Fresh twist on tragic JFK Jr and Carolyn love story
C
AMELOT 2.0 is getting a re-write. Fifteen years after the plane crash that killed JFK Jr, his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette, friends of the couple are saying the romance between America’s most eligible bachelor and the publicity-shy Calvin Klein flack might be the greatest love story poorly told.
Contradicting practically all the negative stories that have been written about the couple’s three-year marriage, the latest issue of People magazine carries a cover story with anecdotes from some of the couple’s “closest confidantes” who decided to open up now “because they want John and Carolyn to be remembered as the warm and wonderful friends they loved.”
Why they waited so long to speak out isn’t clear, but what they have to say is surprisingly compelling.
Some, like Matt Berman who worked as the creative director on George magazine, come across a little too sugary. “John was more famous than any celebrity but in a weird way, he was the simplest person,” says Berman, whose new book JFK Jr., George, & Me, is also excerpted in the issue. “The world saw them as this prince and princess, but they were the most real and engaging people I’ve ever known.” But others, including Gustavo Paredes, son of Jackie’s personal assistant Provi Paredes, sound unaffected especially when putting perspective on legends like the one that Carolyn snared the Prince of Camelot by working “The Rules,” and refusing to go on a date with him for months after their first 1994 meeting. “She didn’t think he was serious,” Gustavo says simply, also revealing how Bessette initially dismissed her future husband as a serious “fashion mistake.”
RoseMarie Terenzio, who served as Kennedy’s PA for the last five years of his life, went on the Today show to publicise the People piece, insisting Carolyn was never threatened by John’s superstar status or his allure as a playboy.” On Valentine’s Day...the first year they were married, she had flowers sent from every single popular blonde of that era: ‘Love, Pamela Anderson,’ ‘Love, Vendela,’ ‘Love, Claudia Schiffer.’ It was just hilarious,” Terenzio recalled, rubbishing the blonde’s reputation as icy and aloof. “They were the type of couple that was fun to be around. There was no tension, really, between them. I think they really were each other’s best friends and soulmates — if that exists. And it wasn’t just the romance,” she added, shaming everyone who had written the marriage off as a mess, “it was the friendship.”
Clintons ‘slum it’ on holidays
Hillary Clinton’s determination to prove she can relate to the everyday concerns of American voters isn’t exactly going to plan.
The 66-year-old presidential candidate-in-waiting, who is still getting grief for complaining that she and Bill were “dead broke” leaving the White House, must have thought she was playing a blinder when she sensibly opted to downgrade the family summer vacation this year.
Instead of repeating last year’s Hampton’s holiday, when she paid $200,000 for a three-week rental in Sagaponack, Hillary recently settled on a $100,000 three-week rental in less flashy nearby Amagansett.
She didn’t, however, count on having reporter Blake Fleetwood as a neighbour who — tuned in as he is to the local gossip — broke news of her arrival this weekend via his Huffington Post blog on Thursday.
Noting that the “modest” 7-bed/7.5 bath “$18-or-so-million,” house overlooks the bay and not the ocean, Fleetwood helped readers understand how the Clinton’s will be “slumming it,” by explaining “these are the distinctions between the 1-percent and top 10th of the 1-percent.”
He also pointed out how they will be living “next door to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein” who “may even be able to line up” some moneyed “Hollywood connections for a presidential run.”
Other notables in the hood: Alec Baldwin, Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow and Paul McCartney.
KK eyes up new NY Krib
Days after announcing she has bid on a $20m California home (two spas, a vineyard etc), Kim Kardashian is said to be close to settling on a Manhattan pied-a-terre fabulous enough to serve as “an appropriate family home” for husband Kanye West and their one-year-old daughter North.
The four-bedroom $50m (€37.3m) penthouse at 66 E. 11th Street comes with standard features like vitamin-C filtered showers, posture-supportive flooring, a kitchen herbarium and dawn stimulation provided by circadian-rhythm lighting customised to a resident’s sleep pattern.
Add-ons, including a three-story metal floating staircase, a 2200 sq. ft. roof terrace and a Chromatherapy jacuzzi (which, fyi, uses coloured light to harmonize with the body’s natural energy meridians) are extra.
Another plus: tenants, including Leo DiCaprio and Deepak Chopra, share access to Donna Karan’s Urban Zen wellness concierge who curates and coordinate daily wellness experiences. One guess as to who is laughing now.