Monica Lewinsky: An Intern vs. The President

Join Alex in the studio for an interview with Monica Lewinsky. Monica reflects on how her life turned upside down after a clear abuse of power from the President. She discusses navigating double standards, slut shaming, and how she has finally reclaimed her narrative.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Cooper?

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• 0:44Alex Cooper?

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• 1:12Speaker 01

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• 1:43Alex Cooper?

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• 2:27Alex Cooper?

  You just got one of the most prestigious internships in the country and you feel like your career is about to take off. You're so excited to be working alongside your boss, who is without a doubt the most important person and everyone loves and admires this man. One day, he starts to show you attention. He even begins to flirt with you and one thing leads to another and you guys end up in a full-blown, secret relationship. For a while, everything's great. He's giving you gifts. He's making you feel special and you confide in your coworker telling her everything about the relationship. But then one day,

• 3:10Alex Cooper?

  you're at the mall and the FBI surrounds you. They know about you and your boss's relationship because your coworker secretly recorded your conversations and turned them over to the FBI. They tell you if you don't cooperate, you will go to jail. Suddenly, every explicit detail of you and your married boss's relationship is released to the public. Next thing you know, your face is on the cover of every newspaper and every news channel is talking about you. They call you a slut and a whore. They criticize your body and they

• 3:51Alex Cooper?

  embarrass you every single day for decades to come. You're not allowed to talk to your friends about it. You can barely leave your house. Your name and reputation are completely ruined and your life crumbles before your eyes. Daddy gang, this is a true story. This is Monica Lewinsky's story. When Monica Lewinsky was 22 years old, she was an intern at the White House and she ended up in a two-year relationship with her boss, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Their relationship was exposed to the public after Linda Tripp,

• 4:34Alex Cooper?

  a woman Monica trusted as a close friend, secretly recorded their phone calls and handed them over to the FBI. After that moment, Monica's life was changed forever. She became the sole focus of a massive investigation that resulted in Bill Clinton's impeachment.

• 4:55Alex Cooper?

  And her very public downfall.

• 4:59Alex Cooper?

  Despite, and I want to emphasize this, despite the 27 year age gap and a clear abuse of power from the president, Monica was the one who was ripped apart in the media. Her name became synonymous with blowjobs and she was relentlessly slut shamed, body shamed, and publicly humiliated for years. Daddy gang, unfortunately, as women, we are way too familiar with the double standards of how men get treated in this world versus how women get treated. While Bill Clinton still gets to embrace and enjoy his life in the public eye, Monica

• 5:44Alex Cooper?

  has spent years working through the lasting effects of this trauma.

• 5:51Alex Cooper?

  So now it is Monica's turn to reclaim her name and share her side of the story.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  What is up daddy gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper with Call Her Daddy.

• 6:09Alex Cooper?

  Monica Lewinsky, welcome to Call Her Daddy.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thanks, Alex.

• 6:13Alex Cooper?

  I am so happy we're finally meeting. It's been a long time coming. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a very, very long time. I think there's so much that we're going to talk about today that a lot of the women that listen to my show will be able to resonate with and also learn from. So thank you for taking the time. How are you doing?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  I'm good. I'm a little nervous. I still get nervous with these kinds of things, but in general, I'm good. I'm excited. It's a, it's a very busy, it's a, as you know, launching a podcast. It's, it's a lot more than I ever could have imagined.

• 6:51Alex Cooper?

  That's what I was going to say. Congratulations.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 6:55Alex Cooper?

  You are launching this podcast, obviously. First, you survived being the face of a global scandal when you were 24 years old. Now you're launching this podcast called Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. And basically you're discussing what it means to take back your name. Why did you want to do this now?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Well, it felt, it kind of felt for me like it was the next step for my own reclaiming and my own experiences of having lost my narrative almost my life at 24 and what that journey or process has been like to come back that in many ways, that's in the bones of the show. I think this idea of losing something and getting it back.

• 7:46Alex Cooper?

  Let's talk about it. Your life completely changed once the news broke of your relationship with President Clinton. Can you take me to the day?

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:57Alex Cooper?

  The world finds out about this. You find out that the world knows. Where were you and how did you find out?

• 8:05Speaker 03

  So just to reel it back a few days, I, I found out about the investigation several days before the rest of the world did. There was a sting operation that happened in a shopping mall. And then I was up in a, there was a Ritz Carlton attached to the shopping mall and I was in the hotel room, really realizing that what felt like my life was over. Certainly my life was going to change and that I was threatened with jail and essentially told if I didn't cooperate and wear a wire, that I would go to jail for 27 years. So,

• 8:47Speaker 03

  and so I kind of saw this train starting to barrel down the tracks and I really felt like the 21st, January 21st, opening the door. I was living in the Watergate apartment complex with my mom. And so I remember opening the door and these were in the days where people would get a newspaper delivered and in DC, it was always several, like the Post and the New York Times. And, and so, and I remember seeing my name above the fold and the, in the investigation and looking down the hall and seeing the exact same newspaper

• 9:31Speaker 03

  outside everybody else's door. And it was, it was shocking. It was terrifying and.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  I didn't, I didn't actually know how to process anything. And, and really it was a moment where life as I knew it was over.

