It’s hard enough to keep track of the Kennedys when they are joining opposing political parties; harder still when they’re coming up in headlines involving Bennifer’s divorce. But here we are: “Page Six” tells me that Kick Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s 36-year-old granddaughter, has been hanging out with Ben Affleck at the Polo Lounge. Yes, she looks a little bit like Jennifer Garner, and no, we’re not gonna talk about it. (TMZ says they’re just friends anyway, and Affleck’s rep has cast doubt on the idea that he knows her at all.) What we can address is how this kookily nicknamed Cape Cod heiress ended up knocking at the wrought-iron gates of J.Lo’s heart factory — at least, in tabloid headlines — and also why her story about a whale head is making the rounds. I have faith we can figure it out.
Who are her parents?
Kick’s father is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the weird former presidential candidate who left that dead bear in Central Park, touts conspiracy theories about vaccines (among other things), claims to have once had a worm in his brain, and is married to Cheryl from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Kick, whose full name is Kathleen Alexandra Kennedy, is one of the two kids RFK Jr. had with his first wife, Emily Ruth Black, before they got divorced in 1994. She has an older brother and four younger half-siblings, including Taylor Swift’s ex Conor Kennedy. Shortly after RFK Jr. and Black got divorced, he married Mary Kathleen Richardson. (Richardson later died by apparent suicide while she and Kennedy were in the midst of divorcing.) Kick is also a cousin of Jack Schlossberg.
Why is her nickname Kick?
Because it’s delightful? Kick is named after her great-aunt Kathleen Agnes Kennedy (also nicknamed Kick, apparently for her “irrepressible nature”), the socialite sister of John F. Kennedy and RFK Sr., whose family basically stopped talking to her when she married outside the Catholic Church. The family did not care that the original Kick’s husband was in fact a marquess and the heir to the 10th Duke of Devonshire — in fact, the Kennedys became so estranged that when Kick died in a plane crash in 1948, her father was the only relative to attend her funeral.
The younger Kick seems to be on much better terms with her family, perhaps unfortunately so. She’s spent most of her life making public appearances with her father, though her feelings about his recent pivot into fringe politics — and endorsement of Trump — are unknown. (In 2012, she joked that her parents would call her death “divine retribution” if she became a Republican. Clearly things have changed.) Last summer, she appeared in a Vanity Fair profile of RFK Jr., lounging at the family’s Cape Cod compound for several weeks on an indefinite visit from Los Angeles.
What does she do?
Kick majored in history at Stanford. Based on the smattering of mid-2010s magazine spreads about her, she wanted to act after graduation. In pursuit of that, she made a few TV appearances — in 2011, she was on Curb Your Enthusiasm, which may or may not be related to the fact that Larry David is her father’s friend and wingman. She had a small role in The Newsroom and played herself in a Gossip Girl cameo. In 2014, she starred in an Off Broadway production of Antigone. She seems to have pivoted since then — last year she told Vanity Fair that she works at an art gallery called False Flag.
Kick has also devoted a lot of her life to charitable causes, chief among them clean water, which was one of her father’s major causes before he started saying all that other stuff. In 2008, she and RFK Jr. joined anthropologist Wade Davis and his daughter Tara to raft through the Grand Canyon while being filmed by Imax cameras, all for a documentary to raise awareness of water-conservation issues. Also raising awareness: Kick’s trip to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010 with Emile Hirsch and Jessica Biel.
What’s this about a decapitated whale?
The sudden interest in Kick’s name has resurfaced a 2012 Town & Country profile, in which she shared yet another story involving her father and dead animals. RFK Jr. recently admitted to dumping a bear corpse in Central Park, and he has also been accused of eating a barbecued dog carcass. (He says it was a goat.) Anyway, here is Kick’s contribution: Apparently, at some point during her childhood, “word got out” that a dead whale had washed up near the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod, and RFK Jr. scampered down to the shore with a chainsaw to saw off the whale’s head and affix it to the roof of the family minivan. He then drove his two children and the whale head — Kick was 6 — to their home in Mount Kisco, New York, a five-hour drive during which she says “whale juice would pour into the windows of the car” anytime they sped up. Kick called it “the rankest thing on the planet” but also “normal day-to-day stuff for us.” I guess when you grow up like that, making chitchat with a guy in the throes of a midlife-divorce crisis is a total breeze.
What’s her dating history?
In 2013, Kick was rumored to be dating Paul Simon’s son Harper — one source said he had bought her a vintage Mercedes. More recently, when the late banking heir Matthew Mellon died in 2018 after a years-long battle with opioid addiction, reports surfaced that he had been seeing Kick for a few months at the time of his death.
Anything else?
Kick’s half-brother Conor is the Kennedy who was briefly dating Taylor Swift in 2012. She told the Cut at the time, “I love Taylor; they’re pretty cute together.” Do you think she got invited to those Fourth of July parties?
This post has been updated.
