Entertainment

Casting ‘Kennedy’: Lowe, Goodwin as Jack and Jackie in TV movie

CAMELOT DUO: Rob Lowe and Ginnifer Goodwin will play John and Jackie Kennedy in Nat Geo’s movie, “Killing Kennedy.”

CAMELOT DUO: Rob Lowe and Ginnifer Goodwin will play John and Jackie Kennedy in Nat Geo’s movie, “Killing Kennedy.”

CAMELOT DUO: Rob Lowe and Ginnifer Goodwin (above) will play John and Jackie Kennedy (inset) in Nat Geo’s movie, “Killing Kennedy.” (
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Rob Lowe, who toiled in the White House on “The West Wing,” will return to the Oval Office in Nat Geo’s “Killing Kennedy.”

Lowe, 49, will play President John F. Kennedy in the two-hour movie, based on Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s best-selling book and scheduled to air later this year near the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination in Dallas (Nov. 22, 1963).

Ginnifer Goodwin, who currently headlines ABC’s “Once Upon a Time,” will play Jackie Kennedy — while former “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Gossip Girl” star Michelle Trachtenberg will play Marina Oswald, wife of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

The part of Oswald has yet to be cast. “We’re very close. It’s a young actor who we think this will be a breakout role for,” says Howard T. Owens, one of the “Killing Kennedy” executive producers.

Lowe, who spent four seasons playing White House Communications Director Sam Seaborn on NBC’s “The West Wing,” will reunite on “Killing Kennedy” with director Nelson McCormick, who directed several episodes of “The West Wing.”

“Rob Lowe has always been my first choice and is obviously pivotal because this role has been played by a lot of excellent actors,” Owens says.

“Rob is a huge political junkie and is such a JFK fan and even has some JFK memorabilia.

“He’s connected to DC and understands politics,” Owens says. “I’ve seen some photos of him transforming into JFK — we had some makeup tests [Monday] — and the resemblance in uncanny.”

The movie, which will film mostly on location in Richmond, Va. (starting next month) begins in 1959, when JFK announced his presidential candidacy and Oswald was renouncing his US citizenship.

It tracks the men’s lives over the next four years, ending with that fateful weekend in Dallas, first with JFK’s assassination and then with Oswald’s murder two days later at the hands of Jack Ruby.

In her role as Marina Oswald, Trachtenberg — who’s fluent in Russian — will speak all of her lines in that language, since Russian-born Marina Oswald spoke little English at the time of the assassination.

Owens says that, as Jackie, Goodwin was always his first choice — and that Nat Geo has had no contact with the Kennedy family, which reportedly influenced History into yanking its miniseries, “The Kennedys,” at the last minute (it aired on Reelz in 2011).

“We’re not dealing with any outside interferences or political wishes or family will,” says Owens. “We’re just trying to tell a story that’s true, riveting and entertaining.”