From the first episode, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette has felt like a magical look that one or the most infamous couples of the 20th century. Naturally, when it came time to tackle Bessette and Kennedy’s nuptials, for director Gillian Robespierre, that feeling of grounded whimsy needed to abound.
But with a couple that kept their wedding day so famously under lock and key, essentially getting married in secret to avoid a tabloid spectacle, how does any writer or director tasked with handling something so major create something honest and real but as unattainable as Carolyn and John’s wedding felt? Well, it all starts with a small misunderstanding.
According to Robespierre, while reading the final draft of Episode 6, “The Wedding,” she and her director of photography, Pepe Avila del Pino, came across a beautiful metaphor used by the writer, Juli Weiner, to introduce John and Carolyn’s first dance after their uniquely intimate wedding. The line in the script went something like “the happy couple levitates on the dance floor,” a piece of text she interpreted literally.
“Juli Weiner wrote the most beautiful script and it was just, the wording was different than any episodic script I’ve ever read before,” Robespierre explained in a sitdown with DECIDER via Zoom. “I don’t believe she meant levitate, but Pepe, my DP, and I read it and he’s like, ‘Let’s make them levitate.’ And I was just like, ‘Okay, let’s let’s do it.’ Because your wedding day, after you feel the rush and all of the adrenaline of the planning and pulling it off and being in a small chapel with all of the people you love the most, and then entering into this magical lit tent by the moon and beautiful lanterns, you kind of feel like you’re going to levitate.”
To do that, the production team behind the show quite literally dug a hole where they were filming the reception scene, inserted a hydraulic lift in the ground, and hoisted Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly up so that they could dance above a sea of partygoers. The episode’s director told DECIDER that they surrounded the main actors with stunt team members who were there to steady them and catch them if anything were to happen. The magic of television, ladies and gentleman.
“So Sarah and Paul were actually spinning, and a lot of the people around them were stunt people, making sure that they [were safe],” Robespierre told DECIDER. “And we created a circular dolly track around it so we would counter and, and, and sort of just keep on moving around them. So all of that intimate dialogue, we didn’t have to break it up with relighting one side of the room, and it felt very organic and natural, and they could take as much time as they wanted to deliver these lines and to gaze at each other.”
Robespierre, who is best known for writing and directing Obvious Child starring Jenny Slate, said that what started out as a scene meant to symbolize the joy that this couple was feeling on the day of, ended up being an artistically moving moment that highlights the creativity and imagination of everyone who worked on the show.
“You kind of feel like you’re the only ones in the room and like all the love is sort of pushing you up and floating you,” she said of bringing the metaphor to life for the magical episode.
The first six episodes of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette are now streaming. New episodes premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. PST on Hulu.
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