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There was a lot of advance hype for the FX series “American Crime Story: Impeachment.” But it won’t be available on any major streaming platform for another 10 months, and that’s a problem in 2021.It was one of the most dramatic episodes of the season. Monica Lewinsky, the heroine of “American Crime Story: Impeachment,” strikes an immunity deal with federal prosecutors, and President Bill Clinton admits to having had an affair to a grand jury and the nation as a whole. The episode also brought Hillary Clinton, portrayed by Edie Falco, to center stage for the first time.The only thing missing was a big viewing audience.“American Crime Story: Impeachment,” a series that attracted lots of media coverage before its September premiere, airs on the FX cable network Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Last week’s episode ranked 15th in the ratings for cable shows that day, tied with ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and MTV’s “Teen Mom.”Produced by Ryan Murphy, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” has a lot going for it, including an A-list cast (Clive Owen, Sarah Paulson, Beanie Feldstein, Ms. Falco) and the sumptuous production touches that Mr. Murphy’s fans have come to expect of his shows.Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton on the FX show “American Crime Story: Impeachment.” An A-list cast has not meant big ratings.Kurt Iswarienko/FX The last two seasons of the anthology series, which tackles a new subject each time out, won Emmys for best limited series. And although Variety criticized the current installment as an “overwrought rehash,” the reviews overall were “generally favorable,” according to the website Metacritic.So why hasn’t the show landed with viewers in a big way? Why isn’t it a regular part of Twitter’s top trending topics? The answer lies in the fact that “American Crime Story: Impeachment” is not available on any major streaming platform and won’t be for another 10 months.The same was true for the initial rollouts of the previous seasons. But millions of viewers have cut the cord since then, ditching cable for some combination of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, AppleTV+ and other services.Fans of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” who miss an episode can still stream it, but only if they are armed with their cable-subscription user names and passwords. And in 2021, a show that’s not easy to stream risks becoming almost invisible.The reason for its absence from the big streamers has to do with a deal worked out in 2016 by FX’s parent at the time, 21st Century Fox. For an undisclosed sum, the company sold the streaming rights to all editions of “American Crime Story” to Netflix. Both sides agreed that the series would be available exclusively on FX for roughly a year. From then on, Netflix would make it available to its subscribers.The deal seemed reasonable to 21st Century Fox in 2016. Back then, cable was still a robust business, and viewers were still in the habit of watching a program at a certain time on a certain night of the week.The first season of “American Crime Story,” about the O.J. Simpson case, premiered early in 2016 and was a big hit, although it was not available on any major streaming platform. At the time, video-on-demand technology was still emerging, and Netflix had 80 million subscribers, meaning it had less of a reach than FX, which was then available in 92 million households.“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” with Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, came out in 2016, when FX had reached more households than Netflix.Ray Mickshaw/FXThe pandemic accelerated the trend of viewers dropping cable subscriptions in favor of the watch-when-you-want experience of streaming. Netflix now has 213 million subscribers, and FX is available in 76 million homes.Viewers accustomed to the largely commercial-free experience of streaming would have had a flashback to the days of traditional TV while watching the most recent episode of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” on Tuesday night. The roughly 80-minute show included five commercial breaks that took up 18 minutes and 25 seconds. A sixth commercial break, three minutes long, came between the final scene and the preview of the next week’s episode.Scripted cable shows are still very much a part of the cultural conversation — as long as they’re streaming. All of HBO’s scripted shows, a lineup that includes “Succession,” “White Lotus” and “Mare of Easttown,” appear weekly on the HBO channel itself while also streaming on HBO Max. HBO said that digital viewing for the third season premiere of “Succession” was “up 214 percent from last season’s premiere,” which came out in 2019.FX sends most of its new series to a streaming portal, FX on Hulu, which like FX itself, is now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Because of the 2016 deal, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” is not among the shows that go to Hulu.Before the show’s premiere, John Landgraf, FX’s chairman, conceded that the world had changed substantially in the years since the Netflix deal, telling The Hollywood Reporter he could “not remember the last time that there was a really water-cooler show that was scripted on a linear cable channel.”