The penultimate episode of “Love Story” opens in 1997 with the death of a shocking and beloved public figure: Princess Diana.
Diana, fresh off her divorce from the current King Charles, was killed in a car accident that also took the lives of Dodi Fayed, her boyfriend at the time, and driver Henri Paul. She was 36 years old.
In Episode 8 of “Love Story,” which aired March 19, John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (Sarah Pidgeon), react to the news.
Carolyn is distraught in the show, watching the news with her jaw dropped. “They killed her. She did everything right. Posed for every photo. Gave them everything they wanted. And they still killed her,” Carolyn says.
She later tries to talk to John about the loss that defined his own childhood. John’s father, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963 just days before JFK Jr.’s 3rd birthday. John resists the comparison.
“This is nothing like what me and Caroline went through. They’re princes. They’re members of a monarchy. I was 3 when my dad died. I grew up 60 blocks from here. I rode my bike to school. It’s night and day,” he said.
John, meanwhile, is more distraught about how Diana’s death might stop Carolyn from “living her life.”
“Once Upon a Time,” the Bessette Kennedy biography that inspired the book, touches on how the couple may have actually reacted to the tragedy. Here’s what to know.
How Did JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette React to Diana’s Death?
According to “Once Upon a Time” author Elizabeth Beller, Diana’s death affected Bessette Kennedy deeply. She thought of her own position, newly married and hounded by paparazzi.
“Just a month earlier, Carolyn had sat behind Diana at Gianni Versace’s funeral, whose death, it could be argued, was also a result of his fame. She couldn’t help but wonder if a similar fate would befall her. Carolyn was terrified,” Beller wrote in the 2024 biography.
Kathy McKeon, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ former assistant and her children’s former babysitter, described a dinner she had with the couple the night before Diana’s funeral.
Bessette Kennedy, she said, described being chased by a “wolf pack” of photographers. “While Carolyn was forthcoming about her despair concerning the circumstances of Diana’s death, John remained quiet for the most part, though he was affected,” Beller wrote.
Christopher Andersen wrote in “The Good Son,” his biography of JFK Jr., that Diana’s death “served to harden Carolyn’s resolve not to have children anytime soon.”
Andersen quoted JFK Jr.’s friend Billy Noonan, who recalled how Bessette Kennedy reacted. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do about Carolyn,” Kennedy told Noonan, per the book. “She’s really spooked now.”
Did JFK Jr. Call Princes William and Harry?
In her biography, Beller said that Bessette Kennedy “tried to get” her husband to call Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, to give his condolences, after reports came out that Diana had wanted her sons to take after JFK Jr.
Tina Brown wrote, in a story for The New Yorker published after Diana’s death in August 1997, about a lunch she had with the Princess of Wales in June.
During the lunch, Diana brought up JFK Jr. as a role model for her sons and a picture of how to handle life in the spotlight.
“All my hopes are on William now,” Diana reportedly Brown. “I don’t want to push him. Charles suggested he might go to Hong Kong for the handover, but he said, ‘Mummy, must I? I just don’t feel ready.’ I try to din into him all the time about the media — the dangers, and how he must understand and handle it. I think it’s too late for the rest of the family. But William — I think he has it. I think he understands. I’m hoping he’ll grow up to be as smart about it as John Kennedy, Jr. I want William to be able to handle things as well as John does.”
In the book “The Day John Died,” biographer Christopher Andersen said JFK Jr. didn’t see a parallel between him and the princes.
“I was able to lead a normal life from about the age of 5,” Andersen quoted Kennedy as saying.
Bessette and Kennedy died in a plane crash, along with her sister Lauren Bessette, in July 1999, two years after Diana’s fatal accident.
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