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00:00It was a very simple wedding, you know, it wasn't fancy at all.
00:25John F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed that he indeed married Carolyn Bessette over the weekend.
00:35The couple managed to outfox and evade the entire tabloid press.
00:39Like he was pretty much the most famous guy in the world.
00:43As a couple, they were sought after.
00:46They got married on a tiny island.
00:49There was not a single photographer except for the wedding photographer there.
00:54The wedding was kept a secret from the public and indeed from many of their family members as well.
00:59Just wanted to keep it a little private for a little bit longer.
01:04Just a little bit.
01:06That's the church. Look at him.
01:09It was pig shit and the horse manure everywhere.
01:14And she came from fashion and he was passionate about magazines.
01:18It's funny because his sister got them a t-shirt for their wedding and it said, I thought it was so cute.
01:24Politics plus fashion equals passion.
01:28And that's what they were.
01:31I think physically they complimented each other.
01:34She made John more attractive and John made her more attractive.
01:39And given how attractive they both were to begin with, that's a tall order.
01:43She was beautiful.
01:45She was charming.
01:46Incredibly loving.
01:47You look at her and you say, yeah, who wouldn't want to marry Carolyn Pessette?
01:51Carolyn was definitely not a yes person to John.
01:55She did not want John to be used in this like dog and pony show way.
02:01She made him feel he could be his own person.
02:05He didn't have to follow what people expected of him.
02:10Carolyn's mother really loved John.
02:13But when she made a toast, I'll never forget the end of it.
02:17She said, I hope my daughter has the strength for this.
02:21Everyone sort of stopped for a moment.
02:24I think even Carolyn, in her way, underestimated the impact of marrying John and marrying into the family.
02:37But her mom understood it in a way that all of us would then come to understand it later.
02:44I don't even think that the pictures circulating around really do her justice.
03:07She had a presence.
03:09They were matched because she was super charming, really funny.
03:13Well, everybody was interested in John's relationship with anybody he might be dating.
03:21Back then was Sarah Jessica Parker.
03:23And then Daryl Hannah, of course.
03:25So that was a big deal.
03:27And then Carolyn Pessette.
03:29But you really, over the course of his time, didn't see him with a lot of different young women.
03:34So with Carolyn, everybody was really interested because it just seemed like it was going somewhere.
03:43Carolyn never met Jackie, but they shared an irreverent sense of humor about things.
03:51Jackie was kind of, not naughty, but like she would love to gossip a little.
03:56She wasn't like super serious all the time.
04:00There was a really fun side.
04:10And I know that also because she would write Anthony letters and they would always be so charming and funny.
04:16And, oh, did you hear this and that?
04:18And in that way, I think Carolyn was very similar.
04:22She would love to get down and go through magazines and talk about that person or that person.
04:28She could read a room like nobody I've ever met.
04:32And Jackie had that quality too, having had to do that.
04:36I'm sure they would have gotten along.
04:39And she wasn't an actress.
04:42It's a big family.
04:44And like all big families, there's a lot of politics and quirks that you just got to learn.
04:50Maybe John's family more than other families.
04:53There was a higher expectation.
04:55And she didn't play the game.
04:57She didn't like suck up to anyone.
04:59No one in his family.
05:00She was just like, hi.
05:02Carolyn and I came from a very similar background.
05:07I grew up very humble beginnings, like working class, upstate New York.
05:12Her mom was a single mom raising three daughters in a very working class neighborhood.
05:18I think we felt like a real sisterhood because of it.
05:21We were like the ultimate outsiders.
05:24It's funny.
05:26So many people felt like they got to know them through black tie or going into kind of fancy things where there were photographers.
05:36But their life really was not fancy.
05:39Where they lived was definitely not fancy.
05:43The more basic things could be, the better.
05:47They were not a particularly domestic couple.
05:52They had this guy named Effie who worked for them.
05:56And sometimes Effie would cook.
05:58But if he didn't, and Carolyn was making a big effort, she would make her chicken.
06:03Their going out was always from point A to point B.
