Backstage With: ‘Love Story’ EPs Brad Simpson + Nina Jacobson

There's still no substitute for being in the room with an actor or or a handful of actors and doing real chemistry tests, but real readings in the room um in person. And I think that, you know, it's one of the it's it seems like such a gift. - [music] - Hi Brad and Nina. Thank you so much for joining and congratulations on everything including all the Emmy love. - Thank you. It's great. Um it's great to have the love of the viewers and the love of the academy. - Yes indeed. This is definitely a show that even though the last episode aired so many months ago, I feel like people are still talking about it. It's still in the ether. It must be so gratifying for you. Well, except for that I I I was told that we're to blame for an uptick in smoking. Apparently, more people are smoking as a result of our show. So, now I feel a little guilty. The one thing from the 90s that I really don't miss, I think it's safe to say. [laughter] Yeah. Um, well, before we uh jump into Love Story, can you just sort of zoom out for a second and talk a little bit about how it is that you got involved with the project? I know that you've worked with Ryan Murphy a lot and what your responsibilities were as EPs for this particular limited series. - Ryan approached us, Scott, I don't have a year. You know, we we we work on and on um on several shows with Ryan. It's been a really satisfying partnership and um we had done American Crime Story with us and he approached us with the idea of doing a series of classic love stories, great love stories. And the first one he wanted to do was JFK Jr. and Carolyn bet. And you know, Ryan has a great instinct for um pop culture, for things that get the zeitgeist. He himself started out in magazines as a journalist. Um, and he had said to us at the time, you know, Johnf Kenny Jr. is our only version of American royalty. He's the only real sort of like equivalent to William and Harry that we have. And Nina and I were entranced by this idea, but also didn't really know where the story was yet. And really, it was Elizabeth Beller's book that focused on Carolyn bet and told the story through her eyes that really opened up, I think, for all of us what it could be. And we centered the show on all the characters, but really on the idea of an outsider coming into this kingdom. It's a classic story of somebody who, you know, she wasn't to the man or born. She actually came from a middle-class family. She was Italian-American, even though people thought she was this sort of wasp ideal. And she entered into this love story, but also entered into this family and into this fame that she wasn't quite ready for. And you know really the more we read and the more we investigated the more we realized that this was a classic love story that had all the elements of you know the the romcoms but also the tragic love stories that we all grew up watching. the different projects that we do with Ryan, there are ver a variety of ways in which the scripts get developed and in in this case uh we you know we were working very closely you know with our writing writer room with Connor and you know Julie and Kim. So we had like our writer room that you know met daily at our offices and we were very engaged in the research and the breaking of the story figuring out how to take all of the things from all the different sources including the book and consolidate it into like the most emotional and you know authentic version of the love story that we could tell. And so we were very involved in that. And then, you know, Ryan is a, you know, a great partner and collaborator when it comes to to cast. And so, uh, finding, you know, our our cast and pulling this cast together and trying to really, uh, you know, do all the chemistry tests to try to find the right pairing of, um, you know, both John John Kennedy Jr., but also obviously finding, um, our perfect Carolyn, you know, all of that. Uh, we worked very closely with Ryan and then for most of And then for production, Brad was here in New York the whole time. I was actually we we had to tag team because I was on the Hunger Games in Europe while this was shooting in New York. So, um, you know, but it's been a very close and, you know, cozy in uh, collaboration from the beginning on this one. - I'm curious into like how you approach this particular story. They didn't do a ton of press, especially Carolyn. I feel like I found like a YouTube clip of like 15 seconds of her talking. So, with that in mind, like how do you approach a project like this where the history of the couple ends and the interpretation begins? - I would say you're right that there is not Caroline Caroline and her life didn't do really any recorded interviews. We had that snippet of her voice, which was all Sarah Pigeon could go after, but there was actually a lot written about them because they were so famous at the time. And then in the aftermath of their tragic deaths, you know, there were ton a lot of books, you know, all of them pretty serious. You know, there was an oral history of JFK Jr. that included, you know, massive sections on them. A lot of the friends gave interviews and we take pride in thoroughly researching our shows. Yes, they are dramatizations, but actually, you know, and you have to, you know, imagine, you know, what the specifics of conversations are like, but in almost every episode, you know, what you see comes from, you know, real history, comes from, you know, not just Elizabeth Beller's books, but many of the contemporaneous accounts, but also other books that were out there. And, um, and we knew from the