Monica Lewinsky: ‘I Managed to Survive Somehow, So It’s Possible’
The first thing you see when you walk into the foyer of Monica Lewinsky’s apartment is a neon-pink sign that reads “Always -Believe That Something Wonderful Is Going to Happen.” Her Los Angeles home is sunny and bright, with books lining the shelves, smiling snapshots of family and friends, and artwork filling nearly every wall. She shows me the large, framed photograph her father took of an iceberg on a trip to Antarctica, and a small print that reads “Lovey Dovey,” which the artist Ed Ruscha made for her.
Then there are the crystals. Once you notice them, they’re everywhere, tucked into the corner of a kitchen countertop next to the coffee maker, scattered through the bookshelves. There’s one the size of a cocker spaniel in the dining room that she found in a London shop and had shipped back home. “Clear quartz is the ‘everything’ quartz,” she tells me about that one. “It amplifies, it clears. I have an enormous collection. They’ve been a big part of my healing. They’re so magical. Crystals get forged in, sort of, difficult …”
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“Under pressure, right?” I ask.
“Uh-huh!” she says, excited. “I’m sending you home with a crystal.”
Lewinsky is 51, but this is the first place she’s owned, the first that’s really hers. For years, getting a job was challenging — and complicated. If you remember 1998, when she was first thrust into the spotlight at age 24, you probably remember the paparazzi shots or the yearbook photo that ran on the front page of newspapers around the world. She was the White House intern who had a relationship with then-President Bill Clinton and got swept up into one of the biggest scandals of the century, her privacy and dignity obliterated by the press and the public.
The first time the public heard Lewinsky’s voice was in phone calls surreptitiously recorded by her colleague Linda Tripp, who handed them over to the House Judiciary Committee, led by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, that was investigating Clinton. The transcripts were made public, then the recordings themselves.
One day, Lewinsky was a private citizen; the next, her most personal conversations were available as a matter of public interest. The media attention that followed was a tidal wave of mocking coverage and cruel late-night jokes. She tried to tell her side of the story, first in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1999 and then by giving a detailed account of her story to Andrew Morton, Princess Diana’s biographer, for Monica’s Story. She made the most of being a household name, launching a bag line and appearing on MTV and HBO. But that felt uncomfortable too, so around 2005, she went publicly silent.
In her forties, though, she waded slowly, hesitantly back into public waters. In 2014, she wrote a viral essay for Vanity Fair titled “Shame and Survival.” The next year, she did a blockbuster TED Talk called “The Price of Shame.” In 2021, she served as a producer on the Ryan Murphy series American Crime Story: Impeachment — willing to relive the worst year of her life in exchange for a chance to have a say in how it was told.
Finally, people were ready to really hear her side. She continued writing for Vanity Fair, appeared in anti-bullying PSAs, produced a documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame, about people who’ve been publicly humiliated, and starred in a voter-registration ad campaign for the fashion brand Reformation. She was becoming a symbol of resilience.
Today, Lewinsky is using her voice in a different way. She’s launching a podcast called Reclaiming With Monica Lewinsky, a Wondery production in which she’ll sit down with guests to talk about something that shaped who they are — and how they’ve come to think of it on their own terms. Some early guests are Molly Ringwald, who talks about her own experiences with fame at a young age, as well as Kara Swisher, novelist Anne LaMott, and Lewinsky’s good friend Alan Cumming. She gives each guest a crystal at the end of the show.
After everything she’s been through, letting the world back in is scary. But she’s ready.
“I’m excited but terrified about doing a podcast. This is big for me.”
“For this podcast to be all it can be, I have to be more open,” she tells me with a deep breath. “The part of me that makes a joke on Twitter or can write an article, it’s hiding still a little bit. The podcast is me reclaiming, as much as the stories of people I’m talking to.”
You avoided speaking publicly for a decade. Did you think about staying that way forever?
There were many times that I just wanted to disappear, whether that was being silent or disappear disappear. But I always kept trying.
The first few years after ’98 there was nothing to do but be a public person. And I tried. I stretched that out in different ways, and ultimately it didn’t feel satisfying to me. And so I moved to England and went to graduate school there. I was really hoping graduate school would build this new scaffolding upon which I could have a new identity and life. And it didn’t work.
How did it not work?
I couldn’t get a job. There was still so much stigma around me and my history. And it was 2008, so we had this recession at the time. But then also, Hillary [Clinton] was running.
I came out of graduate school — my master’s was in social psychology — and I came out really interested in the space between branding and charity. So I was looking for a job in everything from branding and marketing to market research to charities. There was a place that said, “Well, we’d love to hire you, but can you get a letter of indemnification?” I don’t even know how I’d go about doing that.
