There was much to enjoy in last night’s biographical drama ‘The Kennedys: Decline and Fall’ on Channel 5, but a few viewers seemed to be having trouble getting past Matthew Perry’s transformation into reluctant family scion Ted Kennedy.
The former ‘Friends’ star’s face was somehow the same but very different as he played the youngest Kennedy brother in the drama that told the story of what happened to America’s great political dynasty in the years following the assassinations of JFK and RFK.
Viewers were quick to notice...
However, if they thought Matthew Perry’s appearance was dramatically altered, these viewers clearly hadn’t spotted Aristotle Onassis, with actor Alexander Siddig sporting a quite distinctive fake nose to play the Greek shipping tycoon who famously whisked widow Jackie Kennedy off her feet and made her Mrs O.
The visuals were only one of the many delights of the one-off drama, which is a sequel to the previous mini-series ‘The Kennedys’. Katie Holmes reprised her role of Jackie Kennedy in the show, which sadly told of one tragedy or personal disaster after another in the two decades following Robert Kennedy’s death in 1968 - Ted’s scandal after Chappaquiddick, his wife Joan’s drinking, their son’s cancer, Jackie’s illness and death in 1994, her son John finally seen walking towards his own plane (he died in a plane crash in 1999).
Even family newcomer Onassis was not spared. After his son Alexander was killed in a plane crash in 1973, Alexander Siddig got arguably the most dramatic line of the entire piece (which was saying something) when he shrieked at his wife Jackie: “I know who you are, you are death, you killed your husband, you killed my son, you are cursed, everything you touch turns to death, I never want to see you again.”
The pair remained married for another two years.
Catch up with ‘The Kennedys: Decline and Fall’ on My5.
