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Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette star Paul Anthony Kelly recently welcomed his first baby with his wife, Syd Widziszewski-Kelly.
Kelly, 37, confirmed the news during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show on Monday, February 23.
“You just became a dad!” host Kelly Clarkson said, to which the actor replied, “I did, yeah. Thank you so much.”
After Clarkson, 43, asked Kelly whether adjusting to fatherhood has made him more “tired,” he admitted, “A little bit, yeah. That’s, like, an understatement, for sure.”
The model did not reveal the name or sex of his newborn.
Kelly previously shared that Widziszewski-Kelly, whom he married in May 2023, had been due to give birth on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy‘s birthday.
“When we finish filming, my wife and I need to go back home and start nesting,” he told Interview in November 2025. “The baby comes in January. Originally the baby was estimated to come January 7, which was Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s birthday.”
Paul Anthony Kelly and Syd Widziszewski-Kelly Paul Anthony Kelly/Instagram
Kelly also recalled how Widziszewski-Kelly had informed him they were expecting around the same time that he landed his star-making role as John F. Kennedy Jr.
“February comes around, and I felt pretty good about it, but casting said they were reading other gentlemen for it. I was like, ‘OK, that’s fine. Whatever,’” he told the magazine. “A few months go by, and near the end of April I got an email from my agents. Casting wants to see me again to do another tape. Twenty minutes later, I got another email and they’re like, ‘We’re just going to go straight to the producer callback.’ We’re in Portland. That’s our home base now, my wife and I. So I do the Zoom, and right before we’re about to go for dinner for our second wedding anniversary, she tells me we’re pregnant. May 1 was a big day.”
The creator of FX’s Love Story has no regrets about not consulting the Kennedys before making John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette‘s romance the focus of the new scripted FX series. “As a writer, it’s more healthy and effective to have some distance from the subject matter,” EP Connor Hines told Variety on Friday, […]
Kelly continued, “The next day I got a phone call from my agent: They want to see me for a chemistry read with Sarah [Pidgeon], who was already cast as Carolyn, the following week. The stipulation was I had to have my green card before then. The phone call came on Friday. Saturday I got my green card. Sunday I booked my ticket.”
Kelly and Pidgeon, 29, portray Kennedy and Bessette-Kennedy in Love Story, which premiered on February 12. The limited series also stars Grace Gummer as JFK Jr.’s sister, Caroline Kennedy, and Naomi Watts as his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Kelly said on The Kelly Clarkson Show on Monday that he almost gave up on trying to break into acting right before he booked Love Story.
“I’d been going after it for 12, 13 years, and it was just getting to the point where I was auditioning a lot, wasn’t really moving forward with anything and was like, ‘OK, cool. It’s not for me,’” he reflected. “And then I had this wonderful opportunity.”
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette airs on FX Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu.