Where did you go from there?
I desperately wanted to become a private person again. And when that wasn’t possible, that coincided with Tyler Clementi’s death [the Rutgers student who died by suicide in 2010 after being bullied]. It was a real wake-up call for me. This is happening to younger people. This is happening to people who aren’t public. And maybe even though I’m not thriving, I’m still here. I somehow managed to survive, so it’s possible.
That was one aspect. And the other was really practical — I have to be able to support myself at some point. I was just out of college when I started my [White House] internship, and that was my first job and my entire normal career trajectory was obliterated. After graduate school, 10 years on from ’98, was when I really started to understand how much I’d lost.
Was there a moment where it was like, “OK, I am going to be a public figure for the rest of my life”?
No. I think … I’m there now. I am excited but terrified about doing a podcast. This is a big thing for me.
So, why this podcast?
The idea of reclaiming was something I had put in my Notes app not long after Michelle Obama had written Becoming and had kind of started that trend of “Oh, everybody has a book with one word and an -ing.” And I’m like, “Mine will be Reclaiming. Each chapter could be different aspects of myself I’ve reclaimed.” When I started to revisit it, it became more interesting as an idea to explore with other people, and other people’s stories, rather than it just being about me. I think down the line, there’ll be things that I reclaim on the podcast and process personally. So, that’s the idea there. I’m terrified.
What are you terrified of?
Failure. My main therapist is a trauma psychiatrist. And she’s like, “The echoes of trauma are there for a very long time, and it takes a long time of the psyche feeling safe to loosen the grip on certain things.”
I think I’m afraid of losing everything again. I’m afraid of “Oh, I can’t support myself.” I am now 51. And that’s really proper grown-up. And so I think that those traumas and fears are just not as deep below the surface as I sometimes think or hope they are.
How are you picking your guests?
People whose stories interest me. My intention is that it’s a very elastic definition of reclaiming, which is to take back something that was yours, or to get back something that was lost or stolen. There might be grief, resilience, and ultimately, you triumph.
For example, I’m hoping to talk to Sam Altman at some point. I want to hear the story of the five days between you lose your job as CEO of OpenAI and you get the same fucking job back. I would’ve loved to have talked to Tracy Chapman right after she came off the Grammy stage [last year]. What interests me is the messiness of how we go from here to there. What were all the concentric circles of context and life experience that happened before it?
Tell me about your reclaiming story.
Those first few things [where I told my story], the Andrew Morton book and the Barbara Walters interview, were really about trying to introduce myself — I mean, naively. When I think back to the naivete I had of how the world worked, of this idea that “Oh, OK, well, people have heard all these things but now they’re going to meet me and now they’ll understand. They’ll see me as a person.” And that didn’t happen.
“I would not recommend working on a memoir of your most traumatic period before it’s even over.”
What was important about what happened in 2014 with my first Vanity Fair essay was the world had also changed. We now had this younger generation of people who maybe knew my name because it was in a rap song, or had been in their history class or something, but they hadn’t lived through what my family calls “the brainwashing.” They hadn’t lived through that period where I was completely defined by news media, politics, and my own mistakes.
That conversation shifted things. There was a change. I went to Slut: The Play [Katie Cappiello’s off-Broadway show about a teen girl’s rape and its aftermath], and a young girl came up to me after and she was like, “We read your essay in my feminist group in high school.” And I was like, “Holy fuck.” That meant something to me.
It’s shocking to look back at how you were portrayed in the press. How do you feel about that, particularly now that you’re a member of the media as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair?
I still have PTSD. I mean, I have PTSD from a lot of things that happened in ’98. And one strand of that is definitely what my experience with the media was. But I knew I was going to have to turn a new page if I was going to step back out [into public life]. I have probably made an effort to steer clear of people who were writing a lot in that time. Maybe I will sit down with one of them on the podcast. Who knows? It could be interesting to talk to Mike Isikoff [the former Newsweek reporter who helped break the story of Lewinsky’s relationship with Bill Clinton] at some point. Never say never.
You’ve got a project coming up with Amanda Knox, a scripted series based on her arrest in Italy and eventual exoneration.
Yeah, we are in production, filming around the globe. Amanda is an executive producer on the show.
How has she been to work with?
She’s very smart, very creative, can be silly in the right ways, and has been a good partner. I sit in a really unique space of having been [both] a subject and a producer, and I’m doing my best to shepherd someone through that process. It’s just very hard, especially when your story’s connected to trauma.
What drew you to Amanda?
With Amanda’s story, it felt like this continuation of why I was interested to help tell the story in Impeachment, which is around what happens to these young women who get thrown up on the world stage and really torn apart, and eaten up, and labeled, and mocked, and used [by others] to make money.
