‘He was approachable, down-to-earth, irritating’: inside the real-life love story of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette

He only met John F Kennedy Jr for five minutes but, three decades later, the memory lingers on. “Oh my God, he had it all,” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist, recalling their encounter at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “He had his mother’s poise and his father’s charisma; it was a perfect combination of the two. If there was anybody destined to be president, it was him.”

In the US, the Kennedys occupy territory somewhere between the British royal family and Greek tragedy, a tale of impossible glamour pierced by spectacles of public mourning. More than a quarter of a century after the single-engine plane piloted by John Kennedy Jr plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing him; his wife, Carolyn Bessette; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, Camelot is being mined for content once more.

Ryan Murphy’s new FX and Hulu series Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette, starring Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon, dramatises the couple’s volatile courtship, marriage and deaths. Adapted from a bestselling book by Elizabeth Beller, the show has drawn ire from the Kennedy family.

Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy’s nephew, said last year the show was profiting off his family “in a grotesque way” and accused Murphy of “making millions” off Kennedy’s legacy. Murphy retaliated on the podcast of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, saying it was an “odd choice to be mad about your relative that you really don’t remember”.

Schlossberg, now running for Congress in New York, shared memories of his uncle on social media. “My earliest memories are of John calling me Jackolatern and ‘the nudist,’ picking me up from school, his Pontiac convertible,” he wrote on Instagram. “I remember being the ring bearer at his wedding and the day he died. I remember Wyclef singing at his funeral.”

For everyone who knew the man behind the myth, the return of Kennedy to the screen is a comp