• 10:09Alex Cooper?

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• 10:54Alex Cooper?

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• 11:38Alex Cooper?

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• 12:20Alex Cooper?

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• 13:03Alex Cooper?

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• 13:45Alex Cooper?

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• 14:28Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 14:28Alex Cooper?

  You are in a situation that like, how would you know how to respond that you're saying they're coming to you and saying if you don't wear this wire, you're gonna go to jail? Like, were you able to confide in at least like your mom? Like, did you have to hold all of this by yourself in that moment?

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Well, I, I think the moment in the, um.

• 14:49Alex Cooper?

  Hotel.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  So in the hotel room, they wouldn't let me call anybody at first, so, um, and I had a pager, so my mom kept paging me and eventually they, I said, I was like, look, if you don't let me call my mom, she's gonna really start to worry. So they finally, you know, they all huddled, there were a whole bunch of them and they were in this connecting room to the hotel and that my, the room I was in, the connecting hotel room had a whole bunch of other FBI agents in it and lawyers from the independent counsel's office. And so, um, the, they finally said, okay, you can call your mom.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  And this is in the days of, you know, a handheld phone, so I'm, I'm holding the phone and the agent had his finger over the hang up button. And so it was this, you know, you just begin to understand, um, subtly, maybe not so subtle, but the kind of nonverbal ways that you're starting to understand how much trouble you're in. When I had to go to the bathroom, they went in, because there was a phone in the bathroom, they took the receiver out of the wall. So it was, um, but eventually I was, uh, allowed to go ask for my, ask for my mom because they wouldn't, there was a point where they all came in the room, this had been a few

• 16:17Speaker 03

  hours and I had kind of refused to cooperate still at that point and, um.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  They had really, they sort of sent in the heavy. And at that point, it was um the kind of the pressure tactics. And so I basically said, I can't make a decision unless I talk to my mom. So they let me finally let me call my mom and um and then she came down from New York and um and was so I was waiting for her to come down. And then she called my dad, who was at a medical conference and with his best friend, who was a who was a malpractice attorney, which is how I ended up with a malpractice attorney as my first attorney.

• 17:07Alex Cooper?

  There's a level of like, we can't fathom what as a young woman you were feeling in that like pretty terrifying experience of all these people telling you what you needed to do. You don't have a chance to think for yourself.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  I couldn't call a lawyer. I had asked to call a lawyer from moment one because I think we all um you know, we all know from TV and the movies, right? Like when it happens in in TV and the movies, the the usually a man comes and flashes their badge. You're like, I'm not talking to you without my lawyer. And they said, well, that's fine, but you won't be able to get as much information and help yourself as much. And so and then I was actively discouraged from getting a lawyer and um and I I mean, I remember very distinctly the moment of of it sinking in about what it would mean for this to come out and impact my family, you know?

• 18:04Speaker 03

  So I had a younger brother in college, my dad's upstanding doctor in the community. You know, my my mom is um has her own world too, and my stepmom and um and so that and the and the kind of shame and knowing that I had I had felt very responsible in that point too. Because I knew I had talked about things that um

• 18:32Speaker 03

  It was expected. I would not have talked about them. So.

• 18:35Alex Cooper?

  The media attention, there's paparazzi outside at all times. Like, what were you doing every day? Like, were you going stir crazy?

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it was, I was, well, first I was obsessed with the case. I think too, just, just to paint a little bit of a landscape of what the media, you know, what the media life was like, because we have a sense of how things are today with the, how, how we could get inundated with a story online with social media. Now there are eight bajillion outlets. But what it meant back then was this story was actually, instead of a, a story having legs for a week, which is considered a long time in today's world. I mean, it was a year, you know, it was a year of

• 19:21Speaker 03

  coverage. In the first 10 days of the investigation, The Washington Post alone had published 127 articles. So that's like 12 articles a day on just this story. So it was, and that was one news outlet, and this was global.

• 19:42Alex Cooper?

  Can you explain initially, once this all broke, how, right off the bat, was the media portraying you?

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Oh, I think for five seconds, it was sympathetic. And maybe after about a week, once the White House got in gear, um, I was, I, I was very quickly painted as a, um, a stalker, a whore, mentally unstable, a bimbo, um,

• 20:21Speaker 03

  both a pursuer in this, and also not attractive enough to, to be pursued.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  And and really, there was a creation of a version of me that I didn't recognize and my friends and family didn't recognize. And that's, that's what happens when you have a power imbalance in a story, a story where media is so integral to, to it unfolding.

• 20:53Alex Cooper?

  I can't imagine the feeling of like, for a second, being like, well, that's, yeah, I guess that's what hap- oh, my God, wait, that, that's not me. How are they, how are they, why are they calling me a whore? Why are they calling me a slut? Or how am I the pursuer? Like, I, what, can you explain how your, the name-calling and the slut-shaming slowly started to chip away at the way you felt about yourself?

