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They missed a golden opportunity.
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s hair colorist — who dyed her hair in the ’90s — said the series “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette,” did not do his iconic shade justice.
“It wasn’t the right blonde. It was too dark,” Brad Johns told The Post.
Then when she got married, it was “supposed to be really, really light. And the wedding hair color was not good.”
The colorist to the stars — who served A-listers like Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer and Christy Turlington at his eponymous salon on Fifth Avenue — said the FX and Hulu series did reach out to him to dye the hair of the actress portraying Bessette, Sarah Pidgeon.
However, the show would not agree to his rate — which is in the thousands per day.
“I was so excited to have the chance to do her color for this story, for my dead friend, and for Ryan Murphy, I love him. But I needed to be compensated,” he continued.
He said it would have taken four days to transform Pidgeon’s hair since he would need to dye it for each season.
“Light in the summer, lightish in spring, deepish in fall, and dark in the winter,” he explained.
The show also got her personality all wrong, he said.
“I cry through the show because she’s not around. But I cry to see this poor actress trying to act this character that wasn’t real. She was so sullen and Carolyn wasn’t sullen. She was hysterical,” he said.
“It’s maddening to me when I see my friend being turned into an AI robot . . . Nobody is stepping up for this person, who made me laugh, who made my mother laugh.”
Bessette came to be his dear friend.
“We would go out after I was done with work and . . . have margaritas,” he said.
“She was funny and she made everybody laugh. And she was half Italian. I was half Italian. When I had my opening party, she said, ‘I’m only going if your mother is going because she’s Italian.’ And her and my mother were in a corner gabbing about pasta for like an hour.”
Although he never met JFK Jr., he did have deep conversations with Bessette about him.
“She loved him. I said, ‘Do you love him because of all the stuff around him?’ She said, ‘Brad, I love him. He’s my soulmate.'”
Johns, who is now retired, lives in Los Angeles and works in glass blowing. He fondly recalled his first consult with Bessette, who had light brown locks at the time.
“When we first met, she wasn’t even dating John at that point, and she said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I said, ‘You should be a blonde,'” Johns remembered.
“She said, ‘Well, how long is it going to take?’ I said, ‘Give me three sessions.’ It was gorgeous. And every model came in for it. Every woman who could afford it came in for it.”
Heads would turn whenever she walked into the salon.
“She was stunning. She would come into the salon with no makeup on, and everybody would turn around and go, ‘Oh my God, she’s gorgeous,'” said Johns, who penned a memoir, “Dye.”
English (US)