From Babe Paley to Jackie Kennedy, Naomi Watts is in her mid-century icon era.
New images of the fêted British star from the set of Ryan Murphy’s upcoming American Love Story show her transformed into famed First Lady. Watts traded her signature cool blond waves for a structured, chestnut-colored bob wrapped up in a chic, silken headscarf in the photos taken in in New York City’s Central Park on Aug. 4.
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Watts was joined by costar Paul Kelly, who will portray John F. Kennedy Jr., one half of the couple that give the series its title. Sarah Pidgeon, who recently appeared in the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot, is set to star opposite Kelly as Carolyn Bessette, a fashion publicist and the junior Kennedy’s wife.
The Mulholland Drive star was also flanked by Grace Gummer – the daughter of Meryl Streep – who will portray Jackie’s daughter and John-John’s sister Caroline.
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American Love Story will chronicle Kennedy and Bessette’s highly-publicized relationship and four-year marriage, which was tragically cut short when the couple died in a 1999 plane crash.
In a now-deleted social media post finally announcing the series, which had been the subject of buzz for months, Murphy revealed that the series had begun shooting in mid June, adding, “[I] can’t wait until you see the romantic and tragic love story between America’s prince, JFK Jr., and fashion icon Carolyn Bessette… Over a thousand actors auditioned for each of these roles, and we absolutely found the perfect choices.”
Watts recently appeared in not one but two of Murphy’s TV projects, and is also slated for a fourth after American Love Story. The actress appeared in all seven episodes and executive produced the Murphy miniseries The Watcher in 2022, and is looking forward to All’s Fair, a legal drama costarring Kim Kardashian, Niecy Nash, and Glenn Close, among others.
Last year, she led the cast of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans as the immortal socialite Babe Paley. Watts summoned all the smothered rage she could muster and filtered it through the icy prism of petty bourgeois in-fighting for her performance as the famed magazine editor – a performance which ultimately earned her the first Emmy nomination of her career.
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Reflecting on playing Paley to Entertainment Weekly in 2024, Watts shared, “Everything she thought about was planned: how she plans a dinner party and who was there. Who’s sitting next to each other? Where does the fork go? What are the fabrics of the napkins? Do the candles smell right? All of these things that created such a huge amount of planning, but nothing was left for herself so often. This was how she was raised. She came from a family where the women were there to serve their husbands and nothing else.”