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I, I think, I can't say this for, you know, for everybody who gets involved in a relationship with someone who's, I'm trying to think of the right way to say it, but it's like, I think not everybody who has an affair feels this way, but I think a lot of people, especially young women who get involved in affairs, it already starts with a lack of self-esteem and self-worth. So I already had issues. It was this, it's kind of your worst nightmare of like, all the, all the worst things that you think about yourself and say to yourself, you then start to have reflected and amplified by

• 22:02Speaker 03

  the whole world. And so it was, if it hadn't been for my family continuing to remind me of, of my true self. And then eventually, when I was able to have my friends come in, I, I don't think I would have been able to make it through. I think there were really sort of two parts of me. There was both this more damaged, younger part of me, who was soaking up all the negativity, and it was like a tsunami and just making a bad situation worse. And then there was a, you know, maybe a future version of me, or a

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Like a higher self or whatever, who was angry, who started to get angry. So it was, there were times that I was angry or frustrated. I was so humiliated.

• 22:58Alex Cooper?

  Once you got out of this isolation, essentially, I guess we could call it, right? How did people in your life treat you? And did you see a difference in the way that like, men versus women treated you? Like, was there a difference?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  I think what was interesting that I started to see

• 23:21Speaker 03

  in the public arena was that it, very sadly, it was a lot of women who said worse things about me than the men. The men told a lot of jokes, right? So the late night hosts.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  I think when Jay Leno retired, some media, boop de boop, whatever, organization, had done a study and listed the top 10 targets, his top 10 targets of his late night show. And I was on that list. And so, and I was the only person who wasn't a public figure in this. You know, these are, so it was, I think the men told the jokes. The women sort of eviscerated me. And, and look, also, let's, let's recognize that while there were so many ways that,

• 24:24Speaker 03

  I think Bill's behavior was more reprehensible than mine. I, I did make mistakes. So I, I, you know, I think we see it very differently now. And even through that lens, I still made mistakes. I still, I still did things that were wrong.

• 24:42Alex Cooper?

  I think I've recognized, and I think a lot of women can experience too, especially with media now, it's like, Which we'll get to about the double standard because yes, you made the mistake, but I feel like there's also a conversation online of just like, but the person within the marriage is the one that truly has the right and the is supposed to be the loyal one. And I find that we are always crucifying the other woman. And then there's a level of complexity of there is a power imbalance of you are 22 and this man is 49. So there's so much complexity of it makes me sad for you that women tearing you down. I get it with an affair. I think it's a trigger point for a lot of women.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:24Alex Cooper?

  The way that they could identify whether they had been cheated on by their husbands. You know what I mean? There's everyone's coming at it from the angle that they can personally relate to or their fears or their insecurities. But the outbreak essentially from all these women towards you, in my opinion, like it's devastating because now I think hopefully like, do you feel a difference when women talk to you about it today versus back then?

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Well, I mean, it was, I think that it, it really was the younger generation. When, when I wrote my first person essay for Vanity Fair in 2014, it was, you know, your generation and the younger generations that really insisted on reevaluating this story because you were all coming to it with just the facts, not having gone through the brainwashing or lived through that media lens and bringing different perspectives that happened throughout generations, right? From generations. And so it was really interesting to have this front row seat to observe in the very beginning of the article coming

• 26:34Speaker 03

  out, it was sort of the same voices saying the same thing. Oh, you know, go away. You had your 15 minutes. And then it was the younger generation, the younger journalists, the younger women journalists who were starting to say, hold up. You know, all the things that you just said about the power differentials on both from age and within the resources, resources of both money and power and kind of people who work for you who are able to disseminate information. I had to, you know, hire lawyers. I'd never done any of those things.

• 27:28Alex Cooper?

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• 28:13Alex Cooper?

  your money right. This is a paid advertisement by SoFi Technologies and is not intended to be financial advice. Call Her Daddy is brought to you by Ritual. We are learning so much about how the gut microbiome is key to our mental health, immunity, and of course digestion. And I just feel like I didn't know any of this until recently, which is a problem because this is literally everything that we do need to know to take care of ourselves. But did you know, because now I know, the gut microbiome shifts during pregnancy, ladies, and these shifts can impact mom and baby's health in pregnancy and postpartum. And that is why Ritual created NADAL Biotic, a specialized biotic with clinically studied

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• 29:37Alex Cooper?

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• 30:18Speaker 03

  You know, in the moment, I was split because I felt so guilty. I felt so guilty for everything. I felt like this having become public was my fault.

• 30:38Alex Cooper?

  Why?

• 30:39Speaker 03

  That I had, because I had confided in Linda. And so if I had not confided in her... I felt as if this wouldn't have become public. And so there was an enormous amount of guilt. I didn't want him to lose his job. So there was a part of me that felt, good, deny it. This is what you should do. You know, that sort of a thing. And then there was a part of me that was so humiliated. And to kind of have the most powerful man in the world saying that, you know, basically your damaged goods like is not something,

• 31:22Speaker 03

  not something you want as a 51 year old woman and not something you want as a 24 year old woman.

