star Sarah Pidgeon is weighing in on the backlash that the series received for its first look at her portrayal of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

Fashionistas were not happy with her hair and wardrobe in photos Ryan Murphy released in early June of Pidgeon and Paul Kelly, who plays John F. Kennedy Jr.

While the pics were just camera tests for lighting and color, social media was flooded with complaints and outcries.

“I know how special Carolyn is to me and I understand how widely beloved she is, so this role comes with a lot of responsibility — and I’m not surprised that people have strong opinions about it,” she told me Monday night at the Los Angeles premiere of her new movie “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” “That’s what makes her such an interesting person. I mean, not only how she dressed, but the woman who worked at Calvin Klein and the person that JFK Jr. fell in love with. She’s a human being beyond just these pictures. She really resonates with a lot of people, and she certainly does with me.”

Pidgeon said she’s been inspired by Bessette-Kennedy. “I think that she is an incredibly generous person and she’s incredibly confident,” she said. “I don’t know if I necessarily always carry myself in that way, but it’s been really empowering to channel those elements of Carolyn. I could talk for a while about everything there is about her. It’s been really, really fulfilling and incredibly special to do it on camera.”

In an exclusive interview with Variety shortly after the backlash began, Murphy said he was taken aback by the negative — and sometimes, what he feels were sometimes unnecessarily mean-spirited — comments. “Carolyn Bessette is clearly a religious figure and it’s a religion of her own,” he told me Wednesday during a phone interview from set. “It’s very interesting that people become so inflammatory.”

Filming began in June and is expected to run through the fall.

“There were comments like, ‘I hate that coat, Carolyn would never have worn that,’” Murphy said. “That was just a coat we threw on for color. People were writing, ‘How dare you use the No. 35 Birkin bag? She wore a 40!’ Yes, we have a 40 but we just threw on a bag from another costume department because that was the sound stage we were on.”

In September, months before “American Love Story” premieres on FX on Valentine’s Day, Murphy said he is going to release 20 short videos showing images of Bessette-Kennedy alongside Pidgeon in full character to illustrate costume designer Lou Eyrich’s attention to detail.

Bessette-Kennedy’s every move and fashion choice was dissected ad nauseum. “They’re doing to our Carolyn, what they did to the real-life Carolyn,” Murphy said. “It’s not fair.”

Kennedy and Bessette died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999, when JFK Jr. was flying his wife and her sister, Lauren, from New Jersey to Martha’s Vineyard for a family wedding.