Interview: John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Interviewee: John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Interviewer: Barbara Walters
Date: 1995
In the stead of real royalty, the United States had a “prince,” the late John F. Kennedy Jr. John-John, as he is endeared to many Americans, would always be remembered as that boy who saluted the casket of his father, former president John F. Kennedy. He was famous before he could speak, the first child born to a U.S. president in power.
Living in the fishbowl of constant fame, John F Kennedy Jr. is attractive as much as reclusive, shirking from publicity all his life. In this interview, Barbara Walters got to solicit him on how well he is handling the limelight as a 35-year old man. She also checks with him if he has any plans in public service.
Despite his reservations about the press, John Jr. considered being an actor at one point. Judging from the number of people fawning over him, this move would not have been for naught. People alone, in its 1988 issue, named him Sexiest Man Alive.
Before he married Carolyn Bessette, a publicist at Calvin Klein, in 1996, John Jr. had been coveted as America’s most eligible bachelor. On the road to the altar, he dated actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Darryl Hannah, and was linked to pop queen Madonna.
Supposedly to please his mother, John Jr. pursued law at New York University, but he flunked the bar examinations twice thereafter. He was unique among the Kennedys for not studying at Harvard University, attending Brown University for a degree in History instead.
Eventually, John Jr. took a $30,000-paying job for the Manhattan District Attorney as a prosecutor in 1989. He left it in 1993 with impressive success, winning every one of his six cases.
In September 1995, JFK Jr. tried his hand at journalism. Barbara Walters made this interview just as he was launching George, a nonpartisan magazine straddling politics and lifestyle.
John died in a plane crash at Martha’s Vineyard on July 16, 1999, with his wife and sister.