“I just don’t know whether the pipes are still there to galvanize people’s attention,” he continued. “But we’re going to find out.”Mr. Landgraf and FX declined to comment for this article.Despite the lack of buzz, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” still gets weekly write-ups in Vanity Fair and Vulture. The series also has the eighth highest ratings of any scripted show on cable this year. The 2016 installment, about O.J. Simpson, ranked fifth, and the 2018 version, centered on the murder of the fashion mogul Gianni Versace, was also eighth.The audience figures tell a different story, though. “American Crime Story: Impeachment” draws an average audience of 571,000 viewers among adults under the age of 50, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” had more than double that audience, with 1.2 million, and the O.J. Simpson season had an average of 3.9 million viewers.By the time of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” with Edgar Ramirez as Gianni Versace, left, and Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace, cable was losing viewers to streaming.Ray Mickshaw/FX, via Associated PressIn 2016, the No. 1 rated scripted cable series, AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” averaged 11.3 million viewers among adults under the age of 50, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data. By 2018, “The Walking Dead” viewership average had fallen to 5.3 million. This year its adult audience average is 1.3 million — and it still ranks No. 1.Why did 21st Century Fox executives think so highly of the arrangement they had struck with Netflix deal five years ago? At the time, Mr. Landgraf called it a “phenomenal deal from a financial standpoint.” James Murdoch, then 21st Century Fox’s chief executive, said it was “a great deal for the company and for shareholders.”Never mind that many television executives, even then, were already concerned that the sales of their back libraries to Netflix might backfire. The more Netflix had to offer its subscribers, the easier it was for it to attract new subscribers. That, in turn, enabled it to spend billions on original series and big-time talent.In 2018, Netflix signed one of the most successful producers in cable — Mr. Murphy — to a contract worth $300 million. Under the deal’s terms, he was allowed to keep making the series he had already started at FX and Fox. After that, his new shows would belong to Netflix.FX will broadcast the ninth episode of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” on Tuesday and the season finale Nov. 9. More
She plays a deliciously coldblooded Ann Coulter in “Impeachment.”A white shark nudged closer, gliding just above the actress Cobie Smulders, like a fan asking for a selfie. Ms. Smulders welcomed the intrusion. “This is cool,” she said, rapt, as the shark slid past in the waters of the New York Aquarium.Ms. Smulders, adored for her nine seasons on the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” has loved aquariums for as long as she can remember. As a mermaid-obsessed child in British Columbia, she visited the Vancouver aquarium often and spent weekends on her father’s sailboat, wondering about the life below the water’s surface. The University of Victoria accepted her to its marine biology program.But a few months before school began, she fell in with some theater actors and deferred for a year. And then another year. And then another.An avid scuba diver and an ambassador for Oceana, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring the world’s oceans, Ms. Smulders never gave up on the water. She participates in beach cleanups near the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, the actor Taran Killam, and their two daughters. And she campaigns against the single-use plastics that clog waterways.“It’s a human conversation that needs to be talked about more loudly,” she said.She still has mermaid fantasies. “I still think it could be a possibility,” she said. And she still loves aquariums, though only those that favor conservation.Ms. Smulders studied marine biology before she became an actress. Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesOn a recent trip to New York City to promote the FX limited series “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” she took a car to Coney Island to visit the aquarium’s shark exhibit.She breezed in from the boardwalk just before noon, showing her vaccine card to a giddy employee. “I thought I recognized you!” the woman said as she checked Ms. Smulders’s ID. Rather than dressing for the beach, Ms. Smulders had chosen a monochrome look: belted black Chanel blazer, black jeans and black boots with stamped metal buckles that shone in the October sunlight. Pearls plucked from some very talented oysters hugged her neck.In the first building, she cooed over yellow snappers and pointed out some angelfish, then admired the stripes on some zebrafish. “Mother Nature knows what’s up,” she said approvingly.A cow nose ray caught her eye, as did a yellow rose goby. “I want to be the person who gets to name these,” she said. “You can have a lot of fun with that job.”Ms. Smulders, 39, seems to have fun with most jobs. On “Impeachment,” which revisits the impeachment of Bill Clinton, she plays the right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, a member of the Elves, a group of conservative lawyers who advised Paula Jones’s team.With hair like a Westminster-winning Afghan hound, legs like the Eiffel Tower and a voice as clipped and polished as a high-end manicure, her version of Ms. Coulter finds pleasure everywhere she goes, usually because she brings multiple bottles of wine along. And yet she remains as coldblooded as the aquarium’s sharks.