beginning what we wanted, I think we wanted our structure to be. We wanted to have a classic structural romance. Um, and we wanted to do something that you can't really do in a movie, which is, you know, we episode five, which is the engagement. Episode six is the wedding, takes you up through what the be the end of a traditional romantic movie. And then we were able to go be in the marriage and see what it's like and have the tone shift a little bit and see what it was like for her to suddenly become the most famous person in America or in the world, but also see what it's like to have issues in your marriage that everyone has but have the microscope of the press on them. And we really heavily on a full-time researcher and a lot of material. So while you know we it was dramatized it is you know it is based on you know what we know to be um you know the facts of their life. - I think that that covers a lot of it. I mean one of the things I I also just this is a little to the side of it but I found that I one of the things we discovered because you always discover things when you make a show and then you share it with people that you didn't necessarily see when you were making it would would resonate. But I actually think that you know the experience there was so much nostalgia around this show and this period and we were very struck by the fact that like we have the nostalgia because we were around then but so many young people who weren't around at that time have a nostalgia for a time they never experienced and there's something I think particular about Caroline that really resonated with people in that you know the loss of privacy the loss of feeling that you had control over your own narrative. I think that um the fact of like being always, how would I say it, like always viewed but never seen. Um that that I think really spoke to people about the times we live in now and that the kind of overwhelming nature of of social media, the role it plays in our lives and its complete absence in this story where the tabloids take the place. still the monoculture. But I was very struck by how much I think people ultimately related to her in a way where on the one hand her situation seems like impossible to imagine yourself marrying into American royalty, but on the other hand there's something so poignant about watching her crumble under scrutiny in that kind of magnifying glass that I think people really identified with her much more than I think I I we ever imagined at that level. - Sure. Um, all right. Well, let's get into the casting. Um, I know you cast a very wide net trying to find the two leads. When you were going into something like this, did did you seek out unknowns so they could disappear more into the roles of these icons? Well, I would say one of the best and favorite things about our collaboration with Ryan is that, you know, with somebody like Ryan, his brand is so powerful and so has so much impact and import in the marketplace that you are given the freedom to look for unknowns and to kind of find new faces and to cast exactly the person who feels right for the part as opposed to a person who has a huge following to bring to a show. And um you know, Ryan from the beginning always wanted to new newer faces, wanted people who would be able to disappear into the roles as you've said. And um it was really liberating, you know, to be able to to know that like we could just look for the two perfect people and that there were no other factors um to consider other than whether they were right for the role. Can you talk a little bit about more about how you found Paul Anthony Kelly? Um, you know, John F. Kenny Jr. was so handsome, so charismatic, and he wasn't an actor. Um, he had it all despite that just who he was. Like, how did you find Paul? What made him so right for the role? Other than the fact that he also happened to be extremely good-looking, - there's a it was a nailbiter. Um, the show almost didn't happen because we were still trying to find this actor three weeks before production. We always thought she would be tough to find and we would have a choice of different hunky guys with chops and instead we cast Sarah Pigeon very early on and then went into reading I would say you know we read Courtney Nicole sorry Courtney and Nicole Courtney Bright and Nicole Daniels our you know longtime partners on Crime Story you know scouted Australia the scout they scouted England they scouted modeling agencies We went to the drama schools. We saw every guy who's white between 25 and 37 um who could act and some who couldn't act. Um we were really on a hunt and you realized a couple things. One is that the sort of classic Tom Cruz Richard Gear American hunk with a hairy chest has been a little bit out of vogue. um you know those sort of like that type of guy who was very prevalent in the 80s and who John was really in the tradition of was hard to find people with that physique and that body type. Um but also John was so specific. I mean this is the sexiest man in America year after year and we would test people who were great actors who were good with Sarah and you'd realize that like they didn't have that typo negative blood quality the universal donor. Everyone just agreed that he was charismatic and sexy in a very specific way. And we got closer and closer. And then we just said to them, "Let's go back through the slush pile. Let's see everybody that we haven't seen." Ryan really wanted this. I went to New York with a pile of resumes and head shot. And we poured back over them again. And it was Ryan who picked Paul out and said, "Yeah, what about this guy?" You know, and