The 50th anniversary of the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy will take place later this month and to mark the occasion there will be no shortage of programmes dedicated to the late president going to air over the course of the month. One of them, the National Geographic Channel's Killing Kennedy, stars Rob Lowe in the title role, a role that was no easy task preparing for.

Lowe stars along with Ginnifer Goodwin, who plays his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, and Will Rothhaar as Lee Harvey Oswald. Based on Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's book by the same name, the one-off show will chronicle the events that eventually culminated with the assassination of the United State's 35th president on 22 November, 1963.

Mixing archive footage with recreated scenes, the show will look to understand the assassination and its aftermath better. But taking on such an icon role was no walk in the park for Lowe, as he explained to USA Today, stating that this kind of role is even "more difficult when you play an icon that people remember as well as they do Kennedy and are emotionally invested in his memory as they are in Kennedy."

As difficult as it was to prepare for the role, Lowe went on to claim that he found a simple method of how to step into the venerable JFK's shoes: by humanising him. He continued, "you can't play heroes or icons or villains, you can only play human beings."

As challenging as the role was, it wasn't without its fair share of benefits, as Lowe was able to gain closer insight into the life of the late president. Lowe commented on how he has long admired the "elegant, timeless, classic, easy glamour aesthetic" that JFK exhuded, and at the end of filming he even managed to walk away with a few JFK souvenires. After filming wrapped, Lowe managed to leave the production with "a couple of spectacular JFK suits and cufflinks and some pretty cool Wayfarers."

Rob Lowe
Rob will play the late JFK in the upcoming dramatisation