Monica Lewinsky is looking back on the unwanted notoriety she faced after her relationship with former President Bill Clinton became public — and how the intense media attention pushed her to a breaking point.
Nearly three decades ago, Lewinsky, then a White House intern, had an affair with Clinton while he was president. The revelations later led to Clinton’s impeachment trial, which began in December 1998.
Lewinsky told The Times that the public reaction was overwhelming and deeply damaging. She said she contemplated suicide during the period of nonstop scrutiny, describing the experience as “excruciating” and adding that “life was almost unbearable.”
She also said she believes Clinton endured far less personal consequence than she did.
“I haven’t spoken to him in almost 30 years and I don’t know what his internal landscape is,” she said. “I think he escaped a lot more than I did.”
Clinton was 49 at the time, while Lewinsky was 22.
Lewinsky has long maintained that the relationship was consensual, but she now describes the dynamics in blunt terms.
“This was a gross abuse of power. Full stop,” she said.
At the same time, she acknowledged her own responsibility for the choices she made and the harm those choices caused.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t make mistakes, that I didn’t make wrong choices, that my behavior didn’t hurt other people,” she said. “But at the heart of it was a gross abuse of power.”
Clinton was ultimately acquitted. After a handful of public appearances as she tried to reshape her image, Lewinsky largely stepped away from public view in the mid-2000s.
In more recent years, she has worked to reclaim control over her story, including serving as a producer on the FX series Impeachment: American Crime Story.
In 2018, Clinton pushed back when asked whether he should have resigned over the relationship — and whether the #MeToo movement changed how he viewed it.
“I dealt with it 20 years ago, plus,” Clinton said on NBC’s “Today Show.” “And the American people, two-thirds of them stayed with me. And I’ve tried to do a good job since then, and with my life and with my work. That’s all I have to say.”
Lewinsky has continued building new platforms. In January 2025, she launched her podcast, “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.” The show description reads: “Every week, I’ll draw from my own unique experiences (like say, surviving a global scandal at 24 years old), and delve into the personal and often messy ways people find their way back to themselves.”
During a February appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Lewinsky said she believes the “right way” for Clinton to have handled the scandal would have been to resign.
“I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign,” Lewinsky told host Alex Cooper. “Or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus.”
She added that she also recognizes the reality of the presidency.
“At the same time, I hear myself say that, and it’s like, ‘Okay, but we’re also talking about the most powerful office in the world.’ I don’t want to be naive either,” she said.
Lewinsky also revisited the White House response at the time — including Clinton’s public denial: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Asked how she processed that moment, Lewinsky said the experience felt like psychological manipulation on a massive scale.
“It was gaslighting,” she said. “I think that was what I experienced on a pretty large scale. It was devastating.”
Even as she described Clinton’s actions as more serious, she reiterated that she doesn’t absolve herself.
“Let’s recognize that while there were so many ways that Bill’s behavior was more reprehensible than mine, I did make mistakes,” she said.
