Preppy Rachel Weis to Play Jackie O

Hello Lovelies,

Have you heard that actress Rachel Weis has been selected to play Jackie Kennedy in the biopic by director Darren Aronofsky? The movie is centered around Jackie in the days immediately following the assassination until the memorial service for the president. I haven't heard when the movie is set to start filming.

I find myself a little protective of the Kennedy's, especially since they fought very hard to keep interviews and documents from the weeks and months after the assassination private. I'm not at home right this minute, but when I get there I'll check and get the details - there was a Vanity Fair article I don't remember what month, but sometime last year, that featured how the Kennedy family hired an author to write Jackie's memoirs of the time, and then realized that what she had said was too sensitive and the publisher was trying to publish them too widely (in Life magazine) and that she had been overly emotional during the interviews which occured within a few months of the assassination. So the family fought the author and the publisher and ended up stiffling the printing of the book and heavily editing it. The original transcripts of the interviews are held at the JFK library and won't be released to the public until 100 years after the assassination 2063. 


Although the film is not based on those transcripts, I can't help but wonder what is it based on? And if the Kennedy family, especially Robert Kennedy, fought so hard to protect Jackie's privacy during the months after the assassination... how would they feel about this movie? It will be interesting to see if Caroline does a press release about it (on a side note, I've always wanted to read an in depth interview with Caroline about what it is like growing up with the images of your fathers last day all over the place, and I've always wanted to know if she ever watched the Zapruder film -click here if you haven't and just a warning it is graphic- and what she thought while she watched it).  I have mixed feelings about this film, I will absolutely go and see it, but I also think it's very important to remember that this was not only a national tragedy, but also a very personal tragedy for the family. 

What do you think readers? Does Rachel Weis have the grace and composure to play Mrs. Kennedy in her darkest hours? Personally, I think Rachel is a good fit for the role!

*All photos of Jackie were taken from the JFKlibrary.org website
**All photos of Rachel are links to the websites they were taken from
**The Vanity Fair article was in the October 2009 issue, it has a great picture of Jackie on the cover. William Manchester was the author who had such personal and intimate interviews with Jackie, some of the Kennedy family and its supporters said they got the feeling that he took advantage of Jackie's vulnerability in the months after the assassination. The book is entitled "The Death of a President." Of intimate details that Jackie shared with Manchester and wanted removed from the book the contents of the letter that Caroline placed on her daddy's coffin, and how the Kennedy's spent their last night together. If you can try to find a copy of the October 2009 Vanity Fair, the article is very insightful and well worth the trouble to hunt down a back issue!