How Sarah Pidgeon Fought for Carolyn Bessette on Love Story

0:00Sarah Pidgeon: It felt like John and Carolyn were more shared by not only the nation, but the world. Yeah. And they represented this like new modern couple of this hope for the next millennium. Hi, everybody. I'm Katie Rich. Welcome to a special Saturday edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast. Today, I am talking to Sarah Pidgeon. She is an Emmy nominee this year for playing Carolyn Bissette Kennedy on FX's love story. And I knew our conversation was going to be off to a good start when I started by saying I was going to quote Fleabag and she knew exactly what I was going to quote, which is hair is everything.

0:41And hair is definitely not everything when it comes to her performance as Carolyn Bissette. It really is this marvel of conjuring this woman who was famously private, who we know something about from her life in the public eye, but not enough to create a full character. She had to invent a lot of it, but the hair was a big part of it. It was a real journey. There were some early set photos, you might remember, where people were really critical of her look and the hair specifically, and they worked on it together. So I talked to Sarah about how they built in that process, how she used the hair as an actor's tool to capture this character, and how going through it and really adjusting the hair step-by-step taught her a lot about advocating for herself and for a character on a set.

1:22She's been a Tony nominee for Stereophonic, but this is really her first big breakthrough role. She and her co-star Paul Anthony Kelly, who plays JFK Jr., are really going through this time in the spotlight together. And she's been pretty open about how it's not exactly what Carolyn Bessette went through when she married America's Prince, but not dissimilar either. She was really fun to talk to. You might be able to tell we're talking backstage at the Today Show, so that explains some of the weird walls. We cut out the part where there were loudspeaker announcements in the background. You're welcome.

1:52But it was a lovely conversation, and there's much more to hear. Hear it all in my conversation with the star of Love Story, Sarah Pidgeon. Before making the show, not to make everything that you did about hair, but I think hair is a valid place to start. Were you a person who would have thought, like, hair is whatever, or were you more of the, like, fleabag philosophy of hair is everything? Hair is everything. Okay, yeah, exactly.

2:17Sarah Pidgeon: What? Hair is everything. Such a great scene. You know, I think hair has been meaningful to me for a long time. I had a traumatic haircut when I was a child. I rocked, like, the short straight bang and the mid-ear bob for quite a while. Honestly, sort of fleabag-ass. But I think I hadn't completely understood how transformative it is for a character. just because the roles that I had played beforehand hadn't so much asked that of me. I have never spent as much time thinking about hair as I have this past year. And I think going blonde made me feel much more like married to this process in a way of, you know, just really, it divorced me a bit more for myself.

3:08Sarah Pidgeon: And granted, I wasn't really going out that much while we were working. I wasn't really experiencing much life outside of filming because we would finish so late in the wee hours of Saturday morning. But it made me, I think, just that much more connected to Carolyn and divorced from myself because I didn't look like myself. And I, since I wasn't really going out, you know, I didn't really feel like connected to this. I feel, I guess, more connected to my blonde era now. Yeah. Yeah. Now do you feel like yourself? Like it has become like a new phase, I guess. When I see older photos of myself, you know, when the like the photos on your phone come up and I see the dark hair.

3:51Sarah Pidgeon: Yeah, I guess it just feels like a different part of my life. But, you know, I've got to go back to the salon like every three weeks to get my roots done. So it's a lot of time thinking about hair, but I think I'm going to keep it for a while just because it took so long to get this light. Yeah. so I might as well. And once you go, once you dye it darker, it's a whole thing. But all that is to say, hair is everything. That's true. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was right about that. She's right about a lot. And she's right about other things. How does that, that intensity of the production schedule you're talking about, how does that compare to Broadway?

4:25Because I feel like Broadway people manage to go out. You have the days to yourself. Was it more intense than what you were used to?

4:32Sarah Pidgeon: I think it's so different. I'm really glad that I had, And I mean, I'm so grateful for Stereophonic for so many reasons. It was such an incredible production to be a part of. Not only the material, but the cast and the creatives behind that project were just so talented and are now dear friends of mine. But it did prep me, I think, for a different—it's a different type of endurance because it is—there's a repetition to it. And I think it's a different ask of, like, of a mental preparation. Because, and especially since it was such a long run, I was in it between the two iterations of it for about a year, maybe 13 months.

