Daryl Hannah’s Scathing ‘Love Story’ Takedown Shows Ryan Murphy’s Big Biopic Problem | Commentary
After a 2025 plagued by bad reviews, Ryan Murphy must have been relieved to see the critical consensus swing back in his favor with the release of FX’s “Love Story.”
The true-life drama, inspired by the troubled romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, has been embraced by audiences and critics. While Murphy himself is not actively involved with the show as a writer or director — its showrunner, Connor Hines, is also its creator, working from a non-fiction book by Elizabeth Beller — it’s still a win for the Murphy brand: an elegant and moving romantic drama that brings to the forefront two oft-misunderstood tabloid magnets and gives them life beyond the headlines.
That’s not a courtesy “Love Story” extends to every real-life person featured in its drama.
Actress Daryl Hannah, best known for “Splash” and “Kill Bill,” dated Kennedy for more than five years. Their relationship was reportedly stymied by his mother Jackie Kennedy’s disapproval. In the decades since Kennedy’s death, Hannah has not spoken ill of her ex or given any details of the romance. “Love Story” decided to fill in the gaps by making Hannah a screeching, drug-addled villain. As played by Dree Hemingway, Daryl is cruel, manipulative and deeply selfish. She seems to love cocaine more than John, and is so hungry for an engagement that she plants stories in the press about their relationship. It’s a curiously callous depiction of someone who had no real reason to be treated as such.
Hannah certainly did not approve and called out the show in an essay published Friday in The New York Times.
She wrote, “The choice to portray her [Hannah] as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident […] 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. I have never planted any story in the press. 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.”
One can hardly blame Hannah for being so insulted by the show’s depiction of her, especially since it’s the most glaring fault of an otherwise good series. It’s odd that “Love Story,” which seeks to otherwise reject the ways the press flattened Carolyn Bessette into a fetish-slash-punching bag, would need to make Hannah into a cartoon of a selfish shrew. She feels like a character from a trashier Murphy endeavor, more “Nip/Tuck” than “Love Story.” It’s the addition that feels the most like something Murphy would do, even though he’s not outwardly in charge of this particular series.
But Hannah’s disappointment is also not unique to a wider issue that has plagued Murphy-verse programming for years. Hannah is but the latest puppet on the stage whose real pain has been remolded into a gawking spectacle for the masses under the guise of prestige.
It all started out so positively, with the first two seasons of “American Crime Story” giving Murphy’s formula a much-needed shot in the arm. Sticking to recent history and extensively documented events kept Murphy from straying into lunacy, and his team found gold through cultural reassessments of figures like Marcia Clark and Gianni Versace. Things soon fell apart though, as Murphy accrued more creative control and leaned in harder on the more garish aspects of true crime.
All three seasons of “Monster,” focused on various serial killers and their hyper-stylized obscenities, were criticized for their objectification of the many victims’ pain. Eric Perry, a relative of one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims, Errol Linsday, decried the first season for its portrayal of the murders and subsequent memeification of Dahmer himself. With the second season, focused on Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers’ family and relatives issued a statement calling the show “a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare.” Outside of the murder world, with the first season of “Feud,” Murphy was sued by Hollywood icon Olivia de Havilland for inaccurately portraying her and using her likeness without permission, but the court had the case dismissed on the grounds that no person can “own history.”
We could be here all day nitpicking at the weird changes to history or questionable focuses in Murphy biopic productions — “Love Story” also leers over the death of Jackie Kennedy in a way that feels close to ghoulish, for instance. But the issue isn’t about listing truths versus creative reinterpretations. Artists can and should have the freedom to explore real-life topics and people without having to slavishly recreate history or adhere to the biased demands of certain subjects. One of the reasons most movie biopics are so dull now is because they have to work within the narrative limitations put upon them by stars and branding companies eager to maintain a certain image.
With Murphy, however, it often feels as though he confuses artistic freedom with the God-given right to troll. His responses to the criticisms of those he depicts in his shows are often snide, and sometimes outright nasty. Regarding those comments from the Menendez supporters of “Monster” Season 2, a show that baselessly implies that the brothers had some sort of incestuous relationship, Murphy lambasted them and said his series was “the best thing that’s happened to [the Menendez brothers] in 30 years.” Jack Schlossberg, the nephew of John F. Kennedy Jr., has been vocal in his condemnation of “Love Story”, which Murphy said was “an odd choice to be mad about your relative that you don’t remember.” Even if Schlossberg didn’t have memories of his uncle — he shared many anecdotes of his childhood with the man after Murphy’s cruel comments — it’s a baffling claim for the showrunner to make. Are the Kennedys meant to be grateful for his show like he believes the Menendez brothers should?
“In a digital era, entertainment often becomes collective memory,” Hannah wrote. “Real names are not fictional tools. They belong to real lives.” While it’s not the duty of fiction to constantly remind its audience that the thing they’re watching isn’t real (even if you are advertising it as “the true story”), surely there’s some level of care to be taken in what you put onto the screen. Certainly, Hannah has been subjected to a lot of harassment and abuse following “Love Story,” rooted not in her life or work but the Murphy-verse’s pageantry of it. This, coupled with the Murphy brand’s extensively documented appropriation of victims’ trauma and Murphy’s own snide dismissal of criticism, reads as a highly irresponsible approach to storytelling. It’s also, frankly, lazy as hell.
At what point does a quick pre-show disclaimer about how “events were changed for dramatic purposes” become a get-out-of-jail-free card for a creative team to treat history and people’s lived experiences with impunity? Did the “Love Story” team think Daryl Hannah should feel nothing over the decision to rewrite her life with her one-time partner as a whirlwind of coke and cruelty? As she pointed out in her essay, the misogyny of it all is telling.
One awaits Murphy’s inevitable rebuttal of Hannah’s feelings and a weak justification for turning her into a coke addict who embodies all the most cliched sexist tropes of the evil ex-girlfriend. Team Murphy could have had one of their best shows yet had they not put a quota on their empathy towards their subjects. As it is, it’s like they cannot help themselves.
“Love Story” releases new episodes Thursdays on FX and Hulu.
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