Carly Simon claims she set up Jackie O, 62, on a ‘date’ with 33-year-old Alec Baldwin
Carly Simon has clouds in her coffee and some seriously juicy stories under her hat.
The famed singer is opening up about her friendship with the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis in her latest book, Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie. Released on Tuesday, the book recounts how Simon befriended the former first lady after meeting her and son John F. Kennedy Jr. on Martha’s Vineyard in 1983. Despite their 16-year age gap — Simon was 38, Onassis 54 — and vastly different lives, the women hit it off and embarked on a friendship that included, the musician claims, wild nights out with Alec Baldwin.
Per the Daily Mail, Touched by the Sun includes the “You’re So Vain” singer’s claim that she and then-husband James Hart once tapped a young Baldwin to serve as the former first lady’s date for a performance of the Irish play Dancing at Lughnasa. The 1990 drama made its Broadway debut in 1991, when Baldwin — who acted in 1988’s Working Girl, the film that won Simon’s “Let the River Run” an Oscar for Best Song — was 33, while Onassis was 62.
Though the encounter doesn’t sound entirely romantic — the twice-widowed Onassis was in a relationship with Maurice Templesman, who was reportedly out of town for the theater date, while Baldwin was seeing future wife Kim Basinger, whom he’d marry in 1993 — Simon writes that Onassis later dubbed it “magical.” The singer also claims that Baldwin stepped up after documentarian Ken Burns and media executive Joe Armstrong were unavailable to accompany Onassis — though the invitation took the actor by surprise.
“Jackie Kennedy wants to go on a date with me?” she says Baldwin responded. “Are you kidding?”
The double date with Simon and Hart also involved wigs. After Hart cooked for the group, Simon allegedly passed out wigs from her personal collection for each person to wear. She writes that Baldwin was given a “short brown” wig, while Onassis chose a style “befitting Madame de Pompadour.” (A paparazzi photo shows Simon and Baldwin wearing wigs in their car, though Onassis is said to have exited separately and without her wig.)
“First thing next morning, Jackie called to tell me what a magical evening it was, how divine Alec was and how important she felt it was to think and act and cavort like a child now and again,” Simon says of the encounter.
Representatives for Baldwin have not yet responded to Yahoo’s request for comment. He did, however, reference the night out in a 2017 interview with Howard Stern. According to the actor, he didn’t know of the set-up until he arrived that night, at which point “I think I literally, like, urinated in my pants … I freaked out” when he found out who he’d be accompanying.
"I don't think she was a cougar," he said of Onassis, who he says asked him for acting tips for her son, JFK Jr.
"Could you imagine if that were true, if she really was interested in me?" he added. But when Stern asked if he’d have pursued something if he hadn’t been involved with Basinger, Baldwin struggled to answer.
"If I was single and I was on my own, would I have had a fling with Jackie Kennedy?” he said. “It's hard to say. I don't know. Maybe.”
Meanwhile, Simon appeared on the Today show on Tuesday to share more about her relationship with Onassis, who died in 1994.
“I think she saw in me something that she wanted to have a little bit of herself,” Simon said. “I think she saw a free spirit who had the license to be, in a rock and roll kind of way, loose as a goose. And I could smoke a joint if I wanted to.
“She didn’t have the license to be free,” she added. “She was a naughty girl and she liked that in herself and she liked it in other people.”
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