5:14Sarah Pidgeon: And so much life happens in that time. So you, sometimes it's this amazing gift to be able to go on to the stage and not think about whatever else you're doing. Because it holds you so well because you know it so well. and you can live inside of it. And then things happen in your life and you're like, I cannot believe I have to go on stage right now when all of this stuff is happening and do this play. And it's funny, in those moments, it actually is, I found, whether or not the performance was great, it felt like the times when you're sort of racing for the show and really have to work yourself up, it has almost the most breath and air and creativity in it.

5:57it like lets you escape the thing that you were trying to in a way the thing that you think is

6:02Sarah Pidgeon: totally inescapable and yeah I guess it's just a different energy on stage but that that constant like gearing up for a show um I think allowed me to yeah I guess just have have my endurance was built up from that and um broadway i think was the best actor's workout i've ever had well because like in in love story like you are central to almost every scene in this but presumably there are days where like this is more paul's thing or like it's like you have like a little bit not that you're not present for it but it feels like it has it must require less endurance on some days at least i really felt the change around when we started finishing episode three because that's when their two worlds really start to come together.

6:48Sarah Pidgeon: Yeah. Because, yeah, I would have like a day or two off or, you know, just work the mornings when you're first starting out and then bada bing, bada boom. Yeah. But I really, I really love being on set. I really, sort of a prerequisite, I think, for being in TV and film is being good at hanging out because so much of it is like the days are so long and the conversations that you have with your cast members and the crew are so wide-ranging and there there's a lot of longevity in them you know you can cover you can get in depth um about you know i guess whatever topic over days and months of shooting yeah um but yeah i i don't mind i don't know maybe it's like i get a sense of pride out of it but i i really like having a really long crazy schedule But I do also like not being on set until like 4 a.m.

7:46Sarah Pidgeon: on a Friday night. Not because I want to go out, but just because I want my weekend. And I want the crew to have their weekend. I like the sense of pride in hanging out, too, because there's a way to be on set where you like retreat into your world or you're on your phone or something like that. But it sounds like you're getting fulfilled by the downtime side of it, too. Yeah. I mean, I think it sort of changes, right? Like there certainly are scenes where or days where I don't really want to talk as much. But I'm also very clearly very chatty. I can't really stop talking. So, yeah, I do find that the majority of my time when I'm not acting on a set is like chatting to people.

8:26I did pick up knitting, though.

8:28Sarah Pidgeon: That's good. Yeah. A lot of people were knitting on set, so it became sort of a meditation. I feel like this is why people smoke so much, is that you need something to do with your hands on set and you get bored. Yeah, I think so. And like an excuse for a break. Yeah. We did a lot of fake smoking in the show. I know. Well, I was thinking about that and stereophonic, like the amount of fake smoking that you've done in your career. Let's see what the next one is. But I also feel like as actors, like sometimes you need something to do with your hands. You need a project. You need like a thing. and there's nothing better than a little prop or like a pen or yeah some something to fiddle with just to put the energy for you like an acting school too or is that something you've kind of come to like overplaying these smoker characters and it's useful i mean i feel like i'm gonna have next character i'm gonna have to upgrade to like a pipe um because i've done a lot of cigarette smoking but i yeah i think having some sort of activity we definitely worked on um that was something that we thought about in acting school and in school we learned so many different types of uh methodologies but yeah having something that's a bit alive because we rarely I know that I'm not doing well in a scene when I'm like I don't know what to do with my hands what do I don't know what to do with my hands and I'm not necessarily always playing with something but I think like I mean just right now I'm constantly touching myself um and I think that the majority of the time people are fidgeting and doing something.

9:54Sarah Pidgeon: So a cigarette is super helpful for that. You can think with a cigarette. You can like shove the cigarette out. Unfortunately, I know you've heard this. It looks so cool still. And it's such a shame that it does. Like I don't want people to smoke again, but this show really activated that, I think. So I guess to kind of go back to the hair for a second, I like the way you've talked about kind of learning to advocate for your character as sort of learning how to advocate for yourself, like kind of having the polite Midwestern thing of I'm just going to go along with this. And I know that the hair was a process and there was, you know, revamping it and you've got this incredible team of professionals who are doing this, but did that make it become more of a collaboration?