“You’re all too nice,” her Ms. Coulter says of her fellow Elves during a late-night strategy scene.Initially, Ms. Smulders had resisted the role. The “Impeachment” producers had approached her a few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the first in which Ms. Smulders, a proud Canadian who recently became an American citizen, could vote. Ms. Smulders votes a liberal ticket, so sharing head space with Ms. Coulter, who has written books such as “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism,” didn’t seem healthy or fun.But Mr. Killam was already attached to the series as Steve Jones, Paula Jones’s husband. And “Stumptown,” the moody procedural on ABC in which Ms. Smulders starred, was canceled because of the pandemic, freeing up her schedule.“Isn’t it just so peaceful here?” Ms. Smulders said of the shark exhibit. Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesSo after Donald Trump lost the election, Ms. Smulders taped an audition. Playing an ultraconservative — especially an ultraconservative with a miniskirt wardrobe and a champagne habit — no longer felt so dark to her.“She’s the only one who can actually have any fun,” Ms. Smulders said of her character. “This confidence that this woman has, to be able to walk into a room and think you’re the smartest person in the room, that you’re the most powerful person in the room, that is the polar opposite of me and my life.”In the shark building, which Ms. Smulders had entered after passing a harbor seal (“Hi, friend!”) and a waddling penguin (“You can do it, buddy!”), it was clear where the power lay. Crawling into a tunnel just past the coral reef section, she marveled at the zebra sharks and bamboo sharks swimming just inches away. “I want to set up a little cot in there,” she said when she emerged. “Waking up to that? Heaven! Heaven!”Not everyone enjoys intimate encounters with fish that might find you delicious, but Ms. Smulders does. On a recent family trip to Oahu, she went for a cage dive with huge Galápagos sharks. “That was a crazy thing,” she said. She enjoys humbler marine life, too. Polyps are an obsession, as is algae, which has a mutualistic relationship with reefs.Further into the shark exhibit, past a re-creation of a shipwreck, Ms. Smulders stopped at Hudson Canyon’s Edge, a dramatic wall of water. She admired the rays, floating past like cheerful ghosts, and a whiskered fish that swam beneath them. “I love a little mustache on a fish,” she said. A loggerhead cruised by, pausing to admire her Tod’s bag. Sharks surrounded her, some of them grinning toothily. Ms. Smulders smiled at each predator.“Isn’t it just so peaceful here?” she said. More
Several networks will air specials timed to the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11. And “American Crime Story” will return for a third season.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 6-12. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1968) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Clint Eastwood is slated to return to theaters this month with “Cry Macho,” a modern-day western. The role gives Eastwood an opportunity to dust off one of his signature looks: grizzled man with a cowboy hat. The quintessential example of that look can be found in this Sergio Leone odyssey, in which Eastwood plays a bounty hunter caught up in a plot that involves buried treasure and betrayal. While the movie — and its score, by Ennio Morricone — has become a classic, initial reception was mixed. This “must be the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre,” Renata Adler wrote in her review for The New York Times in 1968. “If 42nd Street is lined with little pushcarts of sadism,” she added, “this film, which opened yesterday at the Trans-Lux 85th Street and the DeMille, is an entire supermarket.” Critical opinion regarding “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” has improved since — though the same cannot necessarily be said of 42nd Street.TuesdayBeanie Feldstein in “Impeachment: American Crime Story.”Tina Thorpe/FXIMPEACHMENT: AMERICAN CRIME STORY 10 p.m. on FX. After dramatizing the trial of O.J. Simpson and the murder of Gianni Versace, the anthology series “American Crime Story” turns to the events leading up to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for its third season. This telling focuses on the perspective of the women involved, with Beanie Feldstein starring as Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones and Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton. Clive Owen plays President Clinton. Lewinsky is a producer of the season, and discussed her involvement with it in a recent interview with The Times. “The reality is that this story has been part of a collective conversation for 20 years,” she said, “and as I evolve, as the world evolves, it comes to have different meanings.”BITCHIN’: THE SOUND AND FURY OF RICK JAMES (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. The life of the funk singer Rick James is revisited in this documentary, which aims to give a holistic view of James’s complicated legacy. Directed by Sacha Jenkins (“Fresh Dressed”), “Bitchin’” looks at James’s roots — including his enlistment in the Navy — his music and his famously wild lifestyle while also examining his relationships with women. The film is one answer to a question that the critic Candice Frederick asked in a recent article in The Times: “How do you reckon with the man who is just as famous for committing sexual assault