Paul Anthony Kelly lands Jfk Jr role three weeks before filming
Paul Anthony Kelly landed jfk jr in FX’s Love Story three weeks before filming began, after 13 years of hearing no. The casting left him with a short runway for a role built around John F. Kennedy Jr. and the relationship at the center of the project.
Ryan Murphy's support
Kelly said the timing changed everything fast. “When something like that happens, I was so blessed to have Ryan Murphy and his team,” he said, adding that he was given a dialect coach, an acting coach, and a physical trainer. The support was not optional polish; it was the work that let him move from a late casting decision to a usable screen version of Kennedy Jr.
“I was in good shape, but I needed to put on a little bit more,” Kelly said, describing the physical shift the role demanded. He said the trainer helped him bulk up to match Kennedy Jr.’s athletic frame, a specific adjustment that had to happen while the production clock was already running.
13 years of no
Kelly said the role arrived after a stretch that almost pushed him out of acting entirely. “I was really toying with the idea of giving up and maybe moving back to Canada and raising a family and doing something totally different,” he said. “I was about to give up.” For an actor who spent 13 years hearing no, the break came at the point when he was most ready to leave.
At 37, Kelly said the timing helped him approach the part with more maturity. He had also heard earlier in his modeling days, “The comments were always, ‘You look like a young JFK Jr.,’” which gave the casting a visual logic long before it became a job. That kind of fit can save a production time, but only if the actor can turn resemblance into performance under deadline.
Airbrush and cadence
Kelly prepared by working through archival footage, interviews, TV clips, books, and an audiobook narrated by JFK Jr. “I really just became a sponge,” he said. He singled out Kennedy Jr.’s reading of Profiles in Courage as a way to get into “his cadence and rhythm and his kind of lackadaisical speech patterns,” which gave the performance a vocal target beyond appearance alone.
Kelly also had another practical obstacle: tattoos. Because Kennedy Jr. was not heavily tattooed, Kelly said full-body coverage could add “two to two-and-a-half hours” in makeup, and he used daily airbrushing sessions for shirtless scenes and running sequences. That extra prep time meant the role was not only about mimicry; it was a daily logistics problem between makeup, movement, and continuity.
Sarah Pidgeon chemistry
Kelly said the chemistry test with Sarah Pidgeon, who plays Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, gave him a usable base for the relationship at the heart of Love Story. “There was just something palpable,” he said. In a series built around that pairing, the chemistry read matters as much as the resemblance, because the production needs both pieces to hold the story together once filming starts.
For Kelly, the clean conclusion is simple: the late casting was a risk, but the combination of a short preparation window, a support team, and a role-specific physical overhaul gave him enough to work with. The harder question now is whether he can turn a 13-year run of rejection into a performance that matches the speed of the opportunity.