10:33Like kind of how did you learn that advocacy process while kind of working with the team behind this to figure out how these things should look with hair, costume, everything else?

10:42Sarah Pidgeon: Yeah, I think it certainly was a collaboration. Barry Limo came on and was my hairstylist, hair guru extraordinaire and connected me with Carrie Hill, who does my color, and Alex Prado, who did the extensions. And Barry was there every single step of the way. Minus the last six weeks, he had another job that was booked. That's the TV industry for you, right? Because people are just coming and going. And I mean, he is and should be in high demand. He was so wonderful. And I attribute a lot of my character process, I think, to him to watch the transformation, you know, because I would come in and my hair would be absolutely insane from tossing and turning all night.

11:25Sarah Pidgeon: And just being able to look at myself in the mirror and see the transformation come to life of, you know, Carolyn's hair. and being able to talk to him about, because she was heavily documented, but a lot of the moments in the series were looking at, like, what's happening behind the scenes, you know, or what can we infer the relationship might have been like. So it wasn't necessarily documented what type of hairstyle she was wearing at that time. So we would have discussions about, you know, is it a hair up day? Is it a down day? Is it a little curlier? Did she, you know, is it messy? And just having those conversations of having it be that being one of the inroads, while there were many in this show, was incredibly helpful to me.

12:12Sarah Pidgeon: I wasn't able to get so far ahead of myself. You know, it was something very simple to start the day out with of, like, what are we prepping for today? What's being asked to me? What type of story are we telling? um and yeah i've i think that this process for me was quite different from the other jobs i've done um i guess maybe there are some parallels to stereophonic just because of how collaborative uh theater is yeah but um i got a movement coach for this which i haven't done before julia crockett is incredible um and i think i was very anxious to take this job on because i know how uh people hold carolyn and her legacy and everything i've mentioned before of of her being quite mysterious um and they're being material but not the material that would have been really really helpful in terms of transforming physically and vocally um but yeah working with julio working with barry we had connor heinz our incredible writer he i've always felt so comforted when i would go back to video village and be like you know i was trying this does that seem right and and it seemed like we under we had the same understanding of who we thought carolyn was and what we wanted this showcase to be of her um and was that that was that true from the start or did you guys kind of build that together and kind of discover together i mean i think my relationship to connor was very organic he's someone that i i'd like walk to the end of the earth with him um he i remember when i got the audition the log line was um there was something about maybe it was the character description not an ice queen as the paparazzi made her out to be um and i found in it was the first date scene there were so many opportunities for sensitivity and guardedness and um empathy and her humor and her wit and yeah I think the more that I while that audition was obviously very early on in my understanding of Caroline and research everything that I had discovered after that really backed up this idea that she was so much more than this um ice blonde cold like woman from all these misogynistic headlines in the 90s and yeah I'm so grateful for it really did feel like this team effort and that whether or not everyone always started on the same page at the beginning of the day or at the beginning of the scene there was always an effort I think to end up on the same page um and i felt very i think the the collaboration came about because i did the scary thing of like speaking my mind sure um and i think part of that was because we faced a lot of criticism at the beginning of the show um and i think the idea was like if this could be the rest of it you know the show might not do well and people might not like my performance so if that's the worst thing I might as well you know if that could be the end end point then I might as well speak up for what I think is right um you know or you know what my opinions are and what my take on it is um and I found the more I did that the more aligned people became um you know that's not a baseline thing that you found yourself kind of advocating for specifically or was it more like individual moments of you saying i think that this goes this way i think the show did not want to be sentimental yeah um but you're dealing with romance so you know even though sarah pigeon doesn't consider herself as you know moving with a lot of sentimentality there are certainly moments in my life where things become very sentimental and precious and yeah um but i don't think that Carolyn was particularly um like there was one time where they there there was maybe gonna be like a kiss and a pick up and like sure sort of like a kick the kick the leg back and I was like I know what I know what vibe you want of like communion together they've it's it's the calm before the media storm um look at how in love these people are but how can we figure out a way that that feels like that energy or that quality that you're after that also feels grounded in carolyn yeah she doesn't feel like like a kick my leg up kind of girl uh-huh um i don't know if this is super if i'm being super clear with this but no because i think about the way that it does that through like sitting in that restaurant with all those lights around like you get that vibe without anyone acting like they're in anything other than just on like a sometimes awkward first date you know what i mean like it comes through in cinematography and staging and all this stuff that doesn't have to be feeling true to the character.