and perpetuating misogyny in the music industry?”WednesdayWOMEN OF 9/11: A SPECIAL EDITION OF 20/20 WITH ROBIN ROBERTS 9 p.m. on ABC. Women who were affected by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, share their experience in this two-hour special hosted by Robin Roberts. Among those interviewed is Genelle Guzman-McMillan, who spent more than 24 hours buried in the rubble of 1 World Trade Center before being rescued. Also at 9 p.m., Vice TV will air TOO SOON: COMEDY AFTER 9/11, which explores the impact of the attacks on the work of comedians. Interviewees in that documentary include David Cross, Ahmed Ahmed, Janeane Garofalo, Hari Kondabolu, Cedric the Entertainer, and Marc Maron.ThursdayBenedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange.”Disney/MarvelDOCTOR STRANGE (2016) 8 p.m. on TNT. If you watched the just-released “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” over the weekend and are in the mood for more Marvel, here’s a chance to revisit “Doctor Strange.” The actor Benedict Cumberbatch plays a neurosurgeon who goes on a spiritual journey, while Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton and Rachel McAdams also have major roles. Manohla Dargis called the film “giddily enjoyable” in her review for The Times. “Doctor Strange,” she wrote, “is part of Marvel’s strategy for world domination, yet it’s also so visually transfixing, so beautiful and nimble that you may even briefly forget the brand.”FridayDATELINE 10 p.m. on NBC. On Friday night’s special episode of NBC’s “Dateline,” Lester Holt interviews the family members of passengers and crew members who died on United Airlines Flight 93. Several other networks will also air programming timed to the 20th anniversary of 9/11. On History Channel, 9/11: THE LEGACY, airing at 7 p.m., looks at stories of children whose lives were impacted by the attacks. At 8 p.m., CBS will air THE RACE AGAINST TIME: THE C.I.A. AND 9/11. And at 9 p.m., the documentary DETAINEE 001 (2021) on Showtime looks at the case of John Walker Lindh, who became known as the “American Taliban.”ILANA GLAZER PRESENTS COMEDY ON EARTH: NYC 2020-2021 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. For some counterprogramming, consider this hourlong comedy special, which brings together an array of stand-up performances that riff on life during the pandemic, with Petey DeAbreu, Alison Leiby, Larry Owens, and Sydnee Washington.SaturdayYannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra in 2019. Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in Verdi’s “Requiem” to recognize the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in a performance that will air on PBS.Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra in 2019. Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in Verdi’s “Requiem” to recognize the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in a performance that will air on PBS.GREAT PERFORMANCES: VERDI’S REQUIEM: THE MET REMEMBERS 9/11 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Saturday programming recognizing the 20th anniversary of 9/11 includes this special episode of PBS’s “Great Performances,” which features Verdi’s “Requiem.” Misty Copeland will host. The Met Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will conduct the orchestra, which will be joined by the singers Ailyn Pérez, Elina Garanca, Matthew Polenzani and Eric Owens.Sunday2021 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The rapper and singer Doja Cat is slated to host this year’s edition of the MTV Video Music Awards. Nominees for the top prizes include Justin Bieber, Megan Thee Stallion, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift; performers are to include Olivia Rodrigo, Camila Cabello, Lil Nas X, Foo Fighters and Kacey Musgraves. More
Ryan Murphy’s anthology series “American Crime Story” debuted in 2016 with “The People v. O.J. Simpson.” A second installment, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” arrived two years later. In these initial series, which won 16 Emmy Awards between them, the crimes at issue were obvious: the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman; the killing of Versace.In “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” which premieres Sept. 7 on FX, the offenses are more ambiguous.Set in the 1990s, the 10-episode series revisits the miasma of scandal and innuendo that shrouded the Clinton White House: Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton; Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky; Lewinsky’s friendship with Linda Tripp; and the tangle of lies, half-truths and illicit recordings that were ultimately detailed in the Starr Report, the infamous and lurid document prepared by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The report led the House of Representatives, in 1998, to impeach President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate, declining to remove him from office, found him not guilty.But those high crimes and misdemeanors didn’t especially interest the creators of “Impeachment.”Tina Thorpe/FX“To me, the crime is that Monica, Linda and Paula had no control over how they were perceived,” said Sarah Burgess, an executive producer who wrote most of the episodes. Burgess, a playwright, studied the media coverage of these women: the late-night punch lines, the drive-time banter, the scathing opinion columns. “It was unbelievable, the hate,” she said.Burgess was speaking on a recent Monday afternoon from the gleaming reading room in the cellar of the Whitby Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Murphy joined her, alongside the executive producers Brad Simpson and Alexis Martin Woodall and four of the actresses in the series: Annaleigh Ashford (Jones), Edie Falco (Hillary Clinton) Beanie Feldstein (Lewinsky) and Sarah Paulson (Tripp). Lewinsky, a producer on “Impeachment,” was not present. (No one else involved in the administration or its scandals worked on the show. Tripp died in 2020.)The series delves into the lives of Lewinsky, Tripp and Jones — and, to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton. Its aim is not necessarily rehabilitative, but the creators and actors wanted to understand the ambitions, fears and desires that motivated these women.