The FX limited series Love Story has given audiences a riveting look at one of America’s most iconic love stories — but it’s the unforgettable portrayal of Ethel Kennedy by veteran actress Jessica Harper that has viewers talking long after each episode ends. From the moment Harper steps into the dining room at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, the air changes. The table goes quiet. And Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, played with striking vulnerability by Sarah Pidgeon, suddenly realizes she is no longer just meeting her boyfriend’s aunt — she is facing a test she never knew she had to study for.
The keyword here is transformation: Jessica Harper Ethel Kennedy Love Story is a casting story unlike any other in recent television history, and it’s one that is earning Harper some of the best reviews of her already extraordinary career.
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A Horror Legend Steps Into the Kennedy Legacy
Jessica Harper is not a name newcomers to Hollywood might immediately recognize, but for fans of genre cinema, she is a true icon. She starred in Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise and Dario Argento’s Suspiria — two stone-cold classics of 1970s genre filmmaking. Her credits also include My Favorite Year, Safe, and Minority Report. She has built a career on characters who carry something quietly dangerous beneath the surface, and that quality makes her casting as Ethel Kennedy feel not just inspired but almost inevitable.
Series creator Connor Hines admits he was not familiar with Harper’s horror genre legacy when her name first came up. But her audition stopped him cold. He later described sitting by the monitor on her first day of filming and thinking it was “spectacular.” He went home that night and immediately began writing more material for her character, determined to keep her on screen as long as possible. That kind of reaction from a showrunner says everything about what Harper brought to the role from the very beginning.
The Role That Felt Like Karma
Harper herself describes landing the role as feeling “karmically correct.” She was on Cape Cod — just a short drive from the real-life Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port — when she received the offer. The coincidence felt significant to her, and she leaned into it as a sign that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Her preparation was as disciplined as the character she was playing. Harper turned to Rory Kennedy’s 2012 HBO documentary Ethel as her primary research tool. The documentary contains long, uninterrupted stretches of the real Ethel Kennedy simply sitting in a chair and speaking about her life. For Harper, this was invaluable. It gave her a window into Ethel’s physical bearing, the particular quality of her voice, and the way she held herself — what Harper describes as a posture that was almost regal. From those hours of observation, she built a character from the inside out.
The Dinner Scene That Stopped America in Its Tracks
The centerpiece of Harper’s performance so far in the series is the dinner scene in Episode 5, titled “Battery Park.” Carolyn arrives at the Kennedy compound for the first time, and John offers her only the lightest of warnings: call his aunt “Mrs. Kennedy,” not by her first name. What follows is something executive producer Brad Simpson has called an accurate depiction of what Carolyn actually experienced in real life.
Ethel is the undisputed matriarch of the Kennedy family at this point in the story. After Jackie Kennedy’s death, she holds the seat of authority with quiet but unmistakable firmness. She controls the compound’s rules with precision — no coffee after breakfast, bags moved to separate rooms so couples don’t sleep together, a sign-up sheet for breakfast each morning, and dinner conversation that veers directly into trade embargoes and senate seats. Carolyn, a Calvin Klein publicist with no reason to have studied Foreign Affairs magazine, is left exposed and adrift while John does nothing to intervene.
The scene plays, as Pidgeon herself noted, like something out of a horror film. That is not a coincidence. Director Crystle Roberson Dorsey made a deliberate creative decision to seat Carolyn far from John during the dinner, amplifying her sense of isolation and vulnerability. The physical distance at the table becomes a metaphor for everything Carolyn doesn’t yet know about the world she has entered.
Harper, reflecting on that scene with characteristic humor, mentioned that by the time the cameras rolled she may have had a little bourbon — which, she admitted with a laugh, might have made her portrayal of Ethel slightly testier than the real woman would have been. But that edge served the performance well. Ethel, in Harper’s reading, is testing Carolyn. She wants to see how much mettle John’s girlfriend has, whether she can hold her own under pressure. By the end of the evening, Ethel does warm toward her — but the first encounter is, as Harper put it, “a little icy.”
What Jessica Harper Understands About the Kennedys
One of the most compelling dimensions of Harper’s approach to this role is her personal connection to the Kennedy era. She grew up watching the Kennedy family rise, watching them inhabit the White House, and experiencing — as so many Baby Boomers did — the shattering shock of JFK’s assassination. She remembers where she was standing when it happened. She remembers how it felt. For Harper, the Kennedys were never just political figures; they were something closer to American royalty, and the tragedies that followed made them permanently unforgettable.
That emotional foundation gives her portrayal of Ethel a weight that goes beyond performance technique. She is not simply playing a character — she is honoring a woman whose life was shaped by extraordinary grief and extraordinary resilience. Ethel Kennedy lost her husband Robert F. Kennedy to assassination in 1968 and went on to raise eleven children while remaining one of the most recognizable and formidable figures in American public life.
Harper is particularly thoughtful about the role the show plays for younger audiences who may not know Ethel’s story. For millennials and Gen Z viewers, Love Story may be their first meaningful introduction to who Ethel Kennedy was and why she mattered. Harper sees that as one of the most valuable things the series does — it brings a new generation into contact with a woman whose connection to American history is profound.
A Parallel Between Two Outsiders
One of the most surprising insights Harper offers about her character is a parallel she sees between Ethel and Carolyn. On the surface, these two women could not be more different — separated by generation, aesthetic, temperament, and background. But Harper points out that both of them were non-Kennedys who married into one of the most lionized and scrutinized families in American history. Both of them had to figure out how to inhabit a world that was not built for them and carry that weight with dignity. That shared experience — of being an outsider in a family that the entire country has opinions about — gives their dynamic a complexity that elevates the dinner scene beyond mere conflict.
The Bigger Picture: Why Love Story Is Resonating
Love Story airs on FX and streams on Hulu, releasing new episodes on Thursdays. The series has drawn significant viewership and strong critical response since its premiere on February 12, 2026. Jessica Harper appears in three episodes, and producers have signaled that Episode 8 will bring the tensions around the Hyannis Port rules to a direct confrontation between John and Carolyn. Audiences who found the dinner scene in Episode 5 riveting will find the stakes escalating further in the weeks ahead.
The show works because it treats its subjects — both the famous Kennedys and the woman who married into their world — as fully human. Jessica Harper’s portrayal of Ethel Kennedy is central to that achievement. She brings grandeur without caricature, authority without cruelty, and history without lecture. In her hands, Ethel Kennedy is not a footnote to someone else’s story. She is a force of nature at the center of her own.
If you’ve been captivated by Jessica Harper’s performance as Ethel Kennedy in Love Story, share your reaction in the comments — and keep watching Thursdays on FX and Hulu to see how the story unfolds.