17:16Sarah Pidgeon: Yeah, we had such incredible directors that really, I really felt like they led with, you know, this is your character and how can we tell the story as clear as possible? Yeah. And like, tell me who this person is. But I think those moments where in the past, you know, I never want to say I won't do that or that character wouldn't do that because I don't know. But I started feeling the frustration as an actor of knowing that I only have so many takes before it becomes someone else's, before it goes to the edit and it's not mine. And if I became very defensive of Carolyn because I felt like I knew who I wanted to represent best and who I believed this iteration of this character to be.

18:07Sarah Pidgeon: So I started, I guess frustration isn't the right word, but I really, I think I put some pressure on myself to find whatever felt most truthful to her. so then if I was offered in our scene, so if I was offered something that didn't feel truthful, knowing that that might end up in an edit and feel like if that doesn't feel like a tried and true expression of her, then I want to be careful of what I give forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. While also not denying anything because you don't know it until you try it. But I think that sort of awareness of being her advocate and, you know, because of that fear, I think I had to advocate for myself and really communicating where I was coming from, which is uncomfortable.

19:10Do you think that like, obviously, when you do something like that, it's going to stick with you. But I'm just imagining in the future playing a character who wasn't a real person or who you haven't had to do this kind of like sense of advocacy for. Like, this is going to be a lot easier next time that you need to advocate for yourself when there's not so much tied up around it.

19:26Sarah Pidgeon: Yeah, I think maybe or there's like this. Maybe I feel like I don't have a leg to stand on. Who knows? But I think that the thing that feels like I'm being difficult actually has made me a much better actor and a much better, it makes me a better collaborator. And working with, seeing Alessandro Novello work and seeing Constance Zimmer work, I loved doing scenes with them because they are so expert at what they do. and seeing how they take up space in a rehearsal room and the questions they ask. And yeah, I was just very inspired for how they were able to operate on a set to figure out how they can do their job most effectively.

20:11Sarah Pidgeon: So I don't know. I guess we'll find out with the next role. Yeah. Yeah. Without squirreling anything about where it's headed. I mean, I guess we'll just see what it's like next time I'm on the set. Yeah. Yeah. So when you've got this advocacy thing, you've done all this research and you you and Connor are on the same page about who this person was, but you're making a lot of it up. Like there's stuff that you have to go into the world of imagination about how this might have gone. Does that feel like a leap to you while you're doing this? Or by the time you're getting under that set, does it all kind of feel like it's part of one whole, whether or not it's something that like happened on the public record or that the show is imagining?

20:51Sarah Pidgeon: Do you know what I mean? What do you mean? What do you mean a leap? Like, does it feel different from saying, OK, now we're replicating this photo from the wedding that everyone has seen versus now we're imagining what they were saying in that fight in the park that nobody actually knows what the dialogue was? it didn't feel too different i did find in those moments where we were able to take this found footage of battery park or um their first photos after getting married on the on the street um or their wedding um i found it really satisfying as an actor to be able to have that that physical the script of physicality that they had so i could focus on like how she hooked her thumb around her purse strap and how she moved her eyes and how she moved her head and when she readjusted.

21:43It didn't feel prescriptive. It felt like a, like helpful. No, it felt like such a, yeah, it felt so helpful as an actor to have those few moments where it

21:52Sarah Pidgeon: felt like I was able to marry the inside of who I thought she was with something on the outside That was very concrete. And it also felt satisfying because while we were imagining what those conversations were, i.e. Battery Park, it felt like it was the Connor script aligned with what was happening physically. And yeah, I was just always so excited that that there was something that we could sort of match. yeah um and it felt like maybe i've said this now but the the moving target of carolyn never really stopped because there's so many different iterations of her or at least maybe not iterations but it's seven years and 26 to 33 is i'm not 33 yet but i know you know seven years ago i felt like a very different person yeah um so i felt like her and while so much happened you You know, we're taking seven years and consolidating it into nine episodes.

