Grace Gummer said Ryan Murphy called to persuade her to choose FX’s Love Story over another competing TV offer—and she also opened up about the season finale scene that took ten takes to get just right.
Grace Gummer didn’t plan on playing Caroline Kennedy in the FX series Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette. She had another show in the mix—one that came with a competing offer—and for a moment, that was her path.
Then Ryan Murphy called.
“He called me and was like, ‘What is this other show you’re doing? Why don’t you do our show? I promise, it’s going to be amazing,’” the 40-year-old actress said in an interview with THR. “He’s very, very direct; he knows what he wants, and he’s decisive and smart as hell. So I trust him.”
Murphy wasn’t speaking from outside her world. Gummer previously appeared in three seasons of American Horror Story, and she most recently appeared in an episode of All’s Fair. Her connection to his work is part of why the conversation landed the way it did—quick, clear, and pointed.
Her commitment mattered for more than the role itself. In Love Story’s season finale, Caroline learns of JFK Jr, Carolyn and sister Lauren Bessette’s death in a plane crash, and Gummer described preparing for the scene as something she had to reach for from inside.
“You have to sort of search within yourself in a very deep way, emotionally,” she shared. “Technicality is really important to me as an actor. Knowing the lines was, first and foremost, my center and my mark within the scene. I made sure that I knew all the beats because a lot of the words were repeated. but they were all said in different ways. So I really tried to make sure that I knew what I was saying when I was saying it so that I wouldn’t have to think of any of that.”.
Then came the part that cost more.
“Secondly, I really let myself go,” she added. “There’s nothing I left behind, physically or emotionally. I let myself be completely open and vulnerable. And, to be honest, I try to imagine what it’s like to lose someone you love, and it’s unimaginable, but I tried to do my best.”
That “do my best” didn’t come in a single take. It took ten takes for the scene, and director Anthony Hemingway—who also worked with Gummer on American Horror Story: Freak Show and All’s Fair—kept pushing.
“He said, ‘Just go again. Go again. I know you have it in you,’” she recalled. “By the eighth take, I was like, ‘I actually don’t know how many more of these I can put myself through,’ but I think we ended up using one of the last takes.”
Gummer’s Love Story run continues to follow her in real life, too. Earlier this week, she joined her Love Story co-stars at a SAG-AFTRA conversation in Los Angeles before heading to Italy to attend Dua Lipa and Callum Turner’s wedding.
For Gummer, it sounds like the job asked for two kinds of trust: one that came from a decisive phone call, and another she built take by take—until the finale finally landed.
Grace Gummer Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette Ryan Murphy American Horror Story Caroline Kennedy JFK Jr Carolyn Bessette Lauren Bessette Anthony Hemingway SAG-AFTRA Dua Lipa Callum Turner Italy wedding