• 31:28Alex Cooper?

  The White House, like you referenced earlier, tried to frame you as this like unstable stalker. But what the evidence then went on to reveal was the president called you often, gave you gifts. How did you, at the end of the day, during all this reconcile what people were saying about your relationship? And then what you knew to be true and what you lived with this person?

• 31:54Speaker 03

  It was, well, it was gaslighting, you know? So I, you know, I, I think that was what I experienced on, on a pretty large scale. And it was, it was devastating. You know, it was devastating at the time. And I think what, you know, what we see now in today's world and as, as a grown woman, I hate to break it to any 24 year olds listening to this because I know from 21 to 20, like 25, you think you know everything. You're like, I'm a fucking adult now. I know everything.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  I'm so sorry to tell you, you will look back on this time and feel like, oh, little 20 year old me. Yep, no. So I, you know, I thought it was something it wasn't. And I, my feelings were real. And.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  It was very frustrating and painful

• 33:09Speaker 03

  to have people talking about this in a way that was untrue.

• 33:17Alex Cooper?

  In the midst of all of this, we're talking about how you're reading things online about yourself. You're watching the news. They're calling you a whore and they're slut shaming you and they're calling you unstable and mentally unstable. And you're, you're seeing all of this. Did you ever have a moment during all of this where you started to doubt yourself and you started to feel like you were going a little crazy?

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Oh, 100%. I think that there were, you know, right? That's the whole, the whole goal of gaslighting, right? So, I mean, I don't think the White House's intention was to gaslight me. I think the intention was to stay in power and to get out of legal jeopardy. But that's, you know, I, I think that is the core of being gaslit is you do start to doubt yourself.

• 34:09Alex Cooper?

  I also think what I want to get into talking about too is like, as a young person, when you're going through something traumatic, your understanding of it in the moment is that. And then you're also somewhat in fight or flight and you're like trying to digest it in any capacity you can. And then as time goes on, you're able to, with time in a beautiful way, start to actually look at it a little bit more objectively as time goes on because you're farther away from it. So I can imagine like the way that you felt about it in the moment, you now have different perspectives and that's okay. And I think there's like a lot of shame of people who go through these traumatic moments in their life where there are people like, well, how did you feel in that exact moment?

• 34:51Alex Cooper?

  You're like, I don't know. I need to process it. I need, I need time to think. And I can imagine people asking you questions, paparazzi being outside. It's like,

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:00Alex Cooper?

  being up on a stand. It's like you didn't, you knew the truth, but you also had to protect your like mental sanity of like, I need time to heal and to digest the fact that I thought I was in this relationship. Now it's out to the world. What is happening?

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 35:15Alex Cooper?

  Like it's a lot.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:16Alex Cooper?

  Um, what was your rock bottom moment in all of this?

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, there were many.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  It's interesting. In the moment, the rock bottom moment was probably,

• 35:35Speaker 03

  it was several months into the investigation and

• 35:42Speaker 03

  I guess whatever the layering of whatever had come out in the news that day, whatever it was, it was just too much. And I had remembered thinking, okay, I was able to, the first two weeks of the investigation, I didn't have a therapist. I couldn't go on medication. And eventually I was able to get a therapist who had to be a forensic psychologist who was amazing, Dr. Susan. I'm still grateful to her today. And

• 36:12Speaker 03

  I remember thinking, okay, I'm gonna call her and if she answers, then I'm staying. And if she doesn't, I'm out. So I think for me, that was rock bottom. And that, again, just kind of this, the maelstrom of media and 24 hour news and the internet, you know, this, the report coming out was the first time that you missed history being made if you didn't have access to the internet. Like, Google had just launched. Web traffic doubled overnight. Like, it's just, those are the kinds of things that we just can't even fathom now.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Right? I mean, and this was all pre-social media, but, you know, all the news outlets had, had like WWW representation and comment sections and things like that. So that was, you know, that was a moment where I think, I don't know, sorry, I'm babbling a bit. You're doing great. But I don't, you know, I don't know if you ever had anything like this when you were growing up, but I had a couple of different moments in grade school where it was like, I did something embarrassing and that that feeling of like, I don't want to go to school. The whole class knows, the whole grade knows, everybody's going to this and that. And so that's one level of what we experience. Or if I'm at a dinner party and I knock over,

• 37:40Speaker 03

  I don't drink anymore, but if I knocked over a glass of red wine on the white tablecloth, you know, you're you're mortified in front of this group and you you're able to draw a mental perimeter around that. And what I experienced and now what 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. And you literally, it literally feels like the entire world is laughing at you. And it is devastating.

• 38:13Alex Cooper?

  I appreciate you explaining it like that because I never thought about it. Like, when you're in that restaurant and you spill the wine, you go home that night and you envision those exact faces at that table. And you're like, oh, my God, I hope they forget this. I hope that like, but you have a visual.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:30Alex Cooper?

