On Tuesday night in Midtown Manhattan, crowds gathered at Carnegie Hall for the premiere of Ryan Murphy’s new television series that details an American tragedy: the fiery love affair and marriage between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy that ended with their deaths in 1999 when they crashed in a plane piloted by Mr. Kennedy off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
The FX show, “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette,” which will be released Feb. 12, brings to life the couple’s romance in New York in the 1990s and reckons with the intense tabloid and media coverage that they endured, and that the public hungrily indulged in.
Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon, both relative newcomers, play the couple, and the series chronicles their existence as a glamorous pair of New Yorkers in a chic and predigital downtown Manhattan who were poised to potentially lead a new era of Camelot. The show is filled with scenes of the couple hanging out in their Tribeca loft, dining at the Odeon and Bubby’s and tempestuously arguing in a park.
The series arrives at a moment of renewed interest in their story, stemming partly from a three-part CNN documentary, a biography by Elizabeth Beller (from which the show was inspired) and a wave of appreciation on fashion TikTok, where Ms. Bessette-Kennedy is now celebrated as a symbol of “quiet luxury.”
During red-carpet interviews inside Carnegie Hall, the show’s cast reflected on what it was like trying to embody members of the Kennedy family.
Naomi Watts, who plays Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, said it felt weighty to act out a chapter of the former first lady’s life during which she was burdened with illness and concerned about her son’s future.
“She wanted to impart her wisdom to him,” Ms. Watts said. “She had experienced extreme tragedy in many ways, she was a hurt person and had been broken down by that point. But she was trying to say to him, ‘You’ve got this.’ She was trying to pass on her strength and wisdom, and her hope he could uphold the legacy.”
Mr. Kelly, a onetime Brooks Brothers model, said he immersed himself in character study. “There’s an audiobook of John Jr. narrating his father’s book ‘Profiles in Courage,’” he said, “and I’d listen to it on Spotify all day long, just restarting it over and over again.”
Ms. Pidgeon, who embraces Ms. Bessette-Kennedy’s cosmopolitan yet understated all-American style in the role, with a wardrobe of crisp white shirts, jeans and loafers, considered their lives. “Their story is unfinished, and I think that’s a big reason why people continue to be so invested in and protective of them and still hold them dear,” she said.
Just before the lights went dark in a small theater for a screening of the first episode, Mr. Murphy took the stage in a crimson red suit to deliver a roll call of thanks to his cast, crew and fellow producers. The episode evokes 1990s Manhattan as a character unto itself, depicting Mr. Kennedy biking past the Twin Towers donning his cap, and Ms. Bessette-Kennedy as she starts climbing the corporate ladder at Calvin Klein.
Vans waited outside Carnegie Hall to shuttle the audience to a glitzy after-party at the Pool restaurant in the Seagram Building. As a D.J. began spinning hits by Seal and Depeche Mode, guests lounged with martinis at tables splashed with prop copies of George, the glossy politics and pop culture magazine that Mr. Kennedy started.
Mingling in the room were cultural figures like the musician Mark Ronson, the chef Alison Roman and the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. But there was also a showing of the city’s younger creative set, like the critic Natasha Stagg and the beauty consultant Alexis Page.
Hanging out by a little table were Annie Hamilton, the actress and screenwriter, and the Byline magazine editor Gutes Guterman.
“Because we don’t have access to what they were thinking, it becomes the same reason people love the Mona Lisa,” Ms. Guterman said of the couple. “You just get to project all these ideas of what could have been said, or who did what, and it becomes a vessel for the public’s imagination.”
Ms. Hamilton, who was raised in Lower Manhattan in the 1990s, mused that Mr. Kennedy had probably once biked past her as a girl on the streets of Tribeca.
“The dream is to die young but live forever, right?” she said. “So there’s something dangling and tempting about their story, because we know they’re preserved that way. But then you remind yourself that no one actually wants to die so tragically and so young.”
Alex Vadukul is a features writer for the Styles section of The Times, specializing in stories about New York City.
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