Washington, Apr.30 (ANI): American liberals and historians have expressed anger with the makers of a new television mini-series on the Kennedys, accusing them of “political character assassination” concentrating on sex and scandal.
The series will be broadcast on the History Channel and is being created by Joel Surnow, a political conservative who was behind the globally successful drama “24”, in which Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer, a special agent hunting down terrorists.
A stellar cast has been announced, including Katie Holmes, the wife of Tom Cruise, who will play Jacqueline Kennedy, while Oscar nominee Greg Kinnear will play President Kennedy.
British actor Tom Wilkinson will take on the role of family patriarch Joseph Kennedy.
But after reading early versions of the script, some historians and Kennedy confidantes lambasted it.
One proposed scene had President Kennedy being approached by a Secret Service agent as he has sexual intercourse in a pool with a woman who is not his wife.
In another he tells his brother Robert that if he doesn”t have sex with unfamiliar women every couple of days “I get migraines.”
After reading an early draft, Ted Sorensen, who was President Kennedy”s special counsel and speechwriter in the White House, said: “Every single conversation with the president in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened.”
Nigel Hamilton, author of JFK: Reckless Youth, and an authority on the President, said: “Frankly, it”s a travesty. Why feed this kind of garbage on something called the History Channel?”
The History Channel says the draft screenplay has been undergoing annotation and vetting by its resident historians and is accurate. (ANI)