00:00We're the team from Love Story, and this is Deadline Contenders Television, the nominee's studio.
00:20Well, it's very challenging playing a historical individual, certainly one who's so well-known and well-regarded.
00:29I think the biggest challenge was just for myself to find the humanity in it and keep it real and
00:36honest while also navigating how people perceive him and hold him in their hearts.
00:46When you get a script Love Story, what was the love story between JFK Jr. and Carolyn as your research
00:52and everything that you threw into this showed you?
00:55What was it to you?
00:56I think that they were really, in the beginning, like two ships in the night that really couldn't forget each
01:02other.
01:03There was just this magnetism between them, which was such a fun thing to explore with Sarah.
01:10I think there were, in terms of understanding Carolyn's relationship to the press and paparazzi, it was very interesting to
01:18have filmed in New York and out on the streets in the same restaurants or, you know, on North Moor
01:24where Carolyn and John themselves walked and dined.
01:29And there were, you know, everyone has a cell phone, so there was sort of that understanding of being watched.
01:36And paparazzi sometimes would show up to our set, which admittedly is an incredibly different experience than Carolyn and John
01:43existing in their lives 30 years ago while we're making a television show.
01:47But I think that started to sort of wake up my nervous system, you know, the awareness that someone is
01:53watching you or filming you, capturing you beyond the film camera that's in your face for the television show.
02:00So it, in some ways, I think because my nervous system reacted, in my head, I thought, well, this is
02:09akin to what she might have been experiencing.
02:12And I think that was something that I found really exciting and an important part of her story to share,
02:19because I think especially, you know, 30 years on, we can reflect on that, the advent of paparazzi culture in
02:27a very different way.
02:28But Carolyn never spoke on the record, so in a way to being able to showcase what that experience might
02:36have been for her, I felt was, you know, through me and this iteration of Carolyn setting the record straight,
02:44I guess, in some ways.
02:47But yeah, it's funny, while I think we have made progress, it is, the headlines of today are not that
02:56dissimilar from the things that I read about Carolyn in the 90s.
02:59You know, Ryan is such a world builder, and the creative team behind, like, set decoration, to be in period
03:08-correct clothes, with period-correct cars, and period-correct posters on, like, what do you call it when they...
03:17Paste...
03:17Like, when they're pasting them up?
03:20Paste posters for, like, concerts and stuff.
03:21It was really neat to be in that world in the 90s.
03:25I mean, the buildings haven't changed, so everything else, like, stop signs, garbage cans.
03:31Yeah, the traffic lights were different.
03:32The traffic lights were different.
03:33It was really, really, really neat to be transported to a different time, New York in the 90s, like, these
03:39small sections.
03:40Yeah, I think it adds an element of reality that you don't have to rely on one's imagination to provide.
03:48You know, you sort of are just immediately thrust into these, I mean, this different time, this different world.
03:55And, yeah, I don't know, Constance, were you in New York in the 90s?
03:59Yes.
04:00You weren't born yet.
04:01No.
04:02Oh, Sarah, I love you.
04:05No, I was.
04:06It was, and I think that's, like, those of us that were alive during that time, it's, like, what the
04:12show has definitely brought back was this simpler times, right?
04:17No cell phones, everybody reading newspapers, and actually reading, right?
04:22Like, reading books, and you saw so much of that in the show that I think we all forgot from
04:28whence we came.
04:29We've now come so far from that that I know that's definitely something that was, like, the most fun part
04:36to watch as a viewer.
04:38You know, and, like, my 18-year-old learning about these characters for the first time and going, wow, that's
04:44New York in the 90s?
04:45It looked so cool.
04:47It was cool.
04:48It was, yeah.
04:50I think for me, because there wasn't as much known about Anne as there was the majority of the other
04:57people in the show, it gave me a freedom to, all I had to do was look like the photo,
05:04and then everything else, I could basically give her the power, give her a voice, give a voice to the
05:12voiceless,
05:12which is also a little bit of what happened with Carolyn, is we didn't get to know her that way,
05:18and so I think this being based on the book and this being very much a little bit more of
05:24Carolyn's point of view is the side of the story we never knew.
05:28And so I felt incredibly honored and a lot of pressure to make sure that whatever I did with her
05:38was just to make her somebody that nobody would forget, and that to me was her strength, her knowledge, her
05:47wisdom, being a mother, showing the grief, showing all the underbelly of what everything was so shiny.
05:55You know, she kind of was able to say, well, here's how it really felt, or what it was like,
06:02as we would like to believe, right?
06:04So that was where that came into play, and I think the little that I did know mattered.
06:11Elementary teacher, check.
06:13You know, she had a very dry sense of humor.
06:16Check.
06:16You know, she was very strong.
06:18White Plains, New York.
06:19I was like, okay, okay, okay, got that.
06:21Put it all in there, and then let's just go.
06:24Let's just see what happens.
06:26There is an episode in this series, episode eight, that is completely apart, really.
06:33They call it a bottle episode.
06:34Just learned that term.
06:37And it really is intense.
06:40It's almost like watching a play between the two of you.
06:43How did you approach doing that particular episode, that big argument they get into and all of that?
06:48Well, I mean, the episode itself was kind of written like a play.
06:54Was it two acts?
06:56Yeah, two, kind of three, because there were the tableaus, and then you're running, and...
07:04But we were getting...
07:07There was...
07:07There were a lot of conversations around that episode, sort of leading up and throughout filming,
07:12of what...
07:13Because it was such a...
07:16I think that's where we got...
07:20Most in the weeds with Carolyn and John and, like, the intricacies of their relationship
07:24and the obstacles that they tried to overcome together, and sometimes independently of each other,
07:32that I think production was...
07:36And our writing team, and ourselves included, were trying to figure out what the right tone of...
07:42What that sort of, like, big fight was, and what the argument is, and how extreme does it get?
07:50Where does the love come in?
07:52So we were sort of editing and workshopping it, you know...
07:56Sometimes the night before, we would shoot the particular scene.
08:00We were memorizing.
08:02We would get...
08:02We got, like, 17 pages the night before, which was so wild, but I kind of enjoyed it.
08:09We crushed it.
08:11Yeah, we did.
08:12I think also, coming at the end of such a long production, that was our second-to-last episode,
08:16and it was...
08:17I found it sort of refreshing to have this, a bit of pressure...
08:21A new challenge.
08:21A new challenge to take on, and because it was all shot in one location,
08:27not only were we able to have such long takes, because the scenes were so long,
08:31but we also had this, sort of the added challenge of figuring out how to accommodate the camera
08:38and the boom operator, because it's this sort of narrow railroad apartment
08:43and trying to wake up different spaces of an apartment that we'd seen a lot at that point.
08:48But I loved that episode.
08:50The maneuvering around the apartment was always interesting.
08:54The dancing, but they were behind the scenes moving the furniture so the camera could get around.
08:59Yeah, because there's like 40 crew guys in there.
09:01Yeah, it gets really tight really quickly.
09:03But it was a really neat experience to do pretty much a whole episode in one location
09:11over the period of, what was it, a year and a half?
09:14It was also nice to be, I think up until then, you're not, as an actor, witnessing every scene in
09:22the episode
09:22because you're not there for it.
09:24So to be able to really understand the episode in its entirety, I think also it was helpful
09:31in terms of navigating the questions that we were trying to answer as a production of like,
09:35how do we want to showcase this part of the relationship?
09:39Yeah, it really felt like, I think something that was such an intense collaboration
09:44and really a great representation of what the show meant to me in making it.
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