Paul just, you know, he had no IMDb page. He didn't have um an online presence. He had been trying to make it as an actor and had just moved back to Portland to um to sort of say, "Well, maybe this isn't going to happen." And we flew him down to LA and we had a real star is born uh you know, we tested him um oldfashioned way with sets and real cameras with Sarah. And you know, I've told this story before that someone from Hair and Makeup walked up to me and said, "If you don't cast that guy, you're crazy." And we also, you [clears throat] know, the women, the gay men were all gathered around sort of staring, mesmerized as he read. And we knew it was him. And Ryan let Sarah get him the news. And, you know, but we were really at a point where we thought we were going to have to push in the fall. when only Ryan Murphy has the sort of trust of the studio only, you know, and the ability to say like, I'm going to find him and to be three weeks out from shooting and not have the studio have a nervous breakdown about the fact that we hadn't cast our our lead. Um, and you know, it was a great experience. It was great um the whole way through. But we loved our entire cast. But really what was great about this and Nina talked about this was we got to mix some people that you really know with people who discoveries for the audience. I mean Sarah who was known for stereophonic on Broadway but you know and for doing some YA shows was really new to most people in America. Grace Gummer has been you know working really hard doing great work but you know popped and had a role that really like suited her in a in a way that I don't think we'd seen before. and Constance Zimmer um who has you know been in five million shows and has worked on everything totally transformed as Ann the mother like she's unrecognizable and it was just it was a great experience the whole way through - in fact after I saw the pilot I actually googled who plays Carolyn bet's mother in love story because I did not even and I know Constant Zimmer obviously and I did not recognize her at all - that's I think she barely recognized herself and like when she showed up on set, you know, because she obviously she they had worked together quite a bit before her character is introduced. Um I don't think anybody recognized her as herself right off the bat. She was so utterly transformed. Um and you know that's like say that's that's one of the real joys is being able on something like this to see uh yeah that mix of both the the most you know seasoned actors with the ones who are sort of in their ascendancy um and and to see you know the chemistry between the both you know what the kind of cumulative effect of bringing those forces together. And in terms of Sarah, is it true that like her team sent her like a photo sent you a a Photoshop version of her with the blonde hair? I mean, does it is the I mean, she's obviously super talented stage actress. Is the lesson also here that like just you can literally see someone a different way if they change their appearance? - I think it's good. It's a good uh it is it does help. It really does when somebody has now I think people think of her as a blonde but it is still you know um Carolyn's look was so specific and her hair was such a big part of the look but yes I think having the visual you know cue of seeing her as a blonde was very impact - yeah she looked just like the mannerisms were so uncanny also it just she exuded Carolyn beta's amazing transformation - yeah um Any other casting notes? I mean, this is for backstage that you want to add in terms of like how this project came together. - You know, we cast a lot of people out of the New York theater world. Um, we had actually been to um see a bunch of Broadway shows and we got and and seeing a lot of those actors stood with us. Sydney Lemon, who we'd seen in is it Job or Job? job um on on Broadway. You know, we specifically asked to audition her for the role of Caroline Sister because we had seen her and been so impressed with her in that play. And you know, we actually have this on the shards right now where Graham Campbell, which is about to come out, where Graham Campbell, we had seen him inappropriate on Broadway. Um and we really pulled from that New York theater scene. Um, you know, and we really pulled actors who, you know, uh, you uh, you know, you may remember from from different roles we had. Oh my god, I'm forgetting. We, you know, we pulled from Good Night and Good Luck. You know, our our casting directors were really looking at New York theater stuff. And I would say that, you know, that that community is incredibly important when you're shooting, you know, things in New York, but also the specificity of the looks that you get from the theater community is great. Um, and we built a real sense of community around that. And you know, we just tried to, you know, when people audition, I don't, it's not about like sort of, you know, being memorable in terms of um, in terms of, you know, having a big personality, but instead it's really for us was looking at people who seem to be understanding sometimes only the sides, but really understanding the sides they were doing and approaching them with sincerity. Um, so, um, but I also think the thing I would say for all the actors out there is that this show is a real testament to what TV can do, which is, you know, take people that are in theater or are out there auditioning and, you know, expose them to a mass audience. Um, you know, Constantine Zimmer herself, you know, she started out doing Duracell commercials, you know, back in the day and she's done everything and it's just a