Katie Holmes will star as iconic former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the History Channel’s original miniseries “The Kennedys,” the network announced Wednesday.
The series will also star Greg Kinnear as President John F. Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as Ambassador Joe Kennedy, Sr.
The eight-hour series, the network’s first scripted mini-series effort, will air on the History Channel in 2011.
The series will focus on the Kennedy family, long dubbed America’s own Camelot – a story that ended in tragedy for John and Robert, when the two brothers were killed in separate assassinations. Jacqueline went on to marry Greek millionaire Aristotle Onassis, earning the nickname “Jackie O.”
The presence of executive producer Joel Surnow (“24”), a political conservative who joked in a 2007 New Yorker article that “conservatives are the new oppressed class” and criticized Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, has worried some critics as to the mini-series’ accuracy, though the History Channel’s release notes that the channel’s “resident historians” are vetting the project.
Actress Jeanne Tripplehorn more recently depicted Jacqueline Kennedy on the small screen in 2009 in HBO’s “Grey Gardens.”
Katie appeared at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to promote her next two films, “The Extra Man,” with John C. Reilly, Paul Dano and Kevin Kline, as well as “The Romantics,” in which she stars alongside Anna Paquin, Josh Duhamel and Malin Akerman.
She most recently appeared on the small screen with a guest role on “Eli Stone” in 2008, as well as taking the stage last year for a toe-tapping performance on “So You Think You Can Dance.”
Katie also made her Broadway debut in the 2008 revival of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” leading the production to a hugely successful run on the Great White Way.
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