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A new drama series is turning back the clock to explore how one of America’s most famous families, the Kennedys, came to be.
The upcoming Netflix series Kennedy will detail “the intimate lives, loves, rivalries and tragedies that shaped the most iconic dynasty in modern history, and helped create the world we live in today,” the streamer announced last fall.
The series will be based on Fredrik Logevall’s book JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956. Per the official logline, the first season will follow “the improbable ascent of Joe and Rose Kennedy and their nine children, including rebellious second son Jack, who struggles to escape the shadow of his golden boy older brother.”
Showrunner Sam Shaw compared the story of the Kennedys to “American mythology,” telling Netflix’s Tudum it falls “somewhere between Shakespeare and The Bold and the Beautiful.”
“Fredrik Logevall’s stunning, nuanced biography pulls a veil on the human strivings and burdens behind the myth, revealing as much about our present moment, how we got here and where we’re going, as about the Kennedys themselves,” he added.
In October 2025, Netflix announced that Michael Fassbender will star as Joe Kennedy Sr., the father of President John F. Kennedy and the patriarch of the Kennedy clan.
“He got them to the top of the mountain, the absolute peak of American society, and really, the world, in terms of politics, money, Wall Street, Hollywood, everything,” Pamela Keogh, Kennedy biographer and author of Jackie Style, says of Joe Sr. “And he did it in his very brief lifetime. Where they started and where the ambassador put them, that’s the interesting story, really.”
Now, more casting has been announced for the major players in the story of the Kennedys. Read on to see who will be playing all the famous faces.
Michael Fassbender as Joe Kennedy Sr.
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Michael Fassbender is a two-time Oscar nominee for 12 Years a Slave and Steve Jobs. He most recently starred in The Agency and Black Bag before being cast as Joseph Kennedy Sr.
“The ambassador is really the interesting one,” Keogh tells PEOPLE of Joe Sr.
In his 81 years, the Kennedy patriarch created a dynasty from the ground up. He was the first-ever chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, an ambassador to the United Kingdom, and a massively successful businessman thanks to steel, whiskey and Hollywood.
He then went on to propel his children, and their future descendants, to the heights of cultural status and political power. From 1947 to 2011, at least one member of the Kennedy family was serving in a federal elected office.
Laura Donnelly as Rose Kennedy
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Laura Donnelly is known for television roles on Outlander and The Nevers, as well as an extensive theater career, which has garnered her an Olivier Award and two Tony nominations. She will portray the Kennedy matriarch, Rose.
Where Joe Sr. was active and involved with the children, his wife, Rose, earned her reputation as a “hard woman,” Keogh notes.
“She was Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, which came with an enormous amount of status, prestige, money, the freedom to really do whatever the hell she wanted any time,” the biographer explains.
That said, despite having nine children, “she was not a good mom,” Keogh says.
“She was not a hugger, she wasn’t saying, ‘I love you’ or ‘Are you okay?'” Keogh adds. “She was just a tough woman.”
Keogh cites an example where young Jack Kennedy was at boarding school at Choate and ended up in the infirmary “for some three months… and nobody showed up.”
“They said, actually, that the father was much more emotionally involved in the lives of the children,” she continues. “He would write them letters at school and say, ‘Come on, buck up. You’re going to do okay.’ He would check the grades, and he would talk to the headmaster. He was much more emotionally involved.”
Nick Robinson as Joe Kennedy Jr.
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Nick Robinson is best known for starring roles in films like Love, Simon and TV series like A Teacher and Maid. He will now play Joe Jr., the firstborn child in the most famous Kennedy generation.
“The fascinating thing about the Kennedys is that JFK was really… he was not the top guy. It was Joseph Jr.,” Keogh notes.
She explains how the eldest Kennedy son was “big and strong and handsome — not that smart, but he was the guy that was being groomed.”
But everything changed with World War II. His father had aspirations for Joe Jr. to become president; he served as a delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention and planned to run for Congress when he returned home from serving overseas as a naval aviator.
Those dreams wouldn’t come to pass. Joe Jr. died on Aug. 12, 1944, when explosives his plane was carrying as part of Operation Aphrodite detonated early, instantly killing him and his co-pilot as they approached Nazi ground targets over East Suffolk, England.
Joe Sr. famously penned a letter following the death of his eldest son, in which he wrote, “all my plans were tied up with young Joe… that has gone smash.”
Joshuah Melnick as Jack Kennedy
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Joshuah Melnick — who recently appeared in the 2024 thriller Please Don’t Feed the Children as well as the Hulu series Saint X — will play a familiar face in the upcoming Netflix series, though he may not be the central character.
Many know how the life of JFK ended, but fewer know how it began, as the “spare” to his father’s dreams of status and power.
It was to JFK — or Jack — that Joe Sr. wrote that letter about his “smashed” political dreams. The second Kennedy son read it like the warning it was.
“My father wanted his eldest son in politics,” Jack famously said. “I went into politics because Joe died.”
Following the death of Joe Jr., his younger brother started down the political tracks their father had already laid: from the House to the Senate to the Oval Office. But Kennedy will explore who Jack was up until that point.
“[He] was thin and sickly, he was in bed a lot, and he read constantly, which actually helped him in the long run,” Keogh explains.
“He wasn’t the showboat in the family,” she adds. “I think he almost had to get his parents’ attention. So he was very charming and smart.”
It was that charm, in part, that helped win him the presidency. Jack’s affable nature and youthful good looks were crucial in his political career, notably in his narrow win over Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. It was the first televised debates, which allowed JFK to shine while Nixon stammered and sweated.
“He could talk to miners in Appalachia, and then he could talk to the Queen of England,” Keogh says of Jack. “He could really talk to anybody.”
