Dree Hemingway revealed she tried to connect with Daryl Hannah before the Splash actress publicly slammed how she was depicted in Love Story.
Hemingway, 38, spoke with Nylon in an interview published Wednesday, March 4, about how she wrote to Hannah, 65, after being cast as her in Ryan Murphy‘s new FX show, saying, “It was really just a love note to her saying how much I admired her, how much I’ve admired her as an actress and a woman, prior to even being cast as Daryl.”
Hemingway wanted to express her admiration for Hannah, who dated John F. Kennedy Jr. for several years before he married Carolyn Bessette. The relationship between the exes is addressed in episodes of Love Story, which follows JFK Jr. and Bessette’s romance before their tragic deaths in 1999.
“[I wrote how] much I really just fell in love with her as a human being. I watched interviews and that feeling of really spending time with somebody you’ve never spent time with, but researching,” Hemingway continued. “That was really the note, and just not like ‘Hey, I want to meet you or talk to you.’ Just, like, ‘It was really an honor of my lifetime to be able to portray you and research you.’”
While Hemingway “would have loved to directly have spoken to her,” she had “nerves” when it came to directly contacting Hannah.
“I also didn’t want to intrude in any way. I didn’t want to make her feel awkward if that were something that she didn’t want to do or something,” Hemingway noted before confirming she never heard back from Hannah. “But that’s OK.”
Hemingway continued: “It was not the expectation. It was more so just like ‘I really appreciate you. I admire you as a person, a philanthropist, an actress.’ I wasn’t trying to have her communicate back.”
At the time, Hemingway reflected on how Hannah might need “her own time,” adding, “The show’s just come out; I’m sure there’s a lot to digest there and stuff like that. … We are not exactly portraying her or how something went down. There’s a fiction involved in all of this. With any person that you loved and you were dating, I’m sure it’s a hard thing. So, I think that it’s nice to respect that and her.”
Hannah ultimately broke her silence days later in a New York Times essay published on Friday, March 6. She specifically called out how the show is not “remotely accurate” in its “representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John.” Hannah also wanted to clarify the “actions and behaviors attributed” to her, which she found to be “untrue.”
“I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial,” she continued. “I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s. It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”
Hannah further called out Love Story for how it uses her name and likeness.
“When so many people watch a dramatization that uses a real name, real-life consequences follow,” she wrote. “In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual. When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation.”
Producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, meanwhile, previously told Us Weekly that the subjects featured in Love Story were not consulted.
“You reach out to one person, and then it becomes, ‘Why are you not reaching out to every person?’ We love these characters. We did deep, deep research. It’s based on not just the Elizabeth Beller book but many other artifacts from that time and many other histories,” Simpson told Us last month. “We came from a place of love, but if you foreground one person’s personal story and their version of the truth, then you have to foreground everybody’s, and often they’re in conflict. On all our shows, we tried to be true to what we think the characters were and show you what it was like to walk in their footsteps.”
Simpson addressed the mixed reactions to their version of Hannah, adding, “Daryl’s points to John are really what people are sort of missing. They are very relevant when she’s saying that not every woman is going to be able to deal with this level of fame. He didn’t understand. And her warnings about that turned out to be true for Carolyn.”
New episodes of Love Story air on FX Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET and stream on Hulu the next day.
