Sarah Pidgeon Steps Into the Spotlight

No one really knows her name just yet, or recognizes her face, so actress Sarah Pidgeon and I walk like two friends recording a “Spend a Day in New York City’s West Village With Me” TikTok. We duck into a basement-level crafts store where she holds up different colors of yarn to her face for a scarf she hopes to make. I offer suggestions that seem to match her bright-blue eyes. When two shopkeepers chime in, she goes with their advice and lands on a steely gray.

We continue our easy stroll up picturesque Hudson Street, where November leaves fall in slow motion like paid extras, and we eventually sit down at Anton’s, a wine bar and café, where the head waiter does know Sarah by name (she’s a regular) and who interrupts our meal three times with reminders to eat the bread. Pidgeon and I chit-chat about where she grew up (Birmingham, Michigan, a Detroit suburb); her first adult pet (Tinky-Winky, a kitten that now lives with her mom in Ann Arbor because filming got too busy); her recommendations as an Anton’s aficionado (definitely one of the pastas). It’s all so normal that I almost don’t want to draw attention to why we’re really here: the project with the potential to blow up Pidgeon’s entire spot.

We’re meeting five days after she’s wrapped Love Story, the Ryan Murphy–helmed FX series chronicling the romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy before their untimely deaths in a 1999 plane crash. It’s only because I’ve been studying Pidgeon ahead of our sit-down that I recognize she’s still halfway in CBK mode. Her hair is dyed light blonde, with the faintest hint of her chocolate roots creeping into view. Her tiny black sunglasses match the slim frames her character wore in the same neighborhood, 30 years ago. (Later, she’ll admit that she took a pair home from the Love Story wardrobe department.) Even the black turtleneck and bootcut jeans she wears are reminiscent of her character’s closet.

By the series’s pre-Valentine’s Day premiere, Pidgeon’s chances of going unnoticed in the West Village, or outside her apartment in Brooklyn, are unlikely. Something she’s already gotten a glimpse of. The show’s attempt to chronicle “American royalty” as they met, fell in love, and passed before their time generated viral backlash the moment Pidgeon’s first in-costume photo appeared online last summer. The styling was all wrong. The casting was not quite right. It’s a topic she faces with equal parts steely determination to show how much she poured into her performance and shrug-emoji resignation that she can’t control what anyone has to say, anyway. “It was just a question of what I could do,” she says, twirling a chunky silver ring, a hand-me-down from her mom. “And that was focusing on making this [situation] what I needed—to do my job as well as possible.”

Pidgeon, 29, tells me she’d never been part of a project with so much immediate public interest, and ironically, that gave her a deeper understanding not only of CBK, whom Vanity Fair and other outlets frequently referred to as the “private princess,” but of herself. “I really like my life as it is,” she says with a half smile. “I think anonymity is wonderful because you can get lost in a role.” She wants to be an actress, not a celebrity.

Pidgeon has been training more than half her life for a challenge like playing a beloved cultural figure. She acted in Detroit-area community theater productions of Beauty and the Beast and Willy Wonka alongside fellow star-on-the-rise Chase Sui Wonders. Her parents first enrolled her in summer camp at Interlochen, a prestigious Michigan school for the performing arts, around the same time. By her sophomore year of high school, she’d transfer from her local public school to attend the academy’s term-time program.

Somewhere in between studying movies like Legally Blonde and My Big Fat Greek Wedding and spending hours with “really serious” kids in musical and theater training, she decided acting was her only possible career path. In her version, the epiphany didn’t come with begging her family to move from Michigan to Hollywood. She finished high school and then matriculated to Carnegie Mellon, where she graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting.

Her breaks have gotten successively bigger each year since. First there was the survivalist Amazon Prime Video series The Wilds, where she played one of several teen girls in a staged plane crash turned social experiment; then came a somber character study as a young Kathryn Hahn in the Hulu series Tiny Beautiful Things. Her first Broadway role, portraying a Stevie Nicks–inspired band leader on the brink in Stereophonic, also landed her her first Tony nomination, for Best Featured Actress, in 2024.

Whether she was belting it out in a faux recording studio six days per week or executing underwater stunts, Pidgeon approached each of her past roles with an academic dedication to the craft. “In a lot of what I've done, I’ve pushed this emotional endurance,” Pidgeon says. “I have no real limits. I just want it to be a challenge.” She even taught herself to crochet for Stereophonic, so her alter ego could have a believably 1970s distraction during tense group scenes.

Along the way, she’s caught the attention of designer labels like Chanel (she’s becoming a front-row regular) and industry veterans like Naomi Watts, her co-star in the 2024 drama The Friend. One scene together, and Watts remembers sensing Pidgeon had that something everybody in show business wants but can’t always define: the It Factor. On set, “I remember running over to my assistant between takes and saying, ‘Oh my god, this girl is incredible,’” Watts tells me in an email. “There was an immediate spark—she felt like a live wire.”