Lydia Peckham as Rosemary Kennedy
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Lydia Peckham recently appeared in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Nuremberg, as well as the MGM+ series Robin Hood. She joins Netflix’s Kennedy series as one of the most complicated characters.
Rose Marie Kennedy, later known as Rosemary, had a difficult start. She was born in 1918, amid the Spanish influenza epidemic, which delayed the doctor from getting to Rose on time. A nurse instructed the matriarch to keep her legs closed to prevent the birth, trapping the first Kennedy daughter in the birth canal and cutting off valuable oxygen to her brain.
Rosemary experienced developmental delays growing up, but flourished with tutoring and private schools. However, she remained emotionally erratic, and by the time the family moved back home from the U.K. in 1939, Joe Sr. worried that she might be seen as a “scandal” that would taint the family’s political ambitions.
He took a drastic step, subjecting her to a prefrontal lobotomy at just 23 years old. The surgery left her in worse shape than she had been before, permanently disabled and unable to care for herself. The Kennedys sent her away to various private facilities, and Joe Sr. and Rose rarely spoke of her for the rest of their lives.
“She disappeared from the family,” Keogh says. “They took care of her, but it was almost like she was just off the stage.”
Some of Rosemary’s siblings, however, stepped up in their parents’ absence.
Eunice Kennedy took inspiration from the struggles of her sister.Eunice helped found the Special Olympics and lobbied her brother, JFK, for federal funding to support people with disabilities. The youngest Kennedy sibling, Ted, also cited Rosemary as an inspiration when he became a senator and sponsored the historic Americans With Disabilities Act.
Saura Lightfoot-Leon as Kick Kennedy
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Saura Lightfoot-Leon won a Special Jury Mention at the Venice Film Festival for her feature film debut in 2023’s Hoard. She recently appeared in the Paramount+ series The Agency and Netflix’s American Primeval. She will portray the headstrong Kathleen Kennedy, whom the family called “Kick.”
Kick was the second-eldest daughter of the family, and was quick to keep up with her older brothers.
“I think JFK and Kick were very, very similar,” Keogh says. “They had an ironic take on life. If something was happening, they’d make a joke to each other about it.”
However, unlike her brothers, Kick didn’t toe the family line. Kennedy biographer Lynne McTaggart has described her as “the only rebel of the family.”
During Joe Sr.’s time as ambassador to the U.K., Kick was a hit, standing out amongst the more demure English debutantes. She met and eventually married William “Billy” Cavendish, who was not just titled — the Marquess of Hartington and future Duke of Devonshire — but was also, more scandalously for the devoutly Catholic Kennedy family, a Protestant.
The marriage was happy but short-lived amid the carnage of World War II. A month after Joe Jr. was killed in battle, Billy also died, gunned down in Belgium by a German sniper.
Kick found love again, but would die in an airplane, crashing in France in May 1948, on her way to ask for her father’s blessing to marry again.
“They say when she was killed, JFK was devastated because they were really close,” Keogh notes.
Imogen Poots as Gloria Swanson
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Imogen Poots is best-known for film roles like The Look of Love, Need for Speed, and Green Room, and recently starred in the Prime Video series Outer Range. She was also nominated for an Olivier Award for her 2018 performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In Kennedy, Poots will play the three-time Oscar-nominated actress Gloria Swanson, who enters the Kennedy story by way of her affair with Joe Sr., one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets of the time.
“What’s wild is that… Joseph P. Kennedy brought her around with his family,” Keogh notes.
“She stopped by the Cape and… they had a wall in the garage that Kick had with celebrities, and she signed the wall,” Keogh continues. “Joe’s there with Rose and the eight kids and the whole production… I think Rose just chose to completely look the other way.”
Cole Doman as Lem Billings
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Cole Doman is known for roles in Uncle Frank, Mutt and The Mastermind, as well as the HBO Max reboot of Gossip Girl. He is set to appear in the upcoming Apple TV+ series The Savant, and will portray JFK’s close friend, Lem, in Kennedy.
Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings was one year older than Jack at Choate, but that didn’t stop the two from becoming fast friends.
“He had his own room at the White House,” Keogh notes. “Jackie’s like, ‘Lem was there every weekend.’ You’re trying to be married and there’s this guy hanging around.”
Billings’ sexuality and his relationship with JFK have been debated for decades. What’s known for certain is that the two were close. Billings joined Jack on a post-Choate summer trip in Europe, served as an usher at his wedding to Jackie and worked on his successful congressional campaign.
He remained tight with the family after JFK’s death, even aiding Eunice’s husband, Sargent Shriver, as a trustee for the Kennedy family trusts.
Ben Miles as Eddie Moore
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Ben Miles had his breakthrough role as Patrick on the BBC comedy Coupling. He’s recently starred as Group Captain Peter Townsend on The Crown and as Tay Kolma on Andor. Now he will play Eddie Moore in Kennedy.
“He was [his] best friend who basically followed him his entire life and helped him do stuff,” Keogh explains of Moore, who eventually became the namesake of Joe Sr.’s ninth and final child, Edward Moore Kennedy — better known as Ted.
In the structured world of the Kennedys, Keogh notes, this friend wasn’t so much an assistant, but more of an “aide-de-camp.” Moore served the role after previously working for Joe Sr.’s father-in-law and JFK’s namesake: Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald.
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The Kennedy Netflix series update comes as filming remains ongoing on Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story, which will explore the whirlwind romance and tragic demise of JFK Jr. — son of JFK and Jackie — and Carolyn Bessette.
In Murphy’s series, Naomi Watts will play Jackie Kennedy, with Paul Kelly starring as JFK Jr. and Sarah Pidgeon playing Bessette.