Are there other subjects like that who you want to work with? I read that you went to high school with the Menendez brothers …
I knew them. I auditioned for the band right after Erik.
Their story has been reexamined recently, also with Ryan Murphy.
Ryan has an extraordinary lens for taking stories and social concepts, but doing them in ways that appeal to the most people, and that’s a real art form. This conversation around revisiting what their continued sentencing might be … there are so many people who are behind bars whose actions had started with trauma — sexual trauma and abuse. And so, if this leads to them helping other people get the same [attention], who maybe aren’t attractive and come from a background that is titillating, fine. That needs to be a really big conversation that we’re having in our world, and I’m not sure we’re ready for that.
Will you do a dramatized version of your story again? A movie?
What I’ve learned at this point is, this story has a life of its own. And so if something felt meaningful, if it moves the conversation forward, I’m open to exploring that.
So, you don’t imagine a place where you’re like, “Never again”?
I wanted that. That’s part of the personal work I’ve had to do. I mean, it could happen, and that’s fine, too. And that’s one of the things also with the podcast, [it] feels like a new chapter for me. It’s a different way to use my voice, reclaim my voice, and in that sense, to connect with people, and I hope it does.
“Every positive thing that comes erases something negative from the past.”
You’ve also continued to do anti-bullying advocacy. What impact have you seen?
I love doing the campaigns for Bullying Prevention Month. It’s been really meaningful to me. But I also find myself in a place right now, if I’m really transparent, of “OK, am I really helping? Is it making enough of a difference?” Look at the fucking world we’re living in now and choices we’ve made as a society in this country. And so I feel a little adrift there.
But we’re having these conversations more. “Cyberbullying” was not a word in 1990, “fat-shaming” was not a word in 1998. That’s not by any means to say I started that conversation. I think that I’m a part of it.
There are a lot of people who I’m connected to in organizations that do extraordinary, impactful work. And I’m grateful to them for having let me be part of the conversation, because every step of the way, there have been naysayers. There have been people who’ve said, “No, you don’t belong in this space,” or, “No, you can’t be a plus-one to this event because we don’t do anything political,” or, “Well, this person who’s hosting an event, they just had an event with Hillary, and they don’t think it’s a good look for you to come to this thing.” You know, so it’s always still there.
You wrote about this in your Vanity Fair column in 2018, but how did the #MeToo movement change how you viewed your experience?
That essay, I think, really reflected the questioning phase I was in.
I’ve continued to want to be thoughtful about it because it’s obviously a big topic, especially as we look at the Gisèle Pelicot story [the French woman who was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men], and you just kind of go, “Wow.” Had there not been video, no one would have believed her. There are so many other people whose stories fall into this category that deserve attention. And I think with mine, it is textbook abuse of power. It’s interesting because it feels as I get older I look at it differently. I’m now 51. The idea of being in a relationship with a 24-year-old is insane to me, on so many levels. There’s just so many different ways of unwrapping what you thought something was, what it meant to you at the time, how you see it now. Wrapped up with all of that was always going to be how the world saw me and defined it.
It seems like as you get older, you see your experience through a different lens, but you never did some big 180.
Oh, good. Good. Because that’s always been my fear of … unintentionally, even. Because I was like, “OK, well, this wasn’t sexual assault.” And it wasn’t. I wanted to be there. Did I understand what that actually was entailing at the time? No, but …
Some of those interviews you were giving, and the biography, they were so soon after the relationship and you were still so young.
I’ll always be grateful to Andrew for writing the memoir because no one wanted to publish me.
That’s so surprising.
Oh, I couldn’t get a literary agent. There was a literary agent at one of the big [agencies] here, and he wanted to represent me. And then a very big client who was a big supporter of Bill’s was like, “If you do this, I’m leaving.” I had really big legal bills and I hadn’t been working for a year. But I would not recommend working on a memoir of your most traumatic period being written in three months before it’s even over.
What is it like for you to see people from that time, like Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation, in such massive positions of power?
It’s disheartening. It’s not the way I want the world to work. And there have been so many examples in myriad ways over the last eight years, where you just go, “But that’s not the principles we were raised with.”
Speaking of people from that time period who are in the news, Linda Tripp and Ken Starr both recently died. What was it like for you to hear that news?
It was shocking, in both instances. I met Ken Starr for the first time in 2018, and there was no remorse there, and Linda Tripp didn’t regret her actions. So much of the personal work I’ve done [has been] working directly on forgiving and letting go of things from the past. Sure, I have moments where I definitely get triggered or angry or feel sad. But I think the gift the world gave me in these last 10 years of finally being able to have movement forward and being taken seriously as a human being, it allowed me to just shed a lot of that.
There’s still things that I do on Jan. 16 every year — that was the day the sting operation happened [when Lewinsky was seized by FBI agents and interrogated by the Office of the Independent Counsel]. I turned it into Survivors’ Day in my family.
What does that entail?
We celebrate. Sometimes my mom buys me a gift or I buy myself a gift, and just make a moment of really acknowledging. That’s when I connect to my past the most. That was the worst day of my life thus far. It’s connecting to that, but in a way that brings it back to myself.
You’re very funny on social media.
Thank you.
I’m curious, was your entry into that nerve-racking?
Oh, my God, terrifying. When I started Twitter, I made three people look at my tweet before I would tweet it, and I chose every word so carefully. It was my friend Lara Cohen, who worked at Twitter at the time and was helping me get acclimated, [who] said to me, “You’re really funny. You should let people see this funny side of you.”
Women, in particular, are the subject of so much verbal abuse on social media. Are you the recipient of that, as well?
Yeah. It’s pretty fascinating how quite a lot of people do not have new jokes in 27 years. It’s hard. I think one of the things we really tried to demonstrate in 15 Minutes of Shame is what that feels like. The tsunami feeling. Because even when you intellectually know, “OK, these are bots,” it’s still negative energy coming at you, and it’s a lot.
Do you think 1998 would’ve been better or worse for you with social media?
I think both. I think it would’ve been worse in terms of the proliferation of cruel things and jokes. The way I think it would have been better was, the only way I could see support [at the time] was if somebody was a public person or if somebody wrote me a letter or emailed my lawyer. I think there might’ve been a more silent supportive chunk of people. And I think it would have fleshed out my personhood more, instead of just my high school yearbook page and what stupid shit I say in phone conversations for 20 hours.…
They would’ve seen an Instagram page.
Exactly. I think that humanizes you a little more.
“It’s fascinating how people do not have new jokes in 27 years.”
What is your life like today?
Every day is different. I’m a multi-hyphenate in terms of all the different things I do. I have to say, I was terrified about going into my 49th year because 39 was so horrible. I felt hanging over me all of the things I hadn’t done. All of my failures. I’m not married, I don’t have kids, I don’t have a job. Turning 40 was awful. I was dreading turning 50, and instead, my 49 was amazing, and it was just a great year of acceptance.
There’s so much freedom in being comfortable in who you are as a woman. I had been on a date a few months ago, and the person was like, “What do you like to do for exercise or activities?” I was like, “I don’t know, walk at the beach.” “What else?” I was like, “Walk at the beach.” In years past, I would’ve tried to come up with something quickly. Or pretend I like music that I have no idea about, or an artist I’ve never heard of. All those ways you try to keep up. A lot of that is gone, and that’s really refreshing.
What is dating like for you?
I’m not on the apps. I am like, “I can’t. I’m going to be catfished. I am so gullible.” I think it’s a level of trust that is just not quite there yet. It’s mainly setups. I date, I have relationships, situationships, all the things. I’ve had connections with some extraordinary men. I’ve been really lucky. Not lucky enough that it’s been with someone where it’s worked out at the right time. It just hasn’t.… I still have lots of issues.
How do people treat you differently now than they did 20 years ago?
There’s a compassion, there’s an understanding. I think people see my story differently. A lot of people talk to me about wishing they had made different choices at the time, the jokes they told or the way they thought about it. Every positive thing that comes in erases something negative from the past. I’m lucky I have a whole bunch of healers and helpers, and I do an enormous amount of work on myself to be able to show up in life; and I’m lucky I have the resources now, and hopefully always, to afford that, and people who help me professionally, amazing friends.
Could you imagine this life for yourself in 1999?
No. No. No. I think not only 1999, but I also think 2009.
Oh, really?
I think 2009 me would’ve almost had a harder time imagining this because I had come to understand by that point how much I’d lost. I couldn’t see for a long time how much I’d lost, how poorly people thought of me. It was weird you mentioned Linda Tripp, because someone said to me recently, “Well, wasn’t Bill’s betrayal bigger?” And I was like, “They’re different because the consequences of Linda’s betrayal were immediate, and the consequences of Bill’s betrayal were decades.” So, it was different in that way.
How does it feel to be at this point where people finally see your story differently?
It’s crazy. It is. I have a very supportive family. And I think at different points we’ve all had moments of, like, “Oh, my God. Wow.” I’m a really hard worker. I think people who have experienced a dearth of opportunity or a dearth of resources in their life, when you have it, you appreciate it in a really different way. And so, I’ve always been lucky. I’ve always had a roof over my head and food on the table, sometimes no money in the bank, but always had people who loved me. I wouldn’t have imagined it, so I’m very grateful. I need to come up with a synonym for grateful.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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