Pidgeon tells me she’s still sometimes stunned that this passion can pay her bills. She’s also wondering where to draw the line between work Sarah and everything-else Sarah. “Now I’m getting to this point in my life when I’m asking, ‘Who am I outside of this thing that was very much how I formed my identity when I was a child, before it ever became a career?’”

She looks at her empty plate of pasta as if an answer might materialize in the smears of sauce. When it doesn’t, she quickly presses on. “I think it can be really difficult when that form of self-expression, whether it be writing or acting, becomes something that’s not just for your own self-fulfillment; when its reception is tied to your livelihood, you can start looking at it in a different way,” Pidgeon says.

Toward the tail end of shooting the ’90s horror remake I Know What You Did Last Summer in early 2025, Pidgeon received an email that would change everything. It was an invitation to self-tape an audition for a series inspired by the biography Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, which would track Bessette-Kennedy’s ascent from Calvin Klein sales associate to publicist and, eventually, wife of America’s most eligible bachelor (JFK Jr.). Pidgeon was reading for Carolyn’s half of what would become the titular Love Story.

Of all the roles that had come her way, this one would be Pidgeon’s most daunting yet. First, because of the scant source material: Only 18 seconds of speaking footage exist of CBK online, and Pidgeon couldn't consult her subject on her performance. Then there was the fandom. Thirty years after her untimely death, CBK is revered as an ultimate It girl. Whoever got the part, out of the hundreds auditioning, would be put under a microscope. “It isn’t lost on me what a challenge that is, emotionally, physically, and psychologically, to embody something that everyone has projected so much onto,” says Love Story executive producer Brad Simpson.

Pidgeon, however, seemed primed for the part. Her uncanny resemblance to Carolyn got her noticed, but it was the depth she brought to a reading of a first-date scene—clever but withholding, clear that she wasn’t waiting around to be swept off her feet, wide, expressive eyes—that made her casting “undeniable.” Showrunners could see she respected the material, the person, in the ways that would make the playing of a beloved figure a success. “She was scared of it in the right way,” Simpson says. “She knew what she was taking on.”

The weeks before filming were Pidgeon’s master’s-level course in crafting her version of Carolyn. She worked with a movement coach to pick up gestures she brings with her to our lunch: running her hands through her hair, giving a touch on the shoulder when she’s making a point. (When there wasn’t video, still photographs of Carolyn were sometimes enough of a starting point for her scenes, Pidgeon says.) She read every biography she could get her hands on too. Where history didn’t leave enough details behind, Pidgeon’s research empowered her to fill in the blanks. “What was so exciting in taking on this role was this freedom I had in learning about this person and then creating this character,” she says. “[I wasn’t] necessarily limited by something so literal, because there wasn’t a ton to go off of.”

Some things weren’t negotiable—like a stitch-for-stitch recreation of CBK’s Narciso Rodriguez wedding dress or her signature shade of blonde hair. And so, Pidgeon dyed her brunette hair, in what she calls her first major beauty transformation since an “unfortunate” summer-camp bob when she was 12. “I credit my ambivalence to changing my hair in my personal life to that,” she laughs, “but for this [part], I didn’t have any real hesitation in changing it. Not that hair color necessarily alters your personality, but it felt much easier to become her.” She jokes that, sometimes, she wouldn’t recognize herself in the mirror.

While she studied for her part, she also practiced reading with dozens of potential JFK Jrs. Paul Anthony Kelly, a former model, eventually landed the role. Pidgeon’s younger, but she has more on-set experience; in a way, he says, she became a bit of a mentor. “We had each other’s backs before we even knew it, and I think everyone that was in the [audition] room could see that and felt that,” Kelly tells me on a late December phone call. “That’s really what carried us through the whole show.” Once his part was confirmed, they’d get lunch at the Odeon, a Tribeca staple frequented by their on-screen counterparts.

On a typical set, Pidgeon’s interpretation would be largely out of sight until a series trailer dropped. Love Story filmed on location in New York, where set-crashers are an occupational hazard. Ryan Murphy tried to get ahead of the tabloid headlines by sharing early camera test shots of Pidgeon and Kelly in costume on Instagram. Instead, a firestorm lit up the comments section. Everyone from established fashion editors to armchair commentators picked apart the styling. Their tone insinuated Murphy had danced on the late couple’s graves by, say, handing Pidgeon an Hermès Birkin 40 when CBK always carried a 35. (Obviously.) Bessette-Kennedy’s former colorist, Brad Johns, spent a Vogue interview bashing the “totally wrong” shade of Pidgeon’s hair. Even members of the Kennedy family disavowed the project.

Matters didn’t improve when paparazzi caught on to the shoot dates. Images spread online, and commenters lobbed critiques like “cheap” and “lazy” and “wrong” at Pidgeon’s look—and, by extension, her performance. Never mind that no one had actually seen the actress do what she was hired to do—act.

“I wouldn't say I’m necessarily glad for it,” Pidgeon says of the controversy. “I don’t think it was super-shocking that people were invested in Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and had strong opinions on what we were doing. But it was a real opportunity to understand what it might have been like for her, and that’s always helpful.” She’s turned in her chair, back to the brick wall, talking to me but addressing the near-vacant middle of the restaurant. For someone who booked the project excited and eager to film, backlash felt like history repeating. CBK, after all, was relentlessly hounded by photographers and scrutinized by the media in her own lifetime. Pidgeon decided to turn any hurt or frustration into fuel for her performance.

“It wasn’t lost on me that there were so many parallels,” Pidgeon says. “Granted, I'm playing a character and acting. Carolyn and JFK Jr. were trying to live their lives. But it did give me a sense of what her lived experience was, and it wakes up the things happening physically in your body—what it feels like in your chest, what’s going through your mind.”

What Pidgeon hints the public may be missing is that she cares too. This isn’t a project she took to cheapen CBK’s memory or to boost her own résumé; she wanted to honor the woman she’s portraying. “She's become so incredibly important to me, and I revere her and everything that I’ve learned about her and her legacy,” she says. “I understand people also have that affinity and care and investment in her, and I think that's true of anyone who plays a real person. I certainly felt the responsibility of playing Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and I carried that every day.”

It’s because she cares that she couldn’t completely tune out the noise. She took up a decompression hobby to help: knitting. A friend had introduced her to it in August, and she found the stitches to be a meditative escape from any distractions swirling outside her trailer.

While filming may have wrapped, she’s kept up with it. She pulls a scarf-hood hybrid she’s been working on for a few weeks out of her bag and lets me try a few stitches over our dessert. Before I can get too impressed with her hobby—I’ve never knit before, and this looks to me like it could sell on Etsy—Pidgeon emphasizes the “Swiss cheese” holes where she’s made a few mistakes.

On a project where her every move was (and will likely continue to be) scrutinized, she embraced the private space to play around and mess up. “It’s been nice to try something and be bad at it. When I was a bit younger, if I wasn’t good at something, it would frustrate me so much,” she says. “It’s this weird pressure on the self to be perfect at something when you’re trying it for the first time, hence me being like, ‘Look at this terrible hood.’”

She continues: “I think it's cool, considering that acting can be quite subjective. But seeing something physically made that wasn't there before…it’s still an art, but you can tell that when you missed a stitch, you missed a stitch. There’s no arguing with that.”

A few weeks later, Sarah and I are catching up on Zoom. She’s in Australia, on a long-awaited solo vacation. In a few days, she’ll jet to Dubai to see her sister, who recently moved abroad. While she was pleasant before, she’s perkier with the Southern Hemisphere sunshine streaming in through her rental’s window. That’s what time to come down from a high-stress, high-intensity project can do: “I didn’t realize how depleted my energy was or how much I just needed to rot,” she says.

When we’d first met, Pidgeon had told me she didn’t fully “understand” what she’d accomplished on the Love Story set. Now she has enough distance to feel proud of what she made and optimistic about the premiere, discourse and all. “I know I feel incredibly itchy when I watch myself,” she says, wrinkling her nose in discomfort, “but it makes me so happy that people are excited and eager to see the episodes.”

There’s a certain confidence to Pidgeon’s tone too. “I have a certain expectation of myself and my work. I don’t find that my artistry is inspired when I’m thinking about what people might want me to do or trying to meet some expectation.”

In Hollywood, the burn of success is short, and already there are thoughts of what could come next. Pidgeon’s open. She could try another period piece; alternatively, she’d love to “get really buff” for an action movie. One thing’s for sure: She won’t make her decisions based on Love Story’s eventual IMDB rating. “I think people see your career sometimes based on the reception of the projects that you did,” she says, “and I think something that's motivating me is just following things that feel inspiring and exciting.”

Right now, that’s not even working, necessarily. “I remember when actors would come to my school and the same question would be asked: ‘How do you become a good actor?’ They would always say go travel, have experiences, you’d draw on all of that.” To dive just as deep into the next role that comes her way, “I really need to live a little bit.”

Our call ends, and I set a “Sarah Pidgeon” Google Alert to keep tabs on what could possibly come next. It stays quiet over the holidays and into the New Year. She pops up at a fashion party in L.A. and in pre-premiere interviews for Love Story; otherwise, she’s off the grid.

All I know, since the three months that we met, is that she’s touched up her roots, staying CBK blonde in the photos that surface from her few appearances. Of all the ways this project could change her life, a previously hard-left hair change is the one she’s fine embracing in public. If there’s anything else, she knows now that keeping it to herself is a right worth protecting.

Photographer Olivia McCausland | Stylist Bailey Moon | Hair Stylist DJ Quintero | Makeup Artist Shayna Goldberg | Manicurist Jin Soon Choi | Creative Direction Montse Tanús | Entertainment Director Neha Prakash | Video Director Sarah Al Slaity | DP Gabe Harden | Shoot location The William Vale and Westlight