Monica Lewinsky’s taking her story back. She just dropped the first episode of her new podcast, “Reclaiming,” on Tuesday, and it’s all about her wild ride—from being the White House intern everyone talked about to becoming a Hollywood producer and a voice against bullying. “Back in ’98, I lost everything,” she said on the show.
“No more privacy, no clear future, not even my confidence—I stopped trusting myself.” She loved D.C., the White House vibe, and her job. Then she fell for her boss—yep, Bill Clinton, married and the most powerful guy around. “It was a messy two-year thing,” she said, “and it wasn’t right.”
There are two more episodes out already—one with Olivia Munn, and a bonus chat with her bestie, Alan Cumming, who hosts “Traitors.”
Oh, and a side note—I was munching on pretzels while reading this, and nearly choked when I saw Alan’s name! Anyway, Monica’s 51 now, and she says after 40, you start seeing your younger days differently.
“I thought it was love, thought I meant something big to him,” she said. “Now I get it—real feelings were there, but I didn’t matter as much as I hoped.”
She popped back into the spotlight in 2015 with a Ted Talk that blew up, talking about the scandal and shutting down shame.
Back then, the media tore her apart after Clinton admitted the affair. She was only 22, he was the president—#MeToo later made people rethink that power gap. In a 2018 Vanity Fair piece, she called it out: abuse of power, plain and simple.
These days, she’s produced stuff like “15 Minutes of Shame” and “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” flipping the script on her past.
Last year, she told USA TODAY she survived the worst shame ever. “You get through it once, you can do it again,” she said. “It feels like you’ll never smile again, but trust me, you will.”
Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” even sparked the podcast idea—she jotted “Reclaiming” in her Notes app and ran with it. She’s still scared to dig into it all, but she’s doing it anyway. Guess we’ll see where it goes!