“We all know what happened,” Murphy said. “But we don’t know how it happened.”In a round-table interview, the cast and creatives discussed how the Clinton era’s swirl of partisan politics and fungible notions of truth resonates today, as well as why these scandals still captivate us, how the media came for these women and whether we would treat them any better now.“I just hope when people watch this, they still feel implicated,” Simpson said. “We’re not that distant from it — this is a piece of history, but we are still living it.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Monica Lewinsky, seen here hugging President Clinton in 1996, Beanie FeldsteinAPTV, via Associated PressWhat do you remember about living through these scandals?ANNALEIGH ASHFORD I remember this era from a late-night comedy perspective. It was really dark and really chauvinistic, terrible to the women involved, so grossly sexual and inappropriate. And it was funny. We all clapped.RYAN MURPHY Monica and Linda and Paula — I remember just feeling that their lives were taken away from them. I felt very sympathetic, because I was picked on in high school, I guess. Just seeing them attacked and constantly made fun of — it was a national sport — I felt bad for them. And I continue to feel bad for them. When I ran into Monica at a party, we had announced that we were doing this. She came up, and I said, “I want you to be a part of this.”Why does this story still fascinate us?SARAH BURGESS The Starr Report is a part of that; it’s still shocking how explicit it is. And then Monica, I can’t think of someone else who has had that seething hatred that she experienced, that delight in taking her apart.BRAD SIMPSON The Clintons haven’t left us. We all remember the moment where Donald Trump brought the women who made accusations against Bill Clinton to the debates. It still haunts the culture.ALEXIS MARTIN WOODALL But the end of the day, it’s still a conversation about the women. Even in 2021, we’re still talking about Monica and Linda and Hillary. Bill’s not really part of that conversation.“I think more people would come to Monica’s defense today,” said Ryan Murphy, bottom left, with, clockwise, Sarah Burgess, Brad Simpson and Alexis Martin Woodall.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesIn some ways, the impeachment trial prefigured today’s partisan politics. The left argued that Bill Clinton was the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy. The right held that they had a duty to investigate a fundamentally dishonest leader. How does the series grapple with these two opposing narratives?MURPHY We present both points of view. That’s the interesting thing about the show, it lives in a gray world.SIMPSON Both things can be true. What we’re interested in, really, is flawed individuals intersecting with these systems of power, especially these systems of male power.Recently we seem to be re-examining the ways we treated women at the center of scandals in the ’90s and ’00s — Tonya Harding, Britney Spears. Is the series participating in that reassessment?BURGESS Yes, of course. I think about that a lot. There was no constituency for Monica. There was no one on her side. There was a faint heartbeat of, like, three feminists, somewhere. To watch Beanie play her and walk in her shoes and hopefully put us in a point of view to understand how young she was, I hope that does reorient how people think about her. But do you think it would be any different now?MURPHY If you look at the Britney Spears case, I think more people would come to Monica’s defense today.SARAH PAULSON I think there would be more defenders. But there would be an equal measure coming down on her. We have so many platforms from which to do that now.MARTIN WOODALL People I know, closely, when I talk about the show, they still make jokes. And I’m like, “Hey, stop it with the jokes.”“I really care about her as a character and as a person,” Beanie Feldstein said of Monica Lewinsky.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“I’m not trying to humanize her,” Sarah Paulson said of playing Linda Tripp.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“How did this woman make sense of any of this?” Edie Falco said about Hillary Clinton.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“There’s a real childlike quality,” Annaleigh Ashford said of playing Paula Jones.