‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’s Head Writer Explains Who Is Really Impeached in Her Series

As much as we as a society have dissected Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it’s shocking how little we know about the woman at its center. Over the years Monica Lewinsky has been cast as a harlot, a liar, a victim, a punchline, and a thousand other unflattering things. Now head writer and executive producer Sarah Burgess is attempting to fix this inexcusable oversight through Impeachment: American Crime Story and recast Lewinsky as a human.

Impeachment rewrites the Lewinsky/Clinton scandal, transforming what’s become a scandalous joke of sorts into a reflection on young love, terrible mistakes, bruised ego, and destroyed innocence. For once this story is being told by the three women at its center: Monica Lewinsky; the friend who betrayed her, Linda Tripp; and the woman who sued President Clinton for sexual harassment, Paula Jones. Ahead of Impeachment‘s premiere, Decider spoke to Burgess about how she turned this stranger-than-fiction story into a saga of betrayed friendship as well as why she’s a fan of Sarah Paulson’s casting and what went into her decision to not have Hillary Clinton front and center.

Decider: What I was really blown away by with Impeachment is that it feels almost like a horror series, the way that it shot and paced. Was that intentional?

Sarah Burgess: It became pretty clear, as I was working on the first two episodes, that we wanted to create something that felt as stressful and, at times, terrifying as the real events of the characters, whether that’s moments like the things that happened to Monica Lewinsky [Beanie Feldstein] that are just truly bone-chilling frightening and surreal or the point-of-view of other characters who feel that their situation is as though they’re in the middle of All the President’s Men or The Insider. I’m thinking about Linda Tripp [Sarah Paulson] in the first few episodes and how in our own lives these things feel — at least to me — stressful and important to us. So yeah, definitely. Horror I didn’t think about specifically. But we were talking about the sort of color palette that Ryan [Murphy] chose and that’s Ryan’s vision for the show.

Because of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s character being in this is a huge deal. I was really interested in how Hillary Clinton [Edie Falco] is always in the background in the first six episodes. Can you explain why she was placed in that role?

Usually with a story like this is, there was so much information and research to take in and there’s so many potential ways to tell the story. Especially in talking with my producers, in the middle of 2018 when I started on this, there was always the idea of telling a story from the point of view of Monica [Lewinsky], Linda [Tripp], and Paula Jones [Annaleigh Ashford]. The idea is, for these women’s lives, we started in a place of they are not famous. They are working, in Monica and Linda’s case, in important but regular bureaucratic D.C. jobs.

As what happened between Monica and Bill Clinton [Clive Owen], what happened in that relationship, it starts to affect other people. It starts to affect Ken Starr [Dan Bakkedahl ]. That starts to affect the FBI. It starts to affect the media, and it starts to affect Hillary Clinton. Then those characters become activated. So that’s what was behind that decision… In the first few episodes, we see Hillary Clinton as a mysterious figure who, Linda Tripp talks about in the White House or who’s on TV. The decision behind that was that the story hasn’t landed in her life yet in a way that really affected it. It’s really a pure storytelling decision in that regard, not like I’m intentionally concealing her from you. It was more that this is not landed in her lap. And it will.

Speaking of Monica’s perspective, during a panel for Impeachment at TCA, you spoke a lot about how this season is really about Monica and Linda’s friendship. Why do you think Monica Lewinsky trusted Linda Tripp? You can speak on that as them as people or as your characters.

I wrote this based on research. I was thinking of this last night last night; I think I read like 56 books and all the FBI files and everyone’s memoir and the Linda Tripp tapes. Linda started taping Monica and fall of ’97. They’d known each other for over a year at that point, so it’s deep into this friendship. Of course, something has turned and changed because Linda is secretly taping her; Linda knows about the taping and Monica doesn’t. So the sense that a writer would get from that dynamic is obviously skewed by that fact.

That being said, as a writer what I thought about was Monica. You have to think about Monica’s situation. She was working in the White House, the most prestigious place to work in America, right? I think that’s just simply true. She was involved in this relationship that she characterized as a relationship. She had said she was in love with him. It was incredibly intense. And suddenly, she’s cast out into the Pentagon. She lands in the Pentagon, and, as any of us, what I was writing from Monica’s perspective, like, that just sucks.

She lands there, and here is this woman who also used to work in the White House. That was important. They have that connection. They knew what it was like to walk those halls. That was one reason. That’s one thing that brought them together. There’s a thing that happens with co-workers where you’re not in a great place. I mean, this has happened to me on this show. You have ups and downs… One day I was struggling with a script or something, and I called our line producer, Louise Shore. She answered the phone, also dealing with her own work shit. You know when your coworker answers the phone, and they’re also like, “Hey,” and it actually makes you feel better? I was like, “Oh, god, it’s just like that.” They both were not thrilled to be there. That was a bonding mechanism for them.

It also seemed like Linda was someone who would listen and clearly was curious and clearly liked the gossip and, as things went further, wanted to hear more and more. From Monica’s perspective, here was this person who knew the world of the White House, who is weighing in with her opinion. It did seem to me that Linda would sometimes speak in ways — I mean, Linda Tripp herself would deny this later. But Linda would speak in ways that were supportive of the relationship and would give Monica a feeling like, “Oh, it’s not over.” It’s that thing too where you’re in a tricky emotional place and a friend is maybe telling you what you want to hear and just lending an ear.

And just to pass the time they started talking on the phone a lot at night. Part of the imbalance of power is reflected in the fact that Monica couldn’t call the White House. She couldn’t call Bill Clinton. So she would be at home — this was pre-cell phones — she would be in her apartment at night in case he would call her. She writes about this in her book. To pass the time who could she talk to? She could talk to Linda Tripp. It seemed like at a certain point in Monica’s life, there are people in Monica’s life that maybe didn’t want to hear as much about the relationship. So Linda became that person that she could process all of this with.

I also want to talk about Sarah Paulson’s casting as Linda Tripp. Obviously, Sarah Paulson’s phenomenal in the role. She’s always phenomenal. But there’s been some controversy about her casting. Were there any discussions about casting a plus size actress instead of Paulson?

When I came onto the project, I always knew it would be Sarah. I always had that in my mind from the very beginning. That’s sort of where I came into it, to answer your question. The amount of research I’ve done on Linda Tripp — I do think, aside from Sarah, I’m the world’s leading expert on Linda Tripp at this moment. I’ve read her emails. I cannot express to you how far I’ve gone. [Paulson] just poured herself into this role, and I just think it’s an astonishing performance.

At TCA Nina Jacobson mentioned that Bill Clinton’s story isn’t the only like impeachment story and the season. Could you expand on that a little bit?

I kind of think she was doing a turn of phrase… The other two are about murder, which is the highest stakes thing in the world. How do you put together a thriller tone in that context? These women and their stories — specifically, we’re talking about Paula Jones and then Monica Lewinsky when she became famous — they were considered not valid. Their integrity was imbued, they were not believed. So I think there’s a sense of the sort of tearing apart of someone’s of identity and this assumption that they’re dishonest was what [Jacobson] was talking about. These women were, to some degree, impeached and are in the public arena.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

New episodes of Impeachment: American Crime Story premiere on FX Tuesdays at 10/9c p.m.

Where to stream Impeachment: American Crime Story