long winding path and, um, you know, chasing good material is important, but also, you know, a lot of times it's just about making sure your reps get you in front of the right people. You know, it's funny because obviously there was so much scrutiny around John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carol Betett and then the production had a ton of scrutiny also. Um, so it's a little bit meta in that sense. How does a cast like that navigate those kinds of challenges because it's not just any show. It's not just any Marrian Murphy show. It's two icons. - I mean, we had, you know, on this show in particular, we're s we're in the media center of the world. We're in New York City and we had a little bit of a hiccup with the look for Carolyn at the beginning. early photos of a hair and make got leaked and you know you're working on a show over six months we made this show you're developing the look you know TV is happening in real time you're changing things from episode by episode and everyone decided that they wanted to follow us in an intense way it showed us the depth of feeling for Carolyn bet and we were suddenly you know under a microscope we were shooting in New York City in the summer exteriors and you know when Paul and um Sarah having their first kiss. 15 ft away, there were 25 paparazzi taking photos. We couldn't stop them from being there. So, it was a real trial by fire for everybody. And everybody felt a deep responsibility and really connected to their characters, but they kind of had to drown out the noise. They kind of had to, you know, in real time pretend like they were just in a bubble. And it actually I think helped some of them because it gave them the experience that John and Caroline and Carolyn and all of them had which is you know these were people who lived their lives publicly and were followed around the city by paparazzi and our actors were living that every day. - I think we it certainly reminded us early on of the fact that like there were so many stakeholders in these two characters. I think one of the things that struck us the most was actually how, you know, Carolyn had really become like aostumous influencer. And so the number of people who knew all about her and and people who were born well after her death, young people who knew her style, her looks and and really felt invested in like her as an icon. um you know I don't think we realized until we were making the show like how deeply invested people were in um the idea of Carolyn um and especially as you mentioned like which is particularly interesting given that like she did so few interviews there are so few recordings of her actual voice um and that yet she was people felt as invested in her as they would as if you were doing, you know, an adaptation of a beloved book or something like that. Um, where people really felt ownership over her in particular. And I think we always expected that more, you know, that everybody would know who he was, but not everybody would know about her. And when we went to go make the show, I think we found that like a lot of young people were really introduced to him, but already knew her. And and when people have such a sort of like a strong their own strong idea of who someone is, it's it's that much easier to feel like you're threading the needle and if you go wrong, you'll be rejected. And I think that's a lot of pressure for actors, you know, and to especially to realize that that's the pressure you're under while you're doing the job. But I think it really speaks, you know, to their professionalism and their kind of their craft to actually be able to both like take from all of that noise, but also block it all out. - I mean, beyond the acting, like how does a a big project like this under scrutiny affect your other creative decisions going into this or even while you're filming? Well, I think there was a very strong sense of the New York that Ryan wanted to create and the you know the a particular time and place and a particular version of New York. There have been so many various sort of cinematic representations of New York. Um but I think it felt as important to put these people in their proper place and time - um as it was to get them right in the casting. It's like you really had to design a world around them that is that felt resonant and, you know, conjured the world as it was, but in a romantic with with with a fully sort of romantic lens - because it's the '9s. It's also weird to think of it as a period drama, but it is. - People knew the looks, especially like the exact looks. No, that's not what the purse looks like. That's not how the pants were, you know, tailored. People have such specific takes on and and say, you both have to take it all in and block it all out at the same time. - We had a team of of craftsmen and um heads of departments who were dedicated to getting it right. Alex Derando, who is our production designer, you know, had the specifics of Calvin Klein's office down. and we had some vile photos, but he knew that Calvin Klein had switched. You know, he had three major designers that he worked with over the course of his um of his career in terms of designing office furniture and also furniture for his collection. And Alex was really specific about making sure that the tables were right, that each that the pens that he had were right, that everything in the office was not just period specific, but specific to Calvin. Um, you know, we had a bunch of real historians working with us and we'd also engage with an academic historian who had studied Caroline's different looks and we were sourcing, you know, not just the