They’re still big shots.
Although it’s been more than 25 years since John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy walked the streets of Manhattan, the paparazzi still can’t get enough of them.
Even before the new FX and Hulu miniseries “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” began filming, its executive producer Ryan Murphy alerted the crew to be prepared for the influx of shutterbugs.
Production designer Alex DiGerlando told The Post he was baffled by the warning.
After all, the man playing JFK Jr. — model Paul Anthony Kelly — had zero acting credits to his name. And while the actress portraying Carolyn, Sarah Pidgeon, was a Tony nominee, she only had a few TV roles on her resume.
“When we first started, Ryan was the one who said it in an early meeting — that it’s going to be a paparazzi feeding frenzy. And I was like, ‘These are unknowns,’” DiGerlando said.
“And he was totally dead right. It didn’t matter who they were. It was like they were John and Carolyn.”
The 47-year-old Emmy-nominated production designer said there were so many paps swarming them, some may have even ended up as extras in scenes that had actors playing paparazzi.
“It really was a weird phenomenon … Because you had the cast paparazzi and the real paparazzi. I’m pretty certain that some real paparazzi might have ended up in the final show. I remember seeing maybe someone that was not dressed exactly right or had the wrong camera that didn’t feel period correct,” he said.
The limited series, which airs its finale on March 26, features multiple scenes in Central Park — and DiGerlando said there was so much concern over paparazzi, they almost didn’t film there.
“We even had conversations like, ‘Do we shoot in Prospect Park or do we find a private park we can shoot in?’” he recalled.
“I really fought against that, because, to me, the most important iconic thing is seeing the skyline from the park. And we wanted to shoot around the reservoir because it’s named after Jackie.”
Besides dealing with the unwanted camera flashes, the crew also had to transform the city into what it looked like in the 1990s — which was more challenging than it seems.
“People don’t think of ’92 as that far in the past, but actually at this point it is, and the city looked much different in terms of crosswalks, charging stations, newsstands, subways,” said DiGerlando, a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
As a result, the production team traveled around the city with a truck filled with ’90s New York props such as newspaper boxes and parking meters.
No detail was overlooked, and they even painstakingly recreated subway entrance signs.
“It’s a subtle difference … the topography is little different from 30 years ago,” he said. “The lines have changed over time.”
JFK Jr. was also known for riding his bicycle throughout the city, at a time when there were no bike lines, which also proved difficult to shoot.
“We worked very hard to frame them out when possible. And if the bike lane was in the shot, then post production would have to erase them,” he said.
When asked the most surprising thing he learned is his research, DiGerlando said it shocked him to discover that America’s Prince lived in a loft at 20 North Moore Street, which Carolyn eventually moved into.
“We think of the Kennedys and we think of them being in this kind of ivory castle,” he said.
“But he chose to live down in Tribeca at a time when Tribeca is not what it is now. That was a cool discovery,” he said.
That Tribeca building — which became a makeshift shrine after their deaths in 1999 — also attracted the paparazzi during filming.
“Especially for the finale episode, it got pretty crazy because of what we had to build outside of the apartment for that,” he said.
“But yeah, any time they were on the street, paparazzi was around.”
