BORROWED HISTORY

As Hollywood turns real events and lives into prestige drama, one Kennedy asks what's owed when fame, tragedy and legacy are treated as raw material

- - BY JENNIFER WIGNALL

THE GUY KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT WHAT HE'S TALKING about," Jack Schlossberg told CBS News' Sunday Morning of Ryan Murphy, the executive producer of FX's Love Story, "and he's making a ton of money on a grotesque display of someone else's life." Schlossberg, the nephew of JFK Jr., described the series—based on his uncle's relationship with Carolyn Bessette and their deaths—as "fiction with a capital F."

Schlossberg is not alone in his assessment. As Love Story has become one of FX's most-watched series, questions about who bears the cost of dramatizing real lives have followed it. In a New York Times essay published early March, actress Daryl Hannah—portrayed in the series—criticized it for depicting behavior she disputes, warning that audiences often absorb such portrayals as fact.

Schlossberg also showed concern for what had been done with its proceeds. He said he hoped Murphy would donate some of the profits to the JFK Library. "But he's not," he added. "He's making money." Schlossberg does not appear to be calling for the project to be shut down, nor does he frame the show as defamatory. Instead, he is asking what obligations, if any, accompany the conversion of another family's legacy into a commercial asset—who benefits, and what, if anything, is owed in return.

It's not the first time Schlossberg has called Murphy out about the project. When he suggested on Instagram last year that Murphy donate profits to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Murphy replied, "I absolutely will." Newsweek could not verify if a donation had been made.

Newsweek reached out to Murphy and Schlossberg via email for comment.