22:58Sarah Pidgeon: And I felt like she was always sort of evolving and was trying to figure out, like, where is she now? You know, this and this and this happened in their reality. So how might she be moving? And there's a more physical transformation. Her hair gets straighter. Her hair gets blonder. Yeah. You know, she's dressing still like herself, but she's not 26 years old anymore working at Calvin Klein. going out to much more public-facing events. So, yeah, there was sort of this constant, I guess, evolution of her. Yeah, like you and any real person, or as she was, yeah. So, I guess, as a closing question, I'm not the first person to point out that we are in a very, everyone's facing forward, everyone's giving interviews, putting themselves out their era, and yet everyone's obsessed with this woman who never gave an interview and resisted all of that stuff.

23:50And do you think it's as simple as like we admire someone who is doing something we think no one is capable of anymore? Or is there have you kind of come around to a theory of why Carolyn still captivates people in an era that's so kind of antithetical to the way that she was trying to live her life?

24:09Sarah Pidgeon: um I think that Carolyn was very singular and the way she captivated people in the 90s without this understanding of you know how we evolved technologically close to 30 years later I think that that same interest that was there in the 90s is why we're also interested in her today yeah um that's still more of the same thing than different yeah and I I think it well I have I think our relationship to fame has changed a lot because of how interconnected we are. And the group of notable figures, I think, was significantly smaller. We also had a sense of shared celebrity. Whereas I think now someone who is famous to me is not necessarily famous to you.

24:56Sarah Pidgeon: And I think that Carolyn and John represented this time where there were less television shows on cable, so everyone was watching the same thing. Less news network, so everyone was getting similar news. We didn't have these phones. We didn't have Twitter. You were calling up your friend to see if you wanted to meet them at the corner bar. It was just, like, smaller, and I think because of these cultural moments had much more interconnectivity of a shared experience, it felt like John and Carolyn were more shared by not only the nation, but the world. Yeah. And they represented this, like, new modern couple of this, like, hope for the next millennium.

25:45Sarah Pidgeon: And I think that that sort of residue that has carried over and that, like, idea of nostalgia. There was this really interesting podcast I listened to. I actually still have half of it left. It's called How to Touch Grass by The Atlantic. And it's about— Oh, my God. Have you listened to it? I know, but I need that so badly. It's about, this one episode is about nostalgia and how nostalgia is not actually about the past. It's about the present. And I think that, yeah, there is sort of this, I guess, I think we all feel, I guess I'll speak for myself, you know, that we can be filmed at any time.

26:24Sarah Pidgeon: We're so overexposed. Like, I think we have reached an end of our evolution. Like, we should not know this many people. We should not have this much technology. And I think it's like broken our brains a little bit. And I think everyone's starting to feel that exhaustion. Yeah. And so I think there is not necessarily like let's go back to the 90s, but I think there's kind of like let's change this moment that we're in. But that's a different podcast. But I do think I admire Carolyn for me having read all of these headlines about her. and they're not that different from things that I've seen about people in present day.

27:04Sarah Pidgeon: Sure. You know, change a word there, change a name here. But I think it was so badass that she backed herself so much that my take on it is that, you know, it's not worth her time to correct the record. Yeah. Which I really, really like. Yeah. And that was definitely a way in. And yeah, I don't know if we'll ever, I don't know if we'll ever have a return to that. I mean, here I am on a podcast. I know, I was just thinking like your job obviously requires you to do interviews in a way that hers did not, but there's gotta be a part of you that's like, oh, that's so cool. He's just never saying anything.

27:42It is really cool. I know.

27:44Sarah Pidgeon: Well, yeah, like this idea of just like, let him talk. Yeah. Let him talk. That does it for today's episode. This is our last bonus episode of Emmy season. We'll be back on Tuesday with one last Emmy season conversation and the continuation of our fall preview series. In the meantime, this podcast is edited by Brett Fox and produced by Brett Fox and me. Our theme music is by Dave Gonzalez. You can find the prestige junkie newsletter with many more enemy season conversations, punditry, all of that at the ankler.com. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. YouTube is also where you can watch it.

28:20If you're not already, we will see you on Tuesday.

28:28USING IT