Daryl Hannah doesn’t like “Love Story.”
The actress wrote a scathing essay in Friday’s New York Times, slamming the Ryan Murphy-produced show. The story focuses on Hannah’s romance with John F. Kennedy Jr. before falling in love with Carolyn Bessette.
Dree Hemingway plays Hannah in this series.
“I have long believed that when we engage with distortion, it often amplifies it,” the 65-year-old actress wrote at the beginning of her essay.
“However, a television series that exploits the recent tragedy involving John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and introducing her as me,” Hannah continued. “The choice to portray her as irritable, self-centered, whining and inadequate was no accident.”
Hanna claimed that the series, starring Paul Anthony Kelly as Kennedy Jr. and Sarah Pidgeon as Bessette, was not “a near-accurate representation of my life, my actions, and my relationship with John.”
“The actions and actions attributed to me are false,” she added, accusing the show of “textbook misogyny” by framing her as a “rival” in Kennedy Jr.’s relationship with Bessette.
Hannah then pointed to a specific moment in the show, which she claimed was inaccurate.
“I have never used cocaine or hosted a cocaine-fueled party in my life,” she wrote. “I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated an heirloom or invaded anyone’s personal monument. I have never planted a story in the press. I have never compared the death of Jacqueline Onassis to the death of a dog.”
She also said it was “appalling” to have to “defend” herself to a TV show, and reiterated that the “window dressing” of her personality on the show was “false”.
Later in her essay, Hanna claimed that since the show premiered on February 12, she had “received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who appeared to believe this depiction to be true.”
“My silence should not be misconstrued as consenting to a lie,” she continued, explaining that she usually remains silent about her public perception. “It seems my indiscretion has made me a target.”
The “Splash” star also said that unlike the “Love Story” creator, the Kennedy family is “notoriously private” and that she has “always respected their right to privacy.”
“Please know that most (if not all) people who claim to have some intimate knowledge of our private lives are self-serving sensationalists peddling gossip, innuendo, and speculation,” she wrote.
Hannah and Kennedy Jr. dated on-again, off-again from 1988 to 1994.
Their romance ended in 1994 with the death of Kennedy Jr.’s mother, Jackie Onassis, and the death of Hannah’s beloved dog.
Kennedy Jr. was walking his dog in Central Park when the dog got loose and was hit by a car.
According to the book JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography, Kennedy Jr. was “deeply resentful” that Hannah had made him attend his dog’s funeral in Los Angeles while his mother was dying of cancer in New York.
After their breakup, Kennedy Jr. began dating Bessette, and they married in 1996. Both died in a plane crash in 1999, along with their sister Lauren Bessette.
Meanwhile, Hannah married rocker Neil Young in 2018.
“Love Story” airs every Thursday (9 p.m.) on FX and Fridays on Hulu.
