FX's new series, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, explores the tragic love story of one of America's favorite couples
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Executive producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson tell PEOPLE that finding Sarah Pidgeon to play Carolyn was easy. It was casting JFK Jr. that presented a bigger challenge
"We were about to shut down production and pause because we couldn't find him," Simpson says
Casting one of America's most beloved heartthrobs for the new series,Love Story, was not an easy task.
FX'sLove Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, explores JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's romance, including from whenthey meet in 1992, marriedin a top-secret ceremonyin 1996, anddied tragically in a plane crashthree years later.
Executive producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson tell PEOPLE that they were convinced that castingCarolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the Calvin Klein publicist who caught the eye of the country's then-most-eligible bachelor, would be the hard part.
Instead,Sarah Pidgeon"jumped out and stole the role," Jacobson says, and Simpson agrees that the Tony-winner "won our hearts" right away.
"We saw her on tape and everyone agreed there was something special. And then we brought her in, and on that day, I think it was one of our first groups of 12 people we brought in," Simpson reveals. "We really locked into her pretty quickly. She just had — not only the physicality and the likeness — but there was something that was both very warm about her, but also inaccessible at the same time, that was what we thought Carolyn had."
The team was stumped when it came to finding her costar, who would end up being played bynewcomer Paul Anthony Kelly. "JFK [Jr.] was hard," Simpson says. "We were three weeks away from shooting and we still [had] not cast him. We'd seen every male actor between the age of 25 and 38. [Creator] Connor [Hines] was coming in every day with models he'd found on Instagram, sending cold emails."
Rick Maiman/Sygma via Getty; Steve Sands/BACKGRID
Hines tells PEOPLE he had reached the point of desperation that he was "approaching people on the street, at the gym, 'Would you like to read for John? Please. We need him.' "
It wasn't an issue of not liking the actors who were in the running, Simpson says, but there was simply something missing with all of them until they saw Kelly. "Part of it was just that sort of '80s, old school masculinity — a man with hair on his chest, sort ofRichard Gere,Tom Selleck, the classic chiseled looks — we're not making those guys anymore, for some reason, and he really needed to have that," Simpson explains of what they were looking for.
More than anything, the actor "needed to look like JFK Jr., who wasone of the most handsome men in America."
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Executive producerRyan Murphythen stepped in and told them to go back to the beginning and look through all the self-tapes they'd received. "We just pulled out 13 new guys and picked a couple to come in and read, and we did an old-fashioned screen test," Simpson says.
Kelly, 37, was among that group — and he stood out. "I remember at the screen test, one of the hair and makeup people passed by me, and was like, 'You're crazy if you don't cast him,' " Simpson says. "It was just clear that he was JFK."
The timing couldn't have been better. "We were about to shut down production and pause because we couldn't find him," Simpson admits.
Eric Liebowitz/FX; Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty
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Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette"explores the undeniable chemistry, whirlwind courtship and high-profile marriage of one of the most iconic couples of the 20th century," per FX.
It's inspired by Elizabeth Beller's book,Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
Along with Pidgeon and Kelly,Love Storyalso starsNaomi WattsasJackie Kennedy Onassis,Grace GummerasCaroline Kennedy,Alessandro NivolaasCalvin Klein,Leila GeorgeasKelly Klein, Sydney Lemmon as Lauren Bessette andConstance Zimmer as Ann Marie Messina.
The first three episodes ofLove Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessetteare now streaming on Hulu. New episodes debut Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on FX and Hulu.
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