Love Story actress Dree Hemingway is reacting to Daryl Hannah’s scathing criticism of how she is portrayed in the FX drama.
“I respect her and it’s a sensitive thing to play somebody, a real person,” Hemingway, who plays Hannah in the show, told Entertainment Tonight at the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, March 15.
She added, “I mean, all I can speak to is me as an actress, but I love her. I love her.”
The real Hannah, 65, recently penned an essay for the New York Times criticizing the drama’s depiction of her relationship with the late John F. Kennedy Jr. The first season of Love Story — an anthology series from prolific television producer Ryan Murphy — charts JFK Jr.’s relationship with his wife, Carolyn Bessette.
Hemingway, 38, plays Hannah in early episodes, depicting the actress as JFK Jr.’s previous girlfriend before meeting Bessette.
“I have long believed that engaging with distortion often amplifies it,” Hannah, 65, wrote. “But a recent tragedy-exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and presents her as me. The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident.”
“Storytelling requires tension. It often requires an obstacle. But a real, living person is not a narrative device,” she continued. “There is also a gendered dimension to this thinking. Popular culture has long elevated certain women by portraying others as rivals, obstacles or villains. Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?”
According to the Splash and Kill Bill actress, Love Story is not “remotely accurate” in its “representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John.”
Hannah also called out specific moments in the show that she described as “untrue.”
“I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial,” she wrote. “I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s. It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”
In an interview with Nylon magazine earlier in March, Hemingway said she tried to reach out to Hannah after she was cast in the role.
“It was really just a love note to her saying how much I admired her, how much I’ve admired her as an actress and a woman, prior to even being cast as Daryl,” Hemingway said.
“[I wrote how] much I really just fell in love with her as a human being. I watched interviews and that feeling of really spending time with somebody you’ve never spent time with, but researching,” the actress added. “That was really the note, and just not like ‘Hey, I want to meet you or talk to you.’ Just, like, ‘It was really an honor of my lifetime to be able to portray you and research you.’”