06:07There wasn't a lot of wandering around because it could turn into such a mess quickly.
06:13John, can we get a picture of you real quick before you leave?
06:15Yes.
06:16Do you think that you have that right?
06:21A right to privacy?
06:22Uh-huh.
06:23And I understand that there's interest and certainly that interest has...
06:27It's not interest, it's obsession.
06:28Wow, is that what it is?
06:29Yeah.
06:30I would say that John Kennedy Jr. was at the top, especially here in New York City.
06:35He was John Kennedy Jr.
06:37Who wasn't any interested in him?
06:40How you doing, John?
06:41Good, how are you?
06:42Pretty good.
06:43And John would give them little bits of it.
06:46We always knew the paparazzi were hanging out wherever we were.
06:49But he wouldn't, you know, hide himself.
06:52But Carolyn was said that he came with Target.
06:54Please don't get so close to me.
06:56You know, they also lived in an apartment with no doorman, no security.
07:00Like, I think celebrities now, they travel with a lot of security.
07:04They didn't ever have security.
07:06There was no one.
07:08The way John grew up, he wanted to be as normal as possible.
07:15The last thing you want to do is have a blowout with your girlfriend in public.
07:20But that is exactly what happened between John and his girlfriend Carolyn Bessette.
07:25I remember when Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr. had a fight outside my dorm.
07:31It was on the cover of every newspaper and every tablet because there's always somebody photographing them.
07:38It started out verbally, but it got physical.
07:42You know, whatever he said just really pissed her off and it was no holding back.
07:48She didn't care that she was in the middle of the park.
07:50This is obviously a lady who just doesn't take anything that the Prince of Camelot hands out.
08:01She also was very confident and very strong-willed.
08:04And I think when Carolyn came into his life, it ruffled some feathers.
08:08Like any fiancé then wife, you come with a different perspective.
08:12And I think she weeded his social garden a little bit.
08:16She was very fiercely protective.
08:19She knew immediately if somebody was bad news.
08:24He didn't want to see that.
08:26He wanted to see the good in people.
08:28Carolyn had all the guile that he lacked.
08:31Guile in a good way.
08:33Many titles have been bestowed on John F. Kennedy Jr.
08:36Sexiest Man Alive, Most Eligible Bachelor.
08:39The times when I did go out with John and more public events, we were mobbed.
08:44It was a circus.
08:45He was like the number one pin-up of the world.
08:50And I guess only Princess Diana comes close in terms of the star power that he carried around with him.
08:56I seem to be on the front of a newspaper every single day, which is an isolating experience.
09:05And the higher the media places you, it's the bigger the drop.
09:09I remember when I had lunch with Princess Diana, she said, I'm hoping that William can turn out to be as smart about the press as John Kennedy Jr.
09:18Diana understood that there was no shucking off of this celebrity.
09:22They were the most famous people in the world.
09:24So they were very much parallel.
09:26He was a Nepo baby before there was such a thing.
09:29Thank you. Thank you.
09:31He had to do something substantive that people could point to and say, yeah, that guy deserves it.
09:37The handful of times that I was in a social situation with John F. Kennedy Jr.
09:42When he walked in, the room went to a hush.
09:46He could sense that they were uncomfortable because he was such a famous person.
09:52But it was also a little awkward because until George Magazine, he wasn't famous for actually having done anything.
09:59Ladies and gentlemen, meet George.
10:12So Federal Hall was where George Washington was first inaugurated.
10:21It was the perfect place to launch George Magazine.
10:27Ladies and gentlemen, John Kennedy.
10:32I don't think that I've seen as many of you in one place since they announced the results of my first bar exam.
10:38So it's nice to see you all again.
10:41This was before the era of social media.
10:44You know, magazines drove culture.
10:48We want our readers to be on a first-name basis with the people and the powers that drive American politics.
10:54Who's going to be on the cover of Vogue?
10:56Vanity Fair.
10:57Who was on the cover?
10:58What was inside was something that people talked about.
11:01Magazines were what social media is today.
11:04Ladies and gentlemen, meet George.
