People update: Madonna says no to portraying Jackie O

By Randy McMullenContra Costa Times

Madonna was asked to portray Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in a magazine shoot, but rejected the idea, says a new memoir. The request came from John F. Kennedy Jr., Jackie O's son.

According to an upcoming memoir by RoseMarie Terenzio, former friend and publicist of Kennedy's. The political scion and publisher of George Magazine wanted Madonna to pose as his mother on the cover of his magazine's 1996 Women in Politics issue.

"I think we should dress Madonna up as my mother," Terenzio remembers Kennedy saying in the memoir, "Fairy Tale Interrupted." "Wouldn't that be a riot?"

Yes. We're in stitches.

Terenzio recalls he argued strongly against it.

Besides using a controversial pop icon to play a beloved first lady, he says, the move would have created a "media (expletive)storm" because it had long been rumored that Kennedy and Madonna had a fling in 1988.

The argument became moot when Madonna shot down the idea.

"Dear Johnny Boy," she wrote, "Thanks for asking me to be your mother but I could never do her justice. My eyebrows aren't thick enough, for one. When you want me to portray Eva Braun or Pamela Harriman, I might say yes! Hope you're well. Love, Madonna"

Eventually, Drew Barrymore wound up on the cover, portraying -- irony alert! -- Marilyn Monroe.