  And what you're describing, if anything, yeah, you have like, the most real horrific lived experience of what now so many kids are living online, which is this like unseen beast out there that is talking about you, that is taunting you, that is speaking about you, and they've never met you. They don't know you. They don't know your character. They're just taking what they've seen glimpses online. Like, didn't they even just like, use your passport photo when they?

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, my work passport photo. Jesus, it was the worst.

• 39:05Alex Cooper?

  But it's all manipulated. Right. Like, who wants their passport? But it's all but that's so media of to train someone to believe something about yourself. In those rock bottom moments that you just shared with me, like, having the weight of truly the world on you of people talking about you, and you were contemplating, is it easier to just not be here? What kept you going?

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I, I call them moments of grace. And so I think if you have that moment of grace and the, I don't know that beauty is the right word, but the beauty of having one moment of grace is that somewhere lodged in the back of your mind will always be that experience of having had that grace. You get through the moment and things get better. It doesn't always just continue better and better for the rest of your life. But once you've, you know, and that's, it's especially why I worry so much about young people because they haven't had enough life experience to like

• 40:07Speaker 03

  now at 51, when something, you know, bad happens and feels devastating, I have a whole folder of times that I've had fucked up thing happen. I'm devastated, da, da, da, whatever it is. And then it got better, you know, and now I, I panic even less and less, which is amazing. I'm so grateful for that. Um, so yeah, don't, don't let, young people listening, don't let anybody tell you it is not great to get older because your 50s are fucking amazing. Yeah. You have a long, long time to get there, girl, but it's amazing to feel so comfortable with yourself.

• 40:48Alex Cooper?

  Right. And to know what to expect, know how you

• 40:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:50Alex Cooper?

  react, know what upsets you, know what you can get through, like your threshold, you start to learn more and more.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Boy, I think you, I think really, and, and maybe women of older generations weren't able to do this, but at least how I feel is I've, I know the operating manual to me, you know, and that is, that is one of the most empowering things I think anybody can have, but especially a woman.

• 41:17Alex Cooper?

  It is so heartbreaking because you weren't the only one that participated in this relationship.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:24Alex Cooper?

  And yet you were the one who objectively took the hardest hit.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:29Alex Cooper?

  Did you ever enter the anger stage where you were like, fuck this?

• 41:35Speaker 03

  It, it, um, it took me a really long time. Um, and like I was not until 2000.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  10. So this 1998 to 2010, there were, I was, I would have moments of, of being angry, but it, I didn't realize how much I had lost until I came out of graduate school and I couldn't get a job. And that, and, and also I think at the point where I was because I was in my early 30s. So now, all of my friends have gotten married. Most of them have kids. Some of them are even like going on to their second marriages, you know, second and third kids. And I'm still, I have nothing, you know, or that feeling of nothing. And, um, you know,

• 42:29Speaker 03

  it's, it very much was, um, that was the point when I realized how much had been taken from me.

• 42:40Alex Cooper?

  To also be fair, and I think that's like, a very normal answer, that anyone who has experienced a form of trauma would be like, there's the, I'm not going to say like dissociating, but in some capacity, you have to dissociate to keep moving. And then, one day, it just kind of hits you of your reality because you've gone through enough to get yourself back on your feet. And like you said, you graduate and then you're like, okay, I'm going to go get a job. This is normal. And then it's like, no, you can't get a job. When you say that though, Monica, like, what do you mean? Like, people were literally turning you down in job interviews?

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it was, it was everything from, I, I wasn't even allowed to go interview certain places. Like, a place would say, no, we don't, you can't even come interview, even though I was qualified, to, um, because it was 2007 when I was job hunting, I, um, was, and, and then Hillary was running in 2008. So there was this high likelihood that she would become president, or, you know, or, or could get the nomination. So I think at that point, she was expected to get the nomination, but of course Barack Obama did. So, at this period of time, when I am job hunting, people were saying, well, could you

• 44:00Speaker 03

  get a letter of indemni-, I can never say this. I had Bell's palsy a few years ago.

• 44:04Alex Cooper?

  Indemnification?

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So sometimes some words are still a little hard for me, but indemni-, ask me if I could get a letter of indemnification.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  If they hired me because they relied on grants and so they were worried that they would lose all their funding. So it was, it was, there were a couple of places that, you know, were interested to hire me, but would be like, well, you'd be interacting with the media. So, I mean, it's just, you know.

• 44:37Alex Cooper?

  Was there ever a point that you, not that you should, but was there ever a point that you or anyone in your family thought of changing your name or your last name at all?