11:11Me as George Washington on the cover, I think that was really refreshing.
11:16It was such a new idea.
11:18But seeing John Kennedy Jr. turn that cover around like that, I think, is the thing that sticks in people's mind more than just the cover.
11:26We'll talk about fashion, television and art, all as they relate to the political process.
11:32JFK Jr. was harnessing his celebrity into something meaningful and most people don't bother to do that.
11:41Politics is much too important to be left only to the politicians.
11:49He was a young, good-looking kid and being from that world, obviously he had some thoughts about it.
11:56It would seem logical that he would want to do something like that with the magazine.
12:03But it is also an understanding that his popularity and his celebrity is incredibly important to his success.
12:13He needs that.
12:14Oh, hi. I'm Murphy Brown. You must be my new secretary.
12:17Oh, Murphy, hi!
12:19It was one of those moments, I say, like, when one plus one plus one equals a thousand.
12:24Everything amplified each other.
12:27What the hell is this?
12:30It's a copy of George. It's a new political magazine I'm editing.
12:33I had the guys in the art department mock up a cover with you on it.
12:37It's pretty great, huh?
12:39There was a kind of gusto to it that I liked.
12:41I mean, he went full on to try to do this vision that he had.
12:44And I think where he was clever was he did understand the melding that had begun between politics and entertainment.
12:52Half a million copies of this hip political magazine blew off newsstands nationwide in just four days, making it the most successful debut in magazine history.
13:02You have to catch people's attention. And what we wanted to do is George Washington is an icon and he's an American icon.
13:08And we wanted to use other American icons to kind of play with that iconography.
13:13The first cover, it was very iconic in that it was a very clever idea. And it sort of said in one image, it was not going to be the new republic or the nation.
13:24He wanted to popularize political discourse. And I thought that one cover went a long ways towards that.
13:30Make it entertaining. Make it pop culture. That was unheard of in politics in the 90s. Like Cindy Crawford dressed up as George Washington on the cover of a glossy magazine. That was scandalous.
13:46Do you remember that it was Carolyn's idea?
13:50It was her idea to do Cindy. I will say that I think a lot of the covers were Carolyn's ideas.
13:56She was friends with Herb Ritz, the photographer. She had worked around Herb quite a bit because of Calvin.
14:04In order for a startup magazine to get somebody like Herb Ritz, there would have to have been the relationship. And the relationship was very much Carolyn, for sure.
14:14He photographs women the way they want to look.
14:17It may be one of the most iconic images of me because it wasn't just like a beautiful picture of me in a swimsuit.
14:24I've never done a shoot like that before, and I have never done a shoot like that afterwards.
14:29There'll be my midriff showing. There was a lot of discussion about should we stuff the pants.
14:35At one point, I had a sock in my pants. It's funny, like a supermodel as a sexy George Washington.
14:42Harry Kopelman, who was head of Chanel, he thought John was going to eat our lunch at Vanity Fair, and I thought, well, okay, we'll see how that goes.
14:52I mean, that's what we really aspired to be was the Vanity Fair of politics.
14:58Some pundits once said my grandfather was a great ad man. They said that he sold my father like a box of soap flakes.
15:04My grandfather took great offense, claimed it wasn't true. He said, no, I sold Jack like a Cadillac. Nixon was the box of soap flakes.
15:13John's grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, was determined to have one of his children become president of the United States.
15:22It was originally Joe Jr. who was killed in a tragic mission during World War II, and then once Joe was gone, he transferred all that to John's dad.
15:29He runs for president in 1960, and television is born on the first debate between Kennedy and Nixon.
15:37Kennedy, in that first debate, held his own with Nixon, and Kennedy came across as dynamic and energetic and charismatic, and, you know, the public loved it.
15:48Only you can decide what you want, what you want this country to be.
15:53He was fascinated by that debate, and it was this moment in time that ultimately is what George aspired to create, which is that convergence of politics and popular culture.
16:05We strive to produce a magazine uncolored by a single partisan perspective, even mine.
16:11Please welcome John Kennedy!
