Clinton-Lewinsky FX Impeachment Series Forgoes Sex For Substance :

If you are old enough to remember the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, there’s a good chance that a lot of what you remember are the prurient details, as recounted in the Starr Report.

In writing Impeachment: American Crime Story, playwright and screenwriter Sarah Burgess pointedly chose not to focus on any of that. The series, which recently premiered on FX, tells the story of three women at the center of the scandal: Lewinsky; Linda Tripp, her friend who infamously taped their conversations; and Paula Jones, the Arkansas woman who sued Clinton for sexual harassment.

With those women as the focus of the story — and also with the added hindsight of the #MeToo movement (not to mention another president who had an array of sexual misconduct allegations against him) — the series’ portrayal of the scandal hits differently from how many Americans might remember it from the late 1990s.

I spoke to Burgess about the series: her decision not to focus on sex, what new details she uncovered in her research, and whether we can divorce our assessment of Clinton’s legacy from his personal life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Danielle Kurtzleben: What was your aim in writing this series?

Sarah Burgess: I can’t help but always lose myself in the characters and write in the character-first way. I guess the best way to say it is I got sucked into the idea of elevating Linda Tripp as this frustrated bureaucrat who’s invisible, and Monica Lewinsky, this extremely young woman who shows up in D.C. to be an intern at the White House, and Paula Jones, who, because of her class and gender, was sort of mocked and ignored.

To elevate them to the level of protagonist — even above the president and his wife — that was my aim.

How old were you when the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal was going on?

I’m in my late 30s, so I was a pre-teen when it happened.

I ask because I’m wondering, was there a lot that you found you had misremembered?

Oh my God, yeah.

I will say, at the time — and I’m curious if…