Carolyn Bessette’s marriage to JFK Jr is depicted as a fairy tale. In truth, it was more of a horror movie.
Don’t be misled by CNN’s new three-part docuseries ‘American Prince: JFK Jr’, where only a handful of friends offer compliments on this so-called Golden Couple.
As I reported in my book Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, Carolyn’s mother Ann was against her daughter’s incipient marriage — so much so that, at the rehearsal dinner, she stood up and said that she didn’t think this union would be good for her daughter.
Carole Radziwill, widow of John’s cousin Anthony and self-proclaimed best friend of Carolyn, confirms this in the doc.
‘Carolyn’s mother really loved John’ — not according to my sources — ‘but when she made a toast, I’ll never forget, at the end of it, she said, “I Hope my daughter has the strength for this”,’ Carole recalls.
‘Everyone, sort of, stopped for a moment. I think, even Carolyn in her way, underestimated the impact of marrying John and marrying into the family.’
Ann’s words did, in fact, stun the small gathering into silence. John, as one of his friends wrote, looked as though he’d been slapped in the face.
No one had ever spoken to John F Kennedy Jr like that. No one had ever told him the truth: That unlike his public image, he could be thoughtless at best, entitled at worst, and had a death wish that put at least one ex-girlfriend in mortal danger multiple times.
Carolyn Bessette’s marriage to JFK Jr is depicted as a fairy tale. In truth, it was more of a horror movie (pictured in 1996)
No one had ever spoken to John F Kennedy Jr like that. No one had ever told him the truth: That unlike his public image, he could be thoughtless at best, entitled at worst, and had a death wish that put at least one ex-girlfriend in mortal danger multiple times
But friends and family were deeply involved in protecting John. To protect his image was to protect their own access to him.
It led to a sanitized media image of JFK Jr as, yes, American royalty – a future president of the United States, a humble guy with movie-star looks and the body of a Greek god to match.
Who wouldn’t be charmed by him? Only Carolyn Bessette, who, legend has it, played very hard to get and was forever agonizing about whether JFK Jr was the one for her.
Only the last part is somewhat true.
Friends of Carolyn told me that, contrary to the media spin, she worked very hard to seem so carefree, so aloof to John, all the while cultivating a look and image that read less downtown fashion girl and more Upper East Side, First-Lady-in-Waiting.
‘She was so f***ed up,’ one friend observed.
Carolyn had always sought a big life. Friends who knew her well told me they believed much of this stemmed from her biological father, William Bessette, being a largely absent presence in her life.
Finding wealthy, powerful, famous men to love her was proof that she was valuable — that she was worthy not just of a man’s love, but of a great man’s love.
At Boston University, she dated future ice hockey star John Cullen and an heir to the Benetton fortune. And then she was scouted by an exec at Calvin Klein and flown to New York City and, before she knew it, was seated across from the most relevant American designer of the 1990s. She was hired to do PR on the spot.
Before long, the tall, blonde, lissome Carolyn from Greenwich, Connecticut, was one of Calvin’s most trusted advisers.
It was she who pushed for a young, little-known model named Kate Moss over more famous women (Rosie Perez, Vanessa Paradis) to be the new face of Calvin Klein.
It was Carolyn who was assigned to the most famous clients, Sharon Stone and Diane Sawyer, and she would be utterly casual and cool until the moment they left.
Then, a Calvin friend told me, the mask would drop.
Carolyn would drill down: How do you think that woman got her money? Her fame? Where do you go to meet men — rich ones?
Friends of Carolyn told me that, contrary to the media spin, she worked very hard to seem so carefree, so aloof to John, all the while cultivating a look and image that read less downtown fashion girl and more Upper East Side, First-Lady-in-Waiting
As it turned out, she didn’t have to go very far to meet America’s Ultimate Bachelor, JFK Jr.
He came in one day to the Calvin Klein showroom to sample suits. Carolyn was assigned to help him and, despite already having a boyfriend named Michael Bergin, who was a Calvin supermodel with his own shirtless billboard in Times Square, Carolyn lasered in on snagging John.
‘She wanted this so badly,’ a friend of hers told me — ‘this’ not just being John’s official, public girlfriend, but life as a Kennedy.
None of her friends, sophisticates themselves, were particularly impressed with John.
I was told that one even said he found John to be ‘kind of a d**k’.
But to listen to the likes of Carole Radziwill, the former ‘Real Housewife of New York City’, in this CNN doc — John and Carolyn were the perfect couple.
‘Carolyn made him feel, probably more than anyone in his life, that he could be his own person,’ Carole says.
Yet not even Carolyn could manage John’s selfishness.
He would often just not come home after asking her to prepare a meal for twelve guests, or drive up on sidewalks to get around traffic — or, high on pot, tell Carolyn that he could get away with anything, even murder, because he was a Kennedy.
She thought about her old boyfriend, the model, often. She told her mother that he was the only one who truly understood her. She thought, only a few years in, of ending her marriage.
But John had one insistent request in that summer of 1999. He had to go to his cousin’s wedding in Hyannis, and he couldn’t stand the idea of going alone and sparking divorce rumors in the press. He did, after all, have that image to protect.
So could Carolyn just do him one last favor that fateful weekend of July 16, 1999, and get in his plane?