16:13So, it was mythically perfect that Junior would begin a magazine about fun celebrities who were interested in politics.
16:23Do you think that you being who you are is the reason why George is now so successful?
16:28Readers might have bought the first one, and maybe even the second one, but, you know, we're now doing our seventh issue.
16:34Mm-hmm.
16:35And I don't think people would stick with us if we weren't somehow delivering what...
16:38What do you keep looking at?
16:39I'm looking technically.
16:40If you look at who is reading political magazines, there's 98% white males.
16:46So, he said, I'm gonna just break it up. I'm gonna be a disruptor.
16:49I want this readership to be half women.
16:52I want people not just on the coast to read this magazine.
16:55I want people in the middle of the country to read it.
16:57And so, that was the magazine that he envisioned.
16:59He needs a broad base of women to be invested in his love life.
17:07He needs a broad swath of men saying, how do I become cool like this guy?
17:12John F. Kennedy, Jr. He is the mastermind of this extraordinary magazine, George, which is a hoot.
17:18How's it selling?
17:19It's selling very well.
17:20Yeah.
17:21Yeah.
17:22There are so many people who wanted John to fail.
17:25You know, George, it's an entertainment magazine.
17:28I mean, it's not highbrow journalism.
17:31Who are these guardians of political purity and what political journalism should be?
17:37And we were a real threat to that.
17:39It's a magazine that started with a theory that there was a way of covering politics, largely as women's magazines cover the world of fashion.
17:46It indulges in gossip. I don't think it has a great deal of depth right now.
17:51I think the media never really took George seriously.
17:53But I think it had a kind of gaiety to it, in the old sense, that I find rather appealing.
17:58You know, people in John Kennedy's magazine.
18:01I think there was a lot of jealousy in the business.
18:04And there was a lot of, who does he think he is?
18:16Mr. President, Marilyn Monroe.
18:19Happy birthday, Mr. President.
18:26I think Biz Mitchell, an editor at the time, went to John and said,
18:31it's Bill Clinton's 50th birthday.
18:33And I think that gave John the idea of having somebody dress up like Marilyn Monroe.
18:40That was just John's mischievousness, for good or for bad.
18:44When he did the Marilyn Monroe cover with Drew Barrymore, that was an intake of breath where you thought, wait a minute, you know, she was having an affair with your father.
18:56Are we now going there? Is this what we're going to do?
18:59David Pecker, being the dealmaker that he is, one thing he agreed to, which I think he maybe later came to regret, is that he gave John complete editorial control.
19:12We're already seeing an immediate return.
19:15George has captured the imaginations of advertisers like no other magazine large in the history of publishing.
19:23No one editor has complete editorial control, even Anna Wintour.
19:28Can we talk about that current cover with Drew Barrymore?
19:31I'm wondering how the rest of the family reacted to that.
19:34I think in the grand scheme of things, it's probably didn't register too high on the, on the richer scale.
19:40Keep in mind, he also once wanted to do a cover of his mother.
19:47And he asked his ex-girlfriend Madonna to do it.
19:50And she said, Johnny boy, I'm not going to play mommy.
19:55Something like that.
19:58John is always pushing the boundaries and he's testing the limits.
20:02It must have been hard for him to grow up with a father who was mythical.
20:05The only things he remembered from his father were the memories that people told him.
20:10He has none of his own memories.
20:12His dad was a trailblazer, the first Catholic president of the United States.
20:18He was pushing boundaries all over the place.
20:21So I think of John as having a little of that.
20:26I think part of the desire to do a political magazine was to be able to learn about his father's presidency in the first person.
20:35And understand it on his own terms.
20:39His search was in search of my father, finding myself.
20:44And George gave him the material or the tools to further engage that search in a different way.
20:52So part of that exploration in our first issue was going down to Alabama to meet George Wallace.
20:58Who had physically stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to prevent students from desegregating.
21:05John's father went on national TV.
21:08He faced therefore a moral crisis as a country and a people.
21:12And for the first time committed to passing a civil rights bill, which ultimately became the civil rights bill of 1964.