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think that there, there were definitely a period of time that I contemplated it, except given the world we lived in, I couldn't even see a reality of that. Right? Like, how is that really going to work? Right? I'm going to walk down the street in LA where I was raised and run into someone and they'll say Monica and I'll, you know, oh, my name is Rebecca now. I mean, like it just, I didn't even know how that would, how that would work. Or people had suggested to me, well, you could put a different name on your CV. And I thought about that. But then, you know, when you play that forward, you just, so what, I'm going to walk

• 45:30Speaker 03

  into a job interview, the person in their head is like, hmm, that girl looks a lot like Monica Lewinsky. And, you know, and they're looking at me and I'm looking at them. And, you know, it's just, and then you're also starting out, you know, it's sort of like, part of why I haven't online dated is that, that whole thing of if you, if you, you know, don't want to use your name, you're starting something out with a lie, you know? So that doesn't, that doesn't totally feel right to me either. So I, but, but really more than just the practicality, I think as time went on, I, I also came to feel very strongly that I didn't want to change my name. Why should I have to change my name? You know, I, I bet nobody has asked Bill.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  If he needed, you know, did he ever think about changing his, okay, I get, I get because he was most famous person in the world at a moment, like and president, et cetera. But just even the idea would never cross someone's mind to a man, you know? And, and also too, I'm, you know, I regret a lot of different decisions I've made, both prior to 98, post 98, like I'm a human being, but I'm not ashamed of who I am. And so I think that that, that was a really important, important thing.

• 46:48Alex Cooper?

  And I, and I hope you know, in me asking that, like, I don't think you should change your name, but I, hearing what you went through, I understand, like, there, there may be people around you being like Monica, like to get a job, maybe change last name, like that is, I, I interviewed Amanda Knox at one point, right? And it's like, there is this horrible reality that you have to, which we're going to get to eventually of like, you have to decide how you're going to live your life and you can't just keep letting other people dictate it, even though it's pretty fucking hard because you're saying, I'm walking in places and no one will hire me. And it's like, because like, it's like, in the grand scheme, how are you not getting a fucking job? You know what I mean? Like you're a qualified-

• 47:31Speaker 03

  And I, I was really, I was, I was so lucky that I came from an upper middle-class family that could help support me because I couldn't earn an income. But you really, you know, when you're sitting inside a scandal like this, you really come to understand why a lot of times women make the choices they do, because those are the only fucking options they have, is to maybe pose nude in a magazine, because you will get money and you can pay rent and put food on the table, you know? And so it's, um, it is, it, you really come to understand choices people make and how hard it can be.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  I, I often think about that we don't examine and judge people by the things they don't do, or the things they turn down, you know?

• 48:22Alex Cooper?

  So true.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah.

• 48:25Alex Cooper?

  To add- Color for my audience. I just want to like, read this. You were 22 years old. He was 49. You were an intern. He was the President of the United States. There is a clear power imbalance that they never focused on in the media when all this was coming out. How aware were you of this power imbalance?

• 48:57Speaker 03

  I don't think that was something we talked about. You know, very much back then, in the same way that we didn't have words like slut shaming and fat shaming. You know, um, I think the, this story became, it, it felt very bifurcated. It was like, most Democrats, whether they believed him or not, were supportive. Most Republicans, whether they, you know, were opposed and, um,

• 49:30Speaker 03

  it's, uh, that wasn't something that we talked about a lot. And I think that it was really in the wake of, um, Me Too 2.0, that we really started to look at power imbalances under the umbrella of abuse of power.

• 49:45Alex Cooper?

  Yeah. In 2014, you said the relationship was consensual. In 2018, you said you were just reevaluating how power dynamics impact consent. Now, today, where do you stand?

• 50:14Alex Cooper?

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• 50:59Alex Cooper?

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• 51:44Alex Cooper?

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• 52:29Alex Cooper?

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• 52:50Alex Cooper?

  In 2014, you said the relationship was consensual. In 2018, you said you were just reevaluating how power dynamics impact consent. Now, today, where do you stand?

• 53:03Speaker 03

  I, um, you know, I, it's really still, I kind of landed in the place that I landed in 2018, which was this, which was this sense of, I'm very clear, this was not sexual assault. And therefore, there's a level of consensuality that was there. And at the same time, because of the power dynamics and the, and the power differential, I never should have fucking been in that position. And so that's where you just can't even, I think that you can't even understand what you're walking into. And that's where it's the responsibility of the person with more power. And that power can be age, it can be their job, it can be their financial resources, it can, there

• 53:48Speaker 03

  could be myriad reasons that they have that, the tilt towards the power that way.

• 53:54Alex Cooper?

  No, and I appreciate you saying that because the reality is, when you're, even when I'm going back and reading these headlines, it's like the chaos of like, that people believed, even the people writing it, that like, you were this person, like, he's the president of the United fucking States, like-

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Their secret service.

• 54:18Alex Cooper?

  You're sneaking through the halls and you're like going after him, like, it's so-

• 54:23Speaker 03

  It doesn't work that way.

• 54:25Alex Cooper?

  You know what I mean? And it's so, that again, Monica, and why I appreciate you talking with me about this is, I see it every day still in media, in different corners of social media even, where a woman is being pinned as something. And when you are a woman that's had any form of what you're discussing, and what I'm discussing of the slut shaming, or the judgment, or the double standard, it's so obvious as a woman where I'm like, there's just no fucking, like, hold on, hold on. He's the president and she's, and I think in a gorgeous way, I hope that we're making some progress.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  I think we have. I think, I don't, so- I don't know that it would be as different as people think it would be if it were, you know, with a young charismatic Democratic president. But I think we have, I think we have made some strides, just even in, in the fact that we have language, you know, that we now have no inclosure for these kinds of things that allow for more nuanced conversations.

