Monica Lewinsky reflected on her long journey of healing from the “public humiliation” she endured during the Bill Clinton sex scandal.
“There is an interesting thing about both the experience of public humiliation and the healing from it – that it doesn’t happen alone,” Lewinsky, 51, said on the Tuesday, March 25, episode of her “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky” podcast.
Lewinsky became a figure of international scrutiny – and, often, public ridicule – in 1998 amid revelations that she’d had an affair with then-President Clinton from 1995 to 1997 while working as a White House intern. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, the Lewis and Clark College graduate was even forced to testify in front of a grand jury about intimate details of her sex life.
On the latest edition of Lewinsky’s podcast, she spoke to Wicked director Jon M. Chu about the ways her experience related to the hit movie musical.
“You actually cannot be publicly humiliated in a vacuum. Someone has to do something, or something has to happen, or you f— up. If you f— up when you’re by yourself, you’re not publicly humiliated,” she pointed out.
Lewinsky went on, “It’s that social dynamic that’s really interesting. You know, my experience, Elphaba reclaimed it in one song [in Wicked] and it took me 20 years, but I think I’ve just seen for myself how it’s been, really, a social and collective process for me of being able to heal and reclaim that way.”
She likened her scandal to one of Wicked’s most poignant scenes where Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) defies snickering and cruel judgment in the Ozdust Ballroom to perform an empowering dance routine.
“For me, what was so powerful was the Ozdust Ballroom scene,” she told Chu, 45. “I was seeing it with my friend … I could not stop sobbing. It was so much because of what [Chu], and Cynthia and Ariana [Grande, who plays Glinda] did, but I think the magic between you and Cynthia in that scene, you captured public humiliation in a way that I think is hard to do.”
Lewinsky added, “Since that movie, there were times when people will say, ‘What was 1998 like?’ It was a lot of f—ing humiliation but, basically, I can point to [Wicked’s Ozdust Ballroom scene] and say, ‘It was this, over and over and over again.’ But [the scene] captured [Lewinsky’s experience] in such a way.”
“I think so many of us experience public humiliation in ways that [don’t] have to be on the front page of the New York Times,” she said. “It can be in big and little ways in our community. I think, to feel seen in that way, when there’s so much shame in being publicly humiliated, it just, to me, is one of the many gifts this film [Wicked] gave us.”
Lewinsky spoke in depth about the trauma of the Clinton scandal during a February appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. In one particularly poignant moment, she argued that key lessons from her public ridicule have not been learned more than 20 years later.
“What I experienced and now why I care so much about anti-bullying with young people, because I understand what this is online and with social media, there is no border,” she said. “It literally feels like the entire world is laughing at you. And it is devastating.”
Lewinsky launched her “Reclaiming” podcast in February and has thus far had illuminating discussions with Molly Ringwald, Olivia Munn, Kara Swisher and #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, among others. New episodes are released Tuesdays via Wondery.
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