21:19So John wanted to understand that moment in time.
21:22But a secondary purpose was that in the late 70s, George Wallace decided that he was no longer going to be a racist.
21:29And he embraced integration.
21:31Governor, may we have a few words for British television, sir?
21:34Yes, sir. What do you want to add?
21:35Tell me, you are still remembered in Britain, sir, as a segregationist. Has that all changed?
21:39I mean, that's been 20 years ago. That's not an issue. Don't even talk about it.
21:43There was something that appealed to John about people who were flexible enough to reconsider hardened views.
21:49And I think he looked at somebody like George Wallace and saw a lot of political courage in being able to see the sins of his past and repent for it.
21:58You know, John's always having this ongoing dialogue with his family and his relationship with his father.
22:05So he wants to go back and interview these people who had been his father's adversaries.
22:10So he goes to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro.
22:15In Cuba, 300,000 militiamen have been mobilized.
22:18The invasion was successful in its early hours, with Castro, of course, blaming the U.S.
22:24One of the biggest blunder of President Kennedy's administration when he launched the Bay of Pigs invasion to try to overthrow Castro.
22:32But Castro's army was waiting on the beaches, which leads to the famous Cuban Missile Crisis.
22:38And we're on the verge of a nuclear holocaust.
22:41So Castro seemed like an odd person for John to interview.
22:46But John goes to Cuba and they wait for the word when they're going to have the interview.
22:51And it goes on for day after day.
22:53John was about to leave Cuba because Castro kept delaying the meeting.
22:57And Carolyn told him, get on that phone and say, you're John Kennedy and you're not leaving until you get an interview.
23:04They waited three days to see Castro, who's supposedly a jerk.
23:09They finally had this dinner that lasted well into the night.
23:13And the one thing that John hated was dinners that went on and on and on.
23:17You know, John had a really short attention span.
23:22So Castro gets his knife and he puts it in a shrimp.
23:27And he goes on for two hours.
23:29He was like going like this and pointing the shrimp at John.
23:32John said to me, all I could think is eat the fucking shrimp.
23:37And Castro leaned into him and said, I could never have allowed Oswald to come back to Cuba.
23:46What he was telling John was he had nothing to do with his father's assassination.
23:50No one else could have had that conversation but John.
23:53I think he definitely wanted to know more about his dad.
23:57He was interviewing Castro, okay, who a lot of people think killed his father.
24:02I think Castro would maybe saddened and frustrated and angered John.
24:09And he was an editor and he decided in that moment not to write about that.
24:14He came back and he's like, we're not running it.
24:18And I had sold advertising against it because it was going to be this historical thing on the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs.
24:24There was sort of this renewed enthusiasm.
24:26And it was like, no, we're not doing that.
24:29So the advertisers were putting pressure on Michael Berman to reveal more of John.
24:36And Shed always wanted George to be essentially a celebrity fan club with John as the main celebrity.
24:44You should have had a great number, too, who would say, no, this is not the best idea or this is a good idea.
24:50Because he was probably just too much in charge.
24:52You want people around you who fold their arms and come in your arms and say, this is a terrible idea.
24:57And then you realize, okay, it's a bad idea.
24:59I remember he went to do an interview with Oliver Stone.
25:13That was a big deal, right?
25:14Because he had done that movie about his dad, about the assassination.
25:19He had gone out with all these wild conspiracy theories.
25:22It was a small conspiracy.
25:24It could involve five to 10 people, maybe 11, to kill the president.
25:29Oliver Stone had a big movie coming out about Richard Nixon, which was right in their wheelhouse, right?
25:34I mean, it's a president and it's going to be a big Hollywood production.
25:38And John said, I'm going to go do this dinner with him.
25:40I'm going to ask him to do the magazine, you know, participate.
25:45But he can't bring up the assassination.
25:47Stone promised he wouldn't say anything to John about his father's assassination.
25:51Of course, they sit down and not long in the conversation, he brings it up.
25:55And John gets up and he leaves on cue.
26:00John was so furious that Stone would do that, especially after he was told not to and agreed not to,
26:08that he cut the whole Stone feature.