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesClinton’s popularity soared. Lewinsky became a punchline. Why did we hate this woman so much?ASHFORD Some of it has to do with how uncomfortable people are with sex. People can’t handle not making a joke about it.PAULSON I wonder if it’s what we’re unwilling to look at in ourselves, in terms of this hatred toward Monica. I would have gone into that back room [Bill Clinton’s Oval Office study, where he and Lewinsky engaged in sexual activity], without question.MURPHY I would have done it, too.PAULSON It’s just the whole patriarchal story of accepting his desire, and it being celebrated and understood. And she’s really punished for giving in to her own desire. There is something about vilifying that when it comes from a woman.BEANIE FELDSTEIN To Monica’s credit, even in the Barbara Walters interview, she doesn’t shy away. She doesn’t apologize. She just states the fact. She holds her ground in saying it was mutual. Now we obviously see there was a deep imbalance of power and a very nuanced situation. But why should she be shamed for that, when he, the President of the United States, was never shamed for that? I’m getting a little emotional because I love her so much — I really care about her as a character and as a person. I think it’s just devastating. And it doesn’t get less devastating the more we talk about it. I hope that the show undoes some of the pain.We don’t see the sex that the Starr Report details. We do see the famous thong reveal —SIMPSON That thong moment [when Lewinsky lifted her jacket so that President Clinton could see the waistband of her underwear] wasn’t in the original script. Monica asked for us to put it in.BURGESS She said, “Everyone knows I did this. And I know you’re trying to protect me, but it needs to be in the show.”But why don’t you show the sex?MURPHY The behavior that led to the act was more important than the act. We spent a lot of time asking these questions, and also asking Monica, “What do you think and what do you want?”What did she want? What was her involvement in the show?MURPHY We would go through every page of a script. Sometimes she would have a lot of comments, sometimes nothing. I found the process fascinating and necessary. She never wanted the easy choice. She always wanted it more complicated, more nuanced.The Starr Report led the House of Representatives to impeach President Clinton, here in 1998 with Hillary Clinton, but the Senate found him not guilty.Win McNamee/ReutersWhat did you want to make clear about her relationship with Bill Clinton?FELDSTEIN Monica, at that moment, was a bundle of contradictions. She was naïve yet savvy, sensual yet innocent. That’s been the wonderful struggle, playing both sides. Like any 22-year-old, she thought she knew the world. She had to learn the world. This was her learning.SIMPSON The Hillary point of view is complicated, too.BURGESS It was and still is. There’s a mystery at the center of that story, which is what happens when [Bill and Hillary Clinton] are alone together in a room. There’s no Tripp tape for that.EDIE FALCO It is something that everybody I know has wondered about: What the hell was that like, when she found out? How did this woman make sense of any of this? There was nothing she could do that was right — her glasses, her last name, the way she talked.You’re playing women whom viewers think they know. How important was it to perfect their speech, gait, gestures?FELDSTEIN Her emotionality mattered to me more than her physicality or her voice. I just tried to focus on how she was feeling and what was motivating her, and really tune out everything else. But it’s one thing to play a real human being, and it’s another thing to play a real human being whom you text and call. I want her to watch it and feel validated.FALCO Hillary is a woman who has been imitated on late-night talk shows and on “Saturday Night Live” by pretty much every cast member. So that was troubling to me. I was not interested in being another interpretation. And over the years, she changed a lot — her accent, the way she walked, the way she presented herself — as she evolved as a person in public life. I thought, this whole story is about getting at who this woman is. So for me, it was more about an inner life.PAULSON I worked with a movement teacher, who was with me every day, to try to create a different physical shape than I have, in terms of my posture. It was helpful to look in the mirror and not see myself. I still consider what [Tripp] did to be beyond morally questionable. I’m not trying to humanize her; I’m just trying to be her in the situation and in the circumstances. I connect to a certain kind of internal rage that she has that I have a really easy time dipping into.FELDSTEIN I call it the Tripp dip.ASHFORD For Paula, it’s always about trying to please her husband, trying to please somebody else. It’s part of why she talks so high; it’s part of why she makes herself so small. There’s a real childlike quality. I also worked with a movement coach.MURPHY I want a movement coach.You had so much archival material to draw from — the recordings, the congressional records, the media response. The Starr Report alone runs to more than 112,000 words. How did you decide what to include?BURGESS It’s character first. In the ’90s, Linda and Monica were afterthoughts in the ways this was perceived and reported. They were these idiots who talked about Macy’s on the phone. It was the lawyers and the men who mattered.SIMPSON The way this story has traditionally been told is the story of these great powerful men facing off: Bill Clinton versus Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich versus Bill Clinton. Then off to the side are these nutty women. We decided, from the beginning, we’re going to start with these women.FELDSTEIN These characters, in different ways, have never been given full humanity. What the show does, it prioritizes the humanity over the plot. More
