Dree Hemingway portrayed Daryl Hannah with the best of intentions, but is also unbothered by the mixed reactions to it.
On March 6, the Splash actress, who has largely stepped away from acting, her last role having been in 2023, penned an op-ed for the New York Times, in which she slammed the objectively unfavorable portrayal of herself in Ryan Murphy and Connor Hines' Love Story series on the late Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr.
Titled "How Can 'Love Story' Get Away With This?," she described the series — the most-watched series ever for Hulu and Disney+ — as "tragedy-exploiting," arguing: "The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident."
© Getty Images"The character 'Daryl Hannah' portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John. The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue," she maintained.
Just a few days prior, Dree — a great-granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway via Mariel Hemingway, who made her acting debut in 2001 — speaking with Nylon, maintained of the reaction to Love Story: "I'm here for all of it. Everybody deserves to have an opinion. I know I have mine."
Moreover, she revealed she sent Daryl a "love note" before portraying her, emphasizing her respect for her. "It was really just a love note to her saying how much I admired her, how much I've admired her as an actress and a woman, prior to even being cast as Daryl. How much I really just fell in love with her as a human being."
© Getty Images"I watched interviews and that feeling of really spending time with somebody you've never spent time with, but researching," she continued. "That was really the note, and just not like 'Hey, I want to meet you or talk to you.' Just, like, 'It was really an honor of my lifetime to be able to portray you and research you.'"
The two did not in fact ever meet, of which Dree shared: "I would have loved to directly have spoken to her, but I guess there's nerves in directly speaking to somebody. I also didn't want to intrude in any way. I didn't want to make her feel awkward if that were something that she didn't want to do or something."
She also never heard back from Daryl, though noted: "It was not the expectation. It was more so just like, 'I really appreciate you. I admire you as a person, a philanthropist, an actress.' I wasn't trying to have her communicate back."
© Getty ImagesDree moreover argued that she understands she needs her "own time," maintaining: "I'm sure there's a lot to digest there and stuff like that. What I really want to emphasize is that this is a dramatization. We are not exactly portraying her or how something went down. There's a fiction involved in all of this. With any person that you loved and you were dating, I'm sure it's a hard thing. So, I think that it's nice to respect that and her."
© Getty ImagesDaryl and John Jr., who famously died in an airplane crash in 1999 along with his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette, an investment banker for Morgan Stanley, first met in the early 1980s while vacationing with their families in St. Martin, and dated on-and-off for five years until 1994, around the time of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' passing.
Of the attention the series, and her role, has been receiving, Dree also said: "I have seen people's reactions. I've seen people being like 'Oh, she's so annoying.' And then looking up Daryl and being like 'Oh, she did a good job,' or something like that. But it's good that people are talking. I guess that's all we could really want. The job is you do your work, you put in your energy, and then it goes into the ether, they edit it and it comes out. At the end of the day, it's up to the universe and the people."