26:11And again, we had the cover shot and everything else.
26:15He came back, we're not doing the story.
26:19Michael Berman was, he actually believed this, but he was also channeling some of the complaints that he was getting from his shit themselves,
26:27who just were constantly pushing John to do more.
26:32There was something very personal about it for him, too.
26:36He said, I don't understand why people are so fascinated by my father's death.
26:40He mentioned something about the Oliver Stone movie and he paused and he was like, yeah, Bobby knew everything.
26:46He said it to me, too. He said, the only person who really knows what happened with my father's assassination was my Uncle Bobby.
26:54I was eager to try something different, to see another part of life.
26:58If this was a normal magazine, the issue doesn't just disappear because somebody is personally offended by it.
27:05He had the power to do it because Hachette gave John complete editorial control.
27:12That is unheard of in a magazine company.
27:15It was a problem for Michael.
27:18The experts early on advised us of just one other key point.
27:23Never go into business with a friend.
27:35Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton.
27:41My fellow Americans, thank you for your nomination.
27:50I don't know if I can find a fancy way to say this, but I accept.
28:01The thing that symbolizes to me the celebrity moment of the 96 Democratic National Convention
28:08is the moment that the entire room is doing the Macarena.
28:13It is the most popular song in America.
28:15It involves line dancing.
28:17And we see all of these delegations break out in a round robin of Macarena,
28:23including Hillary Clinton and Al Gore.
28:27Very famously, Al Gore is very stiff.
28:30Would you like to see it again?
28:32It's like this cultural moment where it's like, these are people that are cool,
28:36that have their pulse on the nation.
28:39And we have the President who is one with the American people.
28:44Celebrities, they're just like us.
28:46The President, he's just like us.
28:49But the other part of it is you have the reign of the Kennedy family.
28:55And it is all of the Kennedys.
28:57They are basking in essentially their political dynasty.
29:00In 1996, when I was in Chicago with John, Tom Brokaw invited him to be on primetime.
29:08You have, whether you're in politics or not, one of the most public lives anywhere in the world.
29:13You can't go anywhere without being noticed.
29:16Is that part of the resistance to get involved in election politics?
29:18No, I mean, one of them doesn't really have a lot to do with the other.
29:22But I think certainly in politics, once you begin, you better be in it for the long haul.
29:27And for me, you know, it's important to have a few life experiences before you do that.
29:32That's what John Adams thought politicians should do.
29:34And maybe it's, you know, what will happen to me.
29:36In the lead up to the launch of George magazine, there is an intense amount of scrutiny around what is John F. Kennedy Jr.'s thing going to be?
29:48Is he going to go into politics and policy like the rest of his family?
29:52Is he going to be a lawyer?
29:54Is he going to be a failure?
29:56And so it moves from a conversation around what is he going to do to this is his big crowning achievement.
30:03When we walked out, I'm not exaggerating.
30:06There were probably 2,000 screaming Democratic delegates who thought that Jesus Christ was walking out of the box.
30:14They were grabbing him.
30:15They chased us to the car.
30:19I've got to ask you about the party tonight.
30:21Yes.
30:22I hope you'll come.
30:24Who's going to be there?
30:25I don't know.
30:26How exciting is this going to be?
30:27It's going to be very exciting.
30:28I'm not sure if he's going to be there, but apparently a lot of folks.
30:30It's the 1996 convention where he throws a rager of a party.
30:39It's the kind of party that people are clamoring to get in on the guest list.
30:45Are you excited this week about the connection between entertainment and politics?
30:49Is that what this party is about?
30:50Well, we'll see who shows up, but hopefully it makes it for a good party.
30:55What is that connection?
30:56There was just one event that everybody needed to get into, and that was the George party.
31:01And we held it at the largest venue we could.
31:04They had to close it down because they had been so overwhelmed.
31:07We had everybody from Kevin Costner to Maria Shriver to who's who.
31:14I mean, they were all there.
31:15Movie critic Roger Ebert, comedian Chris Roth.
31:19Democrats have much more fun than Republicans.
