BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Call it Camelot by way of Canada.
Several Canadians have key roles on both sides of the camera in The Kennedys,- an eight-hour miniseries premiering Sunday on History Television.
The series, about the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy, was shot last summer in Toronto.
Why the Canadian city?
“That’s where we found our White House,” says director Jon Cassar, the former 24 showrunner who was raised in Ottawa and came up in the business on several Canadian-based series, including La Femme Nikita.
His Canadian production designer, Rocco Matteo, remembered a replica of the White House Oval Office, built for the 1997 Wesley Snipes movie Murder at 1600, was in storage north of the city.
Matteo, another Nikita alumnus, had no trouble converting that set into the Kennedy White House.
Cassar and Matteo were among those at the red carpet screening of The Kennedys held late last month at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences theatre in Beverly Hills. Greg Kinnear, who plays John Kennedy, and Katie Holmes, who plays first lady Jackie Kennedy, were in attendance, as was Holmes’ movie star husband Tom Cruise.
Kinnear says he did not study other screen takes on JFK — including Canadian Bruce Greenwood, who played Kennedy in Thirteen Days — before taking on the iconic role.
Kinnear did watch film clips of the slain president.
“Especially online,” says Kinnear. “I call it the University of YouTube.”
The actor, normally more associated with comedic roles, wore a hairpiece to approximate Kennedy’s protruding hairstyle and bears a surprising resemblance to the president. He enjoyed shooting in Toronto, saying he was able to get out and walk a few parks with his family.
“In Los Angeles we have the beach but parks, not so much.”
Most of the other key roles in the series went to Canadians. Kristin Booth (featured on both MVP and Flashpoint) plays JFK brother Bobby Kennedy’s wife Ethel. Charlotte Sullivan (“Rookie Blue”) plays oft-rumoured Kennedy squeeze Marilyn Monroe. Serge Houde (Exes & Ohs) plays notorious crime boss Sam Giancana.
“The only thing I knew about Giancana was that he wore those big dark glasses, like Michael Caine,” says Houde. I still had my 3D glasses from seeing Avatar, so I wore them to the audition, and badda bing, badda boom, Sammy G was back in town.”
B.C.-native Barry Pepper says playing younger brother Bobby — JFK’s closest confidant in the White House — was a “nerve-wracking” experience.
“The responsibility is massive,” says the 41-year-old actor, who played home run hitter Roger Maris in Billy Crystal’s celebrated HBO movie 61.
Pepper was embraced by Maris’s family and says it would be “an absolute joy to hear from the Kennedy family or hear feedback if they actually do see the series because I think that I possibly love RFK as much as they do.”
That seems unlikely to happen.
In January, news broke that the U.S. History channel, which co-commissioned the eight hour miniseries along with Canada’s History Television, had screened and rejected the project, deeming it not historical enough. (It was scooped up in the U.S. by Reelz Entertainment, which began showing it last Sunday.) There was a great deal of speculation in the press that so-called “friends of the Kennedys” had brought pressure to spike the series. The Disney Company is a corporate parent of the U.S. History channel, and Caroline Kennedy’s new book (She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems) has just been released on a division of Disney’s Hyperion publishing label. Kill the movie or no book, went the rumours.
Initial reports suggested that the original scripts delved deeper into allegations of infidelity in the White House and even drug use by the president, who was tortured by a bad back throughout his presidency and relied more than the public knew on painkillers. The finished miniseries does explore both of these areas but focuses more on events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Executive producer Joel Surnow, who produced Nikita in Toronto before creating the smash hit 24, has made no secret of his conservative views and was seen as a threat by pro-Kennedy forces.
“The only thing we heard was Robert Kennedy Jr. felt we had trashed his family,” says Surnow, also interviewed at the premiere. He says he did not hear from any member of the family directly.
He dismisses the notion that there was any agenda behind the series, saying screenwriter Stephen Kronish is left-leaning.
“Lefties can write righties,” says Surnow. “If you’re an honest writer, you can write.”