This week in Waspy things that occur on the slopes, Brooke Shields recalled a romantic kiss with one of the most famous men in the world at the time, John F. Kennedy Jr., a.k.a. “John-John,” in Aspen, Colorado. Shields told the tale on Howard Stern’s show as part of her press tour for her new Hulu documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. From her perspective, the brief tryst sounds like it has all the beats of a great Paul Feig–meets–Judy Blume script. It was a mixed bag. Some real high points, but mostly sweaty antics between the famous model-actor and the president’s son.
Shields recalls being in awe of Kennedy and getting into some tough spots in order to impress him. She skied down a black diamond because she was too afraid to divulge her novice ski status (and had to get airlifted out of the trees). “And he didn’t help me, but I was like, It’s okay. He can’t help me. He’s John-John,” she said.
Even worse, Kennedy kept saying that Shields “looked like his mother,” which Shields deemed “…interesting.”
But Shields was able to see past all that (big of her), and when they left a local pub and went back to his hotel, she let him kiss her.
“It was, like, the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life,” she said. “It was beyond not-disappointing. The lips are beautiful and the face is amazing and the body and the person. And he was down-to-earth, funny, and irreverent.”
When there was some indication that he’d like to move the night along, she “froze.”
“I froze, though, because it was so precious to me,” Shields told Stern. “I was like, Oh, my God, you’re falling in love and if you sleep with him, he may not talk to you again.”
The model and actor was still very green and wasn’t “playing a game,” she said. She was genuinely “afraid of being really hurt, because if I slept with him I would’ve given him my entire universe,” she said. “I had to get a cab home, which was a little less than chivalrous.”
The next day, JFK Jr. had changed his demeanor. “He didn’t look at me and he didn’t talk to me,” Shields said. “On the one hand, I was like, Shit! On the other hand, I was like, Oh, thank God.… He showed his true colors.”
All this story needs is a poor, but savvy ski hotel clerk standing by to show the young model what true chivalry and friendship looks like, and it’s ready for blockbuster season.