31:23John F. Kennedy Jr. was really great at figuring out the zeitgeist, wanting to be part of something new and exciting.
31:29So while you have the Clintons, it's also really about John as well.
31:37He can't step foot on the floor without being mobbed by people.
31:41People are asking for his autograph.
31:44This is a political convention.
31:46John had tremendous charisma and tremendous presence.
31:51He was a natural.
31:53Everybody just assumed that one day he was going to be in the running to be president.
31:57It was important for us just to be able to do it in a private and personal way.
32:18And we wouldn't have been able to do it had we told everybody.
32:21Think about it in the two years after his mom died, he started a magazine and he got married.
32:29This is like sort of like a rebirth for him in a way.
32:34Of course, he had started working on the magazine years earlier.
32:37But it all came together after his mom passed away.
32:43The expectation when they went public was excruciating.
32:49Carolyn and John wanted to stave that off, I think, as long as possible.
32:54And it also felt pretty good to be able to do it and then leave and sort of know that in about, you know, two hours there was going to be a big bomb was going to go off.
33:03Right.
33:06There was always this pressure on John to reveal more of himself.
33:10He would give a piece of himself here and there through his letters from the editor.
33:15The editor's letter is a way to communicate with readers in a way that makes tries to create a dialogue between you and them.
33:21Well, here's a great example.
33:24Sometimes the letters could reflect where his head was at.
33:28The letter from a month after he got married certainly does that.
33:32It's true that political life can be a strain on a marriage.
33:36The husband usually gets all the attention while the wife is expected not only to give up her career, but gaze adoringly during every photo opportunity.
33:44They have little privacy and even less time together.
33:49But in another respect, the crisis and isolation of a public life create a sense of shared burden that can bring a couple closer.
33:57We were just in maybe a little bubble of friendship, family, like we were just protected in a way that just disappeared once they officially were husband and wife.
34:11John's sister, Caroline, had a very big wedding in Hyannis Court.
34:16And I don't think he wanted that wedding.
34:18He wanted it super small and super private.
34:21They decided Cumberland Island because his friend Gogo Ferguson owned a bed and breakfast there.
34:27There were only like 10 people living there.
34:30So they could keep it quiet for as long as possible.
34:34But no one believed that they could pull it off.
34:37They're real talkers, those Kennedys.
34:39So John decided not to tell any of them until like the weekend before.
34:45I think John ended up inviting like one cousin from each arm of his family, like who was one representative from each.
34:54And then, of course, Senator Kennedy and his wife.
34:58His wife's brother was a wedding photographer.
35:01They were able to really keep it quiet.
35:03They kept it so private and purple, they didn't tell half of his family.
35:08His cousin Patrick Kennedy told somebody, even though he was not invited to the wedding, that his cousin John got married yesterday.
35:17My cousin John didn't tie the knot yesterday.
35:19And that's how we found out they did get married.
35:24I think in her mind she wanted to be able to go on her honeymoon and still be private.
35:34Everyone benefited from proximity with John.
35:38Even his cousins.
35:40I think she wasn't happy about that.
35:43It's a side name, it's true.
35:45For all the women out there.
35:46Everyone just went crazy.
35:49The media tension for John and Carolyn got a lot worse when they got married.
35:55Because then everybody wanted to know what about this chick that landed John Kennedy Jr.
36:00Because then it wasn't just one person, it was two people that everybody was really interested in.
36:0564 degrees, beautiful day, sunny skies in New York.
36:17They went on a honeymoon, but you're going to have to see pictures of them because they got to come back to New York and to Tribeca where they live eventually.
36:24Hold it please for us, look this way, oh, oh, oh, oh.
36:28Nice and see, we're not getting it, we're not going.
36:30No one knew that they were getting married, they get married secretly.
36:33They come back from their honeymoon and suddenly, you know, they come home to an apartment that's being staked out by 30 paparazzi whose livelihood depends upon getting a shot.
36:44So I just ask, um, any, you know, privacy.
36:48Guys, can we get back up around here?
36:50Give her a seat, please.