• 55:32Alex Cooper?

  That's a good point. When you look back, once the news broke and how everything was handled by media and the White House,

• 55:43Alex Cooper?

  how do you think it should have been handled? Have you thought about that?

• 55:46Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Um, I, I think that,

• 55:53Speaker 03

  I think that he should have said, um, I'm like now thinking this through. I don't think I've answered this question before. But good question. I haven't been asked that before. So, uh, I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was, you know, nobody's business and to resign, you know, or to find a way, to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who was just starting out in the world under the bus. And at the same time, I'm hearing myself say that.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  And it's like, okay, but we're, we're also talking about

• 56:44Speaker 03

  the, the most powerful office in the world, you know, so I don't, I don't want to be naive either, you know.

• 56:52Alex Cooper?

  But I love that answer because you're being honest. You're like, as a human being, if we take a step back, that I agree with you. That is exactly how it should have been handled. It's the least they could have done for you, right? And not even for you, just for like,

• 57:09Speaker 03

  For anybody, right?

• 57:10Alex Cooper?

  It was the truth, right? But then we're talking about the White House and I think this is where it gets complicated because like, at what cost are you just kind of thrown to the wolves to protect something larger?

• 57:24Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 57:25Alex Cooper?

  I know, we both don't have an answer. I think it's okay.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  It's complicated, you know, it's really complicated because you're, you are talking about issues and and situations where so many people are impacted, you know, so I, I don't, you know, and maybe this is a reflection of my generation or my age, but I don't, I don't know where the right, I don't know where the right balance is, you know, because there's, there's, there was damage no matter what. I think there was so much collateral damage for women of, of my generation to watch a young woman to be pilloried on the world stage, to be torn apart, you know, for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything.

• 58:11Alex Cooper?

  What you're saying though, is, I hear what you're saying. It's like, this was such a large statement to the world about the way,

• 58:23Alex Cooper?

  and I get what you're saying, at the time, there wasn't this language, but the double standard, here's the fucking example right here.

• 58:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:30Alex Cooper?

  Right what we're talking about.

• 58:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:32Alex Cooper?

  Look what came from all of this for you and for then the other party. It's just, it's not-

• 58:38Speaker 03

  The consequences were just nowhere, you know, I, I lost my future. So, I mean, that was, that, that really was, I, I was lucky enough to hold on to a strand of my true self.

• 58:55Alex Cooper?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Um, but I lost my future.

• 58:58Alex Cooper?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  And so, I'm so grateful for how my life has changed in the last 10 years.

• 59:04Alex Cooper?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  But,

• 59:09Speaker 03

  it, it wasn't, um, that certainly was not a given, you know?

• 59:14Alex Cooper?

  You made many public apologies. Have you ever received one in return?

• 59:20Speaker 03

  I have had a handful of people who were involved at the time.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  That I've run into in different ways who have acknowledged that they wish they had made different choices. None of the people who were, you know, sort of the above the fold names involved in the investigation. And I'm really grateful that I'm at a place where I don't need it anymore.

• 59:48Alex Cooper?

  Was there ever a time where you felt like you did?

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, sure. Well, I think that's, you know, and that this is sort of something I don't, I don't know that I fully unpacked it yet for myself. You know, I, I think a lot of times with the writing I do, it's like I have an idea for something and I sort of plant the seed and just let it. I'm like, okay, in some version of me, it's figuring it. It's like figuring itself out to worm it its way out onto, onto a page. But I think that a lot of that has to do with this, um, the intersection of as my life changed, as people saw me more and more as my true self, as I was able to have more agency, um, that

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  those things became less important because I was been able to, even though I will always be defined in some way by my history, I am also defined by my present. And that's, it's important.

• 1:00:48Alex Cooper?

  It's beautiful because I can imagine like the way that you're talking about being isolated and being trapped and not being able to speak to people for eight months and the emotional trauma that can do to a human being. Like you said, you weren't prepared for any of this and it hit you in the face and you had to just run with it because you had no other option to survive. And then you come out of this and it's like, how many times did you think like, wow, this, there is a potential, this will stay with me for the rest of my life?

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  Well, I had a whole, I call it my dark decade. I mean, it was a whole period of Floundering and having no purpose. I mean, I'm always lucky. My family's always been amazing. I've always had friends, thank God.

• 1:01:37Alex Cooper?

  You stepped away for about 10 years.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  That was my

• 1:01:39Alex Cooper?

  That was the time?

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Alex Cooper?

  Did you date at all?

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So I, I have always dated, not very, like, not always successfully dated. And I was somebody who had wanted to get married and have kids and I'm sort of past that point of having kids naturally. So that, I think that was a focus for a long time, but it was definitely,

• 1:02:12Speaker 03

  my, you know, my dating life has, has been complicated, I think, at times, you know?

