Niki Cruz
In FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, creator Connor Hines assembled a talented cast of supporting players. Among them is Alessandro Nivola, a character-actor who’s been around for decades in films like Face/Off, American Hustle, and most recently, The Brutalist.
In Love Story, Nivola plays Calvin Klein, cultural icon and designer, whose name was synonymous with taste back in the 90s. Behind the scenes, he was Carolyn Bessette’s mentor, helping her climb the ladder at the brand as a publicist. In the show, viewers learn that Bessette had an eye for the next big thing, as she was instrumental in selecting fresh-faced Kate Moss for a campaign.
Nivola brings magnetic charisma to the screen as Calvin Klein and certainly commands every scene he appears in, but the highlight is the potent sense of vulnerability underneath as a man scorned by his confidant once Bessette’s relationship with JFK Jr. eclipses her role at the brand and her tenure ends.
In speaking with Alessandro Nivola, you get a sense that he could talk about Calvin’s life for days as each story he uncovered about Calvin is more fascinating than the next. When it came to capturing Calvin’s physicality, Nivola highlights the scene where he perfects his walk, striding up to Annette Bening as she arrives at the office for a fitting before the Bugsy premiere.
“That scene was the first time you see him physically. It was the first time I got to get his particular walk. He walked on the balls of his feet, and I had these shoes that they gave me, because he was incredibly tall. He was a 6’4 string bean, and I’m 5’10, so I had these huge lifts in my shoes, and these big tall heels. It kind of allowed me to walk on the balls of my feet, which was just how I’d seen him enter on talk shows. It was a long walk from the door to go to say hello to Annette, and I could put it to use immediately.”
On his approach to Calvin Klein’s mentorship with Carolyn Bessette:
“I treated that relationship as a platonic romance that has its own beginning, middle, and end. It’s sort of love at first sight when he meets her in that fitting, and he then really comes to rely on her professionally and just adore her personally. I saw a lot of footage of the two of them together, and they really had an incredible ease. They would be working in fast-paced environments where they were fitting people and making creative decisions on the fly, and they had a kind of shorthand together, and so I wanted to kind of build up to that.”
“There were some scenes that didn’t make the final cut that, where he makes himself vulnerable to her in a way that he doesn’t to anybody else. At one point he tells her about his childhood experience and stuff, and he really kind of lets her in, in a way that is very unusual for him. Even though those scenes didn’t end up in the series, when it finally came to that [betrayal] scene, which is their kind of breakup scene, it was informed by that, because I think it kind of hurt that much more.”
For more insights into Alessandro Nivola’s portrayal and Calvin Klein’s life, check out the full-length interview below:
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