‘Love Story’: Alex DiGerlando On How Light Made John & Carolyn’s Loft Feel like a Jewelry Box

The production design of FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette feels like it was shot in 1990s New York City. There’s something about the feeling or the vibe of it that vibrates with that pre-9/11, magazine-dominated energy. There are a few moments where we see Carolyn Bessette on her way to work, and she passes through a construction site, and even the posters on the manufactured walls feel like they were taken from 1999. It’s magical. Production designer Alex DiGerlando didn’t have a lot of photographs of the Kennedy spaces to draw from, but he made confident choices to make us remember this time period fondly.

Many people online have rightfully mooned over John and Carolyn’s Tribeca loft, but a space that doesn’t get enough attention is Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg’s sprawling apartment. I love the red wallpaper on the dining room walls, the white and yellow curtains, and the red checkered entryway wall space, and DiGerlando reveals that some of the space was actually in good condition to apply to the period setting.

“That is the only location that we really didn’t do much to,” he admits. “A big part of the job is the designing part, obviously, but sometimes a part of it is curation when you’re finding things that you can slot in to the overall vision. Caroline and Ed lived on Park Avenue, and we were geolocating that area, because we wanted it to have that kind of DNA. There’s not a ton of apartments out there of that caliber that are super psyched about having a whole film crew invade their space. We are lucky that Paul Eskanazi, our location manager, found that place. What drew me to it was the kind of layout and the architecture–it felt so right. But I love the quirkiness to the decor. It’s all very trapped in time, and the kitchen hadn’t been updated so the appliances worked well for us. Ed is a bit a divergence from the Kennedy aesthetic, and since he is an artist and writer, it was an opportunity to make something a little different. I just liked how each room fed into the other room, and that worked well for the amount of party scenes we had set there.”

Like the costumes, the apartments between Jackie and Caroline look like they could be paired with one another since they lean into that traditional Kennedy aesthetic. I told DiGerlando how much I loved that framed picture stuck to the front of the bookcase behind the couch. Surely, every piece that Jackie O places in her home has a bit if history and meaning to her–there is a set of small, gold candlesticks in the shape of rearing elephants that I would’ve tried to sneak into my pocket. The paneled, white walls are clean and the large, white fireplace in the living room feels very classic.

“That [framed picture is] actually lifted right out of the research,” DiGerlando says. “It’s such a cool, bold move, right? We were able to recreate most of the artwork that she actually had. There are only about seven or nine good pictures of that apartment, and being able to recreate it and then wander through it was thrilling to me, if I was being honest. There’s a sort of majesty of being in that space, so I feel very privileged to have been there–even though it’s not the real place. The Kennedys are such photographed people, but then there’s not a ton of pictures of them on the inside. There are so many of them when they leave their homes like when Carolyn and John leave the Tribeca loft. We really had to extrapolate from what information we did have and expand on there.”

I couldn’t help but ponder if John decorated his Tribeca loft to purposefully move away from that Kennedy look. There are sharp corners and bare furniture and high, high ceilings. In the living room, I loved the deep, pew-like couches with the flat cushions and there is a set of table lamps where the pointed tops look like thick school pencils. Light feels different in that space even though there is nowhere to hide.

“Taking that big of a leap to make it as minimalist as we did felt appropriate for the period of the show,” he says. “One of the first conversations I had about the project with Ryan [Murphy] was that he wanted to lean into the idea of glamour and glamour photography for the series as a whole kind of how things were lit for classic Hollywood films. No top lighting and all of it coming from the side and very warm and soft. The minimalist architecture, like in the loft and the Calvin Klein offices, really lent itself in an interesting way, because the way light falls on those surfaces wraps corners. Everything is the same color, but the way light falls on the white that  it can look so different from one foot to the next. By not having a lot of clutter and having that kind of light, it would blanket them and make them separate from the architecture. It was its own special effect, and it made the space feel like a jewelry box.”

The offices of Calvin Klein also feel like an extension of something very contemporary and modern. In Calvin’s office, the large table has curved edges, and there are so many accolades for the brand that they can’t possibly be housed on just one shelf. In another area of the offices, there is a chic, black-and-white calendar that catches the eye. DiGerlando explains how some spaces can feel related to one another.

“We wanted the show to have an overarching color palette, but also just a general aesthetic palette,” he says. “I tried to make sure that all of our sets and locations sort of work in conversation with one another, so there’s definitely a Venn diagram: the sets that are associated with the masculine characters have certain characteristics. Jackie and Carolyn’s have a likeness in their kind of blush tones. With Carolyn’s tiny studio apartment, it has the blush of Jackie’s but stark empty walls and high gloss floors of John’s. I found a lot of pictures of the 39th Street Calvin Klein headquarters–they had 17 floors–so there are a lot of photos from different times. I did find a bunch from his personal office, and that is a close recreation of what it looked like. You’re exposed in those offices.”

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette is streaming now on Hulu.