• 1:02:21Alex Cooper?

  In dating, when you were trying to get back to some form of normalcy, like, did you find in moments that like men were kind of in it for the wrong reason?

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  I've had a couple of instances like that. I mean, it's sort of this wide spectrum of,

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  I think my bullshit detector for someone who was there for the wrong reason was, has been pretty strong, luckily. But then there had been, you know, there's a wide spectrum of like, how intimacy goes after something like this and it's, you know, it's like, I mean, thankfully, no one's ever asked me to wear beret in the bedroom, but you know, I mean, there, there had been, you know, it's, it's complicated. I, I, look, I think, I think our comfort level and, and it might be generational, but I think comfort level of,

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  Really feeling like you can own your own sexuality fully is can be one layer that many of us go through when you add on the way I was sexualized and humiliated around sex.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  You know, it it makes it more complicated, you know, so.

• 1:03:54Alex Cooper?

  I appreciate you sharing that though, because like I couldn't help but think, you know, there was this massive focus on your sex life in your twenties and I've even talked about it in the beginning days of my show. It was way more sexual and it was fun, but then I would go on dates and I was like, wait, no, like, I think you have the wrong idea.

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  Or that's one part of me. I mean, it's funny because what was amazing to me, I was thinking about coming in and sitting down with you and it was like, oh, you know, thanks to your, I think it was episode three, I'm like, you took the mantle of blowjob queen. I cannot thank you enough. You know, so it was, you know, what was it? The GG nine thousand?

• 1:04:40Alex Cooper?

  The gluck gluck nine thousand, girl. But it's, I I'm obsessed with you just said that, but that in itself is like, there's the reclaiming of as women to be like, I'm gonna own it first before you can own it. But then you talking about, you know, being slut shamed, like, how did you start to trust people again? Like getting into a relationship with a man or going into a bedroom with a man that you think you trust?

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  It's, um, you know, I think that those, uh, I think that the first, the first handful of years, I was very self-conscious because of how I'd been sexualized and.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Because as we were talking before of of having the most powerful man, you know,

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  wag their finger and say, I didn't have sex with that woman. And

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  George Lakoff like wrote this essay where he was talking about how I wrote about this a little one of my articles, but

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  how we see, because we haven't had a fucking woman president yet, but we see, we see the male president as a father figure. This idea of the father of the country saying, you know, and so I had concerns about that. And I think that there

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  again, as as because of my own self esteem issues already, I think that it it impacted things. And I don't drink anymore. I mean, I have champagne on like rare. I'm not, I'm not sober. I just don't drink. So I'm, you know, but I think that helped for a while. And then, you know, I mean, I joke now, like if I were still drinking, I'd probably have a lot more sex. But you know, because the sort of the moment in the night, you know, the moment in the night was like, or I should say more casual sex, but that moment in the night where you're sort of gonna like lean into this, this thing like you just start, you start to get more self conscious.

• 1:06:48Alex Cooper?

  Yes, yes. And you start to get more self conscious. And then you get in your head. And I get what you're saying like having a glass of wine, it relaxes you. But I, I see what you're saying. It's like, this is this again, the smaller version of what you experienced when I think so many women can relate to whether it's middle school or high school or college and a guy runs around saying something about a hookup with you, whether it was true or a lie. I've had that happen to me where you're like, that's not true. Like, and you're so embarrassed.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Alex Cooper?

  And a lot of those moments, like I then would like replay my exchanges with that person. And I don't know if you had this where you're like self consciously.

• 1:07:33Alex Cooper?

  Being made fun of. So then you're like, well, what did I like, do you know, do I make sense? A little bit here? You're just like replaying like, what did I do? And what was I like? And as a woman, like, so much of our worth people put on us is our sexuality. So then to be publicly put down, you're like, oh, my God. And as a 24 year old woman, then it's like, what am I worth? And of course, you're worth everything more than that. But at the time, your self-worth is like,

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Well, and I had, I had had a lot of, I had had some sexual trauma from when I was younger that, you know, we didn't even have, again, didn't have language for the kinds of things that, you know, that happened. And so you, you don't even know that you're acting out. You know, you don't even know, you can't even piece those things together. So it's, it is, but I, you know, I've also been really lucky in, I haven't been super successful at a, you know, at a relationship. I haven't been successful at all at a relationship that goes the full distance. But I have been

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  really lucky and dated some amazing men. And, and those, those men, each in their own way, have helped, helped me find a piece of myself again, you know?

• 1:08:53Alex Cooper?

  Shame. Can we talk about that for all the young women listening?

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Alex Cooper?

  You have tackled it head on, quite literally. And it is something that I think every woman in our lifetime, we experience it in a way that men just will not understand. Can you talk a little bit, if you have any advice on how to overcome shame as a woman, when someone is putting you down, again, sexually, for not being enough, whatever it be?

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Um, I guess my brain's going in a few