American Crime Story’s Next Season: The Monica Lewinsky Affair @JeffreyToobin @ACSFX @MonicaLewinsky

The popular FX series American Crime Story plans to turn its attention to former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky next when its fall 2020 season premieres. Even more interesting: Ms. Lewinsky will produce the series, set to be titled “Impeachment.” Beanie Fedlstein (“Lady Bird,” “What We Do In the Shadows,”) will play Lewinsky, and Sarah Paulson (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Bette and Joan,” “American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson,”) will appear as Linda Tripp. Jeffrey Toobin’s book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President (Random House, 2012) is the book on which the series is based.

This season of American Crime Story should be interesting, particularly because discussion of the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship has been framed for so long in terms of what it meant for President Clinton and his associates and his party, and not so much for Ms. Lewinsky. That she is involved in the production of the show should give her the chance to tell her own story after almost thirty years.

 

More here from BBC News, here from The Hollywood Reporter.

 

Here’s a short bibliography on some aspects of the Clinton/Lewinsky relationship and popular culture.

Elizabeth Bell, Social Dramas and Cultural Performances: All the President’s Women, 2 Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (2006).

Steven A. Esposito, Anonymous White House Sources: How They Helped Shape Television News Coverage of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky Investigation, 21 Communication & Law 1 (1999).

Tracy Everbach, Monica Lewinsky and Shame: 1998 Newspaper Framing of “That Woman,” 41 Journal of Communication Inquiry 268 (2017).

Eric Lott, The First Boomer: Bill Clinton, George W., and Fictions of State, 84 Representations 100 (November 2003).