So Wait, Did Carolyn Bessette Kennedy Inspire ‘Sex and the City’ or Not?

Last week, the premiere of Love Story (the Ryan Murphy–produced depiction of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s whirlwind romance) left a host of fan theories, fact-checking, and chic minimalist outfit inspo in its wake. The FX series does not hide the fact that its storytelling takes plenty of creative liberties (episode one opens with a message that reads: “This story is inspired by actual events but includes fictional elements. Any similarity to real people or entities is entirely for dramatic purposes.”). But fictional as some elements may be, the series has successfully renewed online fascination with all things regarding Carolyn Bessette’s real-life lore: her fashion, her acquaintances, her flashy career trajectory as a PR rep at Calvin Klein. It’s also set off speculation about the pop culture she potentially inspired before and well after her tragic passing in 1999…especially related to another show that spotlights well-to-do NYC career women and their love lives: Sex and the City.

In the hours following Love Story’s premiere, several viral posts emerged that likened Bessette to another blonde, oft–Calvin Klein–clad style icon, Ms. Carrie Bradshaw. Other similarities drawn between the two NYC legends included their shared smoking habit and the penchant both had for complicated, dark-haired men (though Mr. Big is no heir to a political dynasty).

And thus a theory emerged: that Candace Bushnell, the writer of the original Sex and the City column for The New York Observer that inspired the hit TV adaptation, based her heroine on the late Mrs. Bessette-Kennedy. And this supposition managed to gain traction even though Bushnell has stated on multiple occasions that the Carrie Bradshaw character was semi-autobiographical. But popular Carolyn x Carrie theories led Love Story viewers to a 1998 satire series that Bushnell wrote for the Manhattan File (under headlines like “Spoiled In the City”), which follows a blonde paparazzi magnet referred to as “CKB” who “married the world’s most eligible bachelor” (not unlike JFK Jr.).

The character is not too likable…she’s whiny and pill-dependent and overall quite troubled—but she also obviously shared the late Bessette-Kennedy’s initials. The snarky stories could be read as a completely unsympathetic dressing-down of Bessette-Kennedy. So the rediscovery of this series led truthers behind the “Carolyn inspired Sex and the City” conspiracy to a new theory: if Carrie Bradshaw isn’t a depiction of JFK Jr.’s bride, then perhaps Sex and the City’s Natasha Naginsky, played by Bridget Moynahan, is.

As a reminder (in case you don’t rewatch the show twice a year), Natasha’s the refined 20-something whom Mr. Big (notably also named John) gets engaged to during the show. Her sophisticated personal style, especially in contrast to Carrie’s more eclectic looks, more closely reflects Carolyn’s famous street style. While no one involved in writing the Natasha character has confirmed Carolyn was her inspo, the actress who portrayed her, Bridget Moynahan, told TVLine in 2024 that she harnessed CBK’s energy during her audition: ““It was [a] one-line audition and the line was ‘Nice to meet you,’” she said. “I had a whole inspiration, Carolyn Bessette was my muse for that line.”

SATC and CBK’s interwoven lore gets further complicated when you explore dating histories. As journalist Louis Pisano notes in his breakdown of CBK’s impact on the SATC universe, Candace Bushnell was romantically linked to Michael Bergin, a Calvin Klein model that Carolyn casually dated pre–JFK Jr. On top of that, Carrie Bradshaw herself—Sarah Jessica Parker—was linked to JFK Jr. for a few months in the early ’90s, but the relationship left Sarah a bit overwhelmed by all the media attention it received. “We would go places where there wasn’t a soul around, and the next day I’d see pictures of us there in the tabloids,” she told the New York Times in 1992. “I never had any idea what real fame was until I met John.”

Overlapping dating histories aside, it’s not far-fetched for fans to assume that their favorite HBO classic took inspiration from a love story that was once inescapable in mid-late ‘90s headlines. Plus, Bushnell has said many of the characters in her original column were based on real people in her social circle. On Kristin Davis’s “Are You a Charlotte” podcast last year, she shared that all of her column and the HBO adaptation’s key players were inspired by real people. “There was a Miranda [and] there was a Samantha,” she said. “Samantha was pretty specifically one friend of mine, who knew everything about men, and I’m actually still friends with her, and then the character of Miranda was this really ballsy, smart girl [who was] in tech before anybody was in tech.”

As fun as it is to play the guessing game, it’s no wonder that Sex and the City fans have found a familiar pleasure in Love Story. It offers the same slice of ’90s New York City life as a media/fashion professional that the iconic HBO show provided. The clear difference is that while Sex and the City is a fairly fictional escape, Love Story roots itself in well-known real-life events. Perhaps in attempting to tie the show back to the narrative fiction we know and love, fans are subconsciously trying to reconcile a fascination with a real-life love story that mirrors the kind of relationship they'd have with pure myth.

We’re OK with the flattening of reality’s nuances and treating human beings like characters while watching something 100% scripted, but it’s understood as inappropriate and dehumanizing to reflect on actual historical episodes that way. Maybe it’s easier to digest the fact that tragic historical events are being mined for entertainment by the same guy behind Scream Queens when you can suggest that another highly-lauded show already did it less directly years ago. Or maybe it’s just exciting to play the pattern-recognition game when it comes to well-dressed, messy-haired blondes on screen who’ve arrested the public's attention for decades. As everyone remains eager to draw parallels, we should appreciate the absolutely confirmed truth that both Love Story and Sex and the City are steadily feeding outfit inspo boards.

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