36:52Go back up.
36:54There's stories that he would say to her, once we get married this will stop.
36:59And it didn't stop.
37:02It got worse.
37:04Come on, John.
37:05Well, she's on the beach alone.
37:06Let's start taking photographs!
37:08We're not getting it, we're not getting it, John.
37:09Are there any little Johns on the way?
37:10John, we're not getting you.
37:11Can you look?
37:12Carolyn?
37:13Back up and look this way.
37:14Carolyn?
37:15Carolyn?
37:16Look this way.
37:17John?
37:18John?
37:19Whoa, whoa.
37:20When they emerge as a couple and their wedding photos are in every major magazine across the country, newspapers treated as like front page news, that little John has grown up and is getting married.
37:38John!
37:39John!
37:40John!
37:41How are you doing?
37:42How are you doing?
37:43How are you doing?
37:44How are you doing?
37:45How are you doing?
37:46How are you doing?
37:47How are you doing?
37:48There's a kind of frenzy around this because everybody wants to be in on the details.
37:53They want to know the secrets.
37:55Kennedy confronted a pair of photographers.
37:57In the end, they got no privacy.
38:00They had a lot of hostile engagements with the paparazzi, but it was more her than him.
38:08And, you know, I wish that she would have handled that better because if you're marrying John Kennedy Jr., they're gonna want your picture.
38:14John understood the role of the paparazzi, which was, I think, why it was so hard when Carolyn had such a visceral reaction to it.
38:22He didn't like it, but he understood it was part and parcel of being John Kennedy.
38:28John!
38:29John!
38:30John!
38:31John had had a lifetime of training.
38:33For Carolyn, she worked in a PR department, and what she did was control the optics around the Calvin Klein brand.
38:41And I think the struggle was she realized she had absolutely no control over this as it related to her.
38:47And I think that was most difficult.
38:50You guys, you got enough.
38:52Why don't you leave now?
38:53There's certainly a gendered element to this.
38:56They treat her poorly in part because she is a woman.
39:01Yeah.
39:02Sure.
39:03She was a nice queen.
39:04What?
39:05Because she didn't sit down and give interviews?
39:06Too fucking bad.
39:08She didn't want to.
39:09That was her choice.
39:11She's a grown woman.
39:14And here's Carolyn Bassett, who's like, I don't want to be a celebrity.
39:19Therefore, I do not want to give you access.
39:22And so the press and the tabloids say, well, we have no choice but to provoke you.
39:27Mom, please.
39:28You're okay.
39:29Princess Diana was living that struggle so publicly, her fights with the paparazzi during that period.
39:40I'm sure Carolyn was watching it and feeling like she was the American version of it.
39:46And it probably just heightened her sense of isolation and frustration.
39:51Diana and Carolyn Bassett lived very, very parallel paths.
40:00The actual reality of living with that was something that came with so much pressure and so much ugliness.
40:13And then Diana dies, which really kind of set things off.
40:20The people's princess is dead across the country, across the world.
40:24Millions are trying to come to terms with the awful tragedy of Diana's untimely death.
40:32I was in Aspen when Diana's car crashed and Carolyn was in New York.
40:37And I remember being on the phone with her during the funeral.
40:42I don't know, it was like a very profound effect.
40:45I mean, Princess Diana was, you know, she was our age.
40:49Pretty much.
40:53And the underlying way in which she died, which was being literally hounded to death by paparazzi.
41:00And that lesson was definitely not lost on Carolyn.
41:04I just remember crying the whole way home thinking of John, like, please be safe, be safe.
41:16The only time we've seen a mass mourning in any way to touch Diana really was the death of JFK.
41:22It was a shock because now this is proof. This is like, like, this is what could happen if things get out of hand.
41:35You know, they were looking for houses outside New York because they were talking about family and having kids.
41:44And Carolyn just couldn't see raising kids in the city and she wanted privacy.
41:51Princess Diana was trying to get away from the paparazzi.
41:56John was always trying to get away from the paparazzi.
42:00And he, you know, that's why he loved to fly.
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