right purse from the moment, but the actual pieces of clothing. A lot of the clothes that Caroline Caroline wears are pieces of clothes that the real Caroline wore in real life. And yes, there are some things that you manipulate and fudge and New York is an evolving city. You know, there's elements of the 80s still in New York or the '9s, but you know, we wanted to be in every frame. We wanted it to be period specific and accurate. - I also want to talk just a minute about the big wedding episode. How do you even go? We see one, we have one photo of that entire wedding um after the fact. How do you even approach something like that? Well, that was one where actually there actually is a a grainy video of the wedding um that was taken inside um and it was not public released for decades and also of the um the the the afterparty. Um, but our team, Alex and his team, rebuilt that classic famous one room tiny church chapel that was in a barrier island in Georgia to the exact specification. They sourced old wood. When you walked in, you felt like you were in a building that had been there for 200 years. And we studied the videos. We studied the dress. Our Rudy, our costume designer, actually found out where the original dress material was in Italy and had it sent over so that the fabric would match exactly. And we had a group of people with frames and images studying it. Julie Winer, our writer on that, study those videos over and over again. And then where we didn't have the exact information, we were able to go by, you know, witness testimony, people's accounts of what had happened, what happened at the ceremony. Um, and it was everyone feeling missiondriven and feeling um like they wanted to recreate not just the storybook wedding, but also the real wedding. And there were a lot of things that happened at that wedding that made it special. There were accidents. You know, they were supposed to get married in the afternoon because the church had no electricity. And they both John and Carolyn were late as people often are for their weddings. And so they people there ran and got a whole bunch of candles and lit the chapel by candle light which gave it even more of a magical feel. And you know our DP shot that sequence Kubric style by candle light. We just really wanted to give people the sense you were there and we had a lot of information and there was a reason why people still talk about that wedding. It actually changed weddings forever. Overnight after that wedding, people went away from having these sort of big poofy Princess Diana dresses to having elegant simple dresses and they suddenly wanted tailored small weddings with raw um flowers on the table and you know to get married in barns and things that would have been very day class A before. Um and we wanted everyone to see in real time why that wedding is the most famous wedding of all time. - It is indeed. Um all right. Well, before we go, like it's been, like I said, a while since you wrapped. It's been a little while since we saw that last episode. You moved on to other projects, but looking back on it, like what is what kind of advice would you give actors, filmmakers, anyone who want who's thinking about approaching a project like this? One thing I would say that we relearn again and again and I really appreciate that Ryan feels this way too which is in-person auditions are still hugely important. I still I think that we've all gotten so used to the ease of everything being, you know, Zoom auditions. there's still no substitute for being in the room with an actor or a handful of actors um and doing real chemistry tests, but real readings in the room um in person. And I think that, you know, it's one of the it's it seems like such a gift to not have for many actors to not have to drive around and do all the go to all the different places and wait with the other actors. And yet I think that this is like such it is one of the most human it is the most human craft that exists. And when we are actually in person with each other uh we see different more and and different sides of a person than when you can than you can ever accomplish on uh on Zoom. So I would say that um and then I would say you know on the one hand like the deep deep research for an actor to really understand if you're playing a historical character and yet you also have to find your own version of that character. You're we're never asking an impersonation. That's never the goal. You know that it it is always about inhabiting a character and that is like we were talking about before both about letting it all in and also keeping it all out so that all what's left underneath is your an authentic reflection of your version of the character as opposed to an impersonation. - Uh really well said Brad. You want to get the quick last word here? My quick last word is not for the actors but it's for the producers which is you know it's great to you know continue to work with established people but we had a showrunner and sorry a creator and writers on this show and actors where this was a big step up for all of them and um uh producers need to keep their eyes open for emerging talent and not just established talent because you could be 37 and Paul Kelly and be perfect for the role and if you don't have your eyes open to find him you're not going to have have him in your show. - Great. Um, all right. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. Again, congratulations on what I I think is it's fair to say is a cultural phenomenon still. Um, and um, good luck at the Emmys. - Thank you. - Thank you, Mara, for your support. - Thanks, Brad and - Thank you. [music]