What Katie Holmes Said About 'The Kennedys' Before Cancelation

12:18 PM PST 1/10/2011 by Mark Cina

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John K/Todd G/Splash News/Newscom

A producer also defends the controversial miniseries, insisting it 'is based on the truth' and 'several networks' still want to broadcast it.

Katie Holmes must be disappointed that the History channel has scrapped the controversial miniseries The Kennedys.

Before the cancelation announcement, she spoke to Elle magazine about mastering the role of Jackie Kennedy.

"[Tom] watched everything with me," she says in the February issue, referring to husband Tom Cruise. "He found it fascinating."

Spending her evenings practicing Jackie's accent, Holmes adds, "I worked as hard as I could because I loved her. On set there was this feeling that we had to create something very special, because these people were very special."

But not everyone thought the end-result was special.

As The Hollywood Reporter first reported Friday, the eight-hour, multimillion-dollar miniseries -- which also starred Greg Kinnear as President John F. Kennedy -- was canceled because the network felt the series was “not a fit for the History brand.” Over the weekend, THR reported that pressure from the Kennedy family contributed to the decision.

In an interview with The New York Times Monday, Michael Prupas, president and chief executive of Muse Entertainment (the Montreal-based company that produced The Kennedys) insisted the miniseries “is based on the truth, reflects the truth, and if anything is a positive, very positive presentation of the Kennedy family.”

Any fictionalized material in the project’s finished scripts was “based on the fact that we had to create dialog to compact stories, which we obviously did," he told The Times.

Added Prupas: “You couldn’t cover 40 years of time in eight hours without doing that. The historical accuracy is something we completely stand behind.”

The Kennedys is still slated to air on Canadian TV in March, as well as in about 30 other foreign countries and markets, including Britain, Italy, Spain, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Japan.

While no American broadcaster has yet announced a deal to show the miniseries, Prupas said “there has been interest expressed by several networks.”

Declining to name the networks, he added, “They’re all viewing the material at the present time.”