On a trip to Edinburgh years ago, a taxi driver told me about a job he’d taken transporting fans of the television series Outlander to some of the locations used in the show. It’s far from the only case of someone making plans based on their favorite small-screen viewing: shows from The White Lotus to Game of Thrones to Girls have inspired devotees to visit the real-life locations where those programs were set. So it isn’t at all surprising to see another popular show also inspiring longer lines and more crowded sidewalks in a certain neighborhood.
That neighborhood is Tribeca, and the series is Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette, the miniseries that debuted to mixed-to-positive reviews earlier this year. As Curbed’s Clio Chang reports, the popularity of Love Story has led to an uptick in visitors to Tribeca — a neighborhood that already has little trouble attracting large crowds.
Among the destinations that have seen an increase in interest is the Odeon. In this case, Chang writes, the interest is not so much a larger number of diners as it is certain customers making a very specific request: “writing notes in their reservation requests to be seated at the same table that John and Carolyn preferred.” Though it’s also notable that the series seems to have heightened existing trends rather than creating them. As Chang points out, Kennedy and Bessette’s existing ties to certain NYC locations are already a draw for some.
Jackie Kennedy’s Former Summer Home Is for Sale
Quarantine like a Kennedy this summerLonger lines and more foot traffic around Tribeca aren’t the only ways Love Story has echoed the real-life events that inspired it. Creator Connor Hines told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Lexi Carson about witnessing paparazzi and actors playing paparazzi being indistinguishable when filming certain scenes.
“I would have imagined that all of the interest we were going to be able to gauge about the show was going to be when the show was released,” Hines told Carson. “So for us to know right off the bat how much people were still invested in them was incredibly telling in terms of the audience we could hopefully anticipate.” Now, the investment Hines mentioned seems to be playing out across lower Manhattan.
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