As promised, Ryan Murphy’s next season of the delightfully campy American Crime Story will tackle the Clinton impeachment, and the role of Monica Lewinsky goes to (drumroll, please!) Beanie Feldstein. Murphy muse Sarah Paulson’s back as Linda Tripp. I am fucking over the moon about the whole thing.
Variety reports that the series is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President and also stars Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones. Playwright Sarah Burgess, who wrote the private equity play Dry Powder, will adapt the series, which, according to the Hollywood Reporter, will primarily focus on Lewinsky and the other women caught up in the scandal.
Murphy optioned Toobin’s book in 2017 but initially balked at putting it on television, for fear that he’d be overstepping his bounds by telling Lewinsky’s story for her. Lewinsky is now on board as a producer.
“I told her, ‘Nobody should tell your story but you, and it’s kind of gross if they do,’” Murphy told the Hollywood Reporter last year. “‘If you want to produce it with me, I would love that; but you should be the producer and you should make all the goddamn money.’”
This is all very exciting, though what is slightly less exciting is that Murphy’s not bringing this to us until September 2020. By then, we’ll have lived through approximately 4,000 more Democratic primary debates, plus nearly an entire election season of white nationalist-roiling Trump campaign speeches. I guess at least we have one (seriously, just one) thing to look forward to.