How FX's Love Story Found The Perfect Actors To Play JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were an iconic couple, so any actors playing them have pretty big shoes to fill.

The inaugural season of FX's anthology "Love Story" — debuting this Thursday at 9 pm on FX and Hulu — charts the famous and ultimately tragic romance between the late Kennedy scion and his wife, and casting the right people to play them was absolutely essential. The "Love Story" producers searched high and low and eventually settled on two relative newcomers: Paul Anthony Kelly as John, and Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn. 

The producers initially thought that "Carolyn would be more difficult to cast," creator and executive producer Connor Hines tells TVLine in the video above, "maybe just because she was a bit more of an enigma. But Sarah Pidgeon very quickly emerged as the frontrunner as soon as we saw her on screen. She just possessed so many of these qualities that I think Carolyn had that can't really be taught... I think she just possessed them inherently." 

As for John, the producers auditioned "a thousand or more actors" to find the perfect fit, Hines admits, because they were "looking for a very specific kind of machismo that's a bit of a bygone era: the George Clooney, the Tom Selleck." (And that machismo includes "chest hair," fellow EP Nina Jacobson points out.) But when they met Kelly in person, "as soon as he walked into the room, I think everybody knew, especially Sarah, that this was the guy we were looking for," Hines recalls.

Pidgeon remembers auditioning for the "Love Story" producers, who only asked her to read her scenes once: "I thought, 'Oh, that's not a very good sign.'" She didn't think she did very well at all ("It was a hard room to read"), but then she got a call a few days later telling her she got the role, and "I think the reality of it really set in. It's a great honor to portray Carolyn in 'Love Story.'" 

Kelly, meanwhile, submitted a tape to play John and didn't hear anything for weeks, but then he got called back for a chemistry read with Pidgeon, he says: "At the end of the screen test, while I was being de-miked, Sarah went off and then came back, and she was just like, 'Paul... congratulations!' And my spirit left my body right then and there."

Do these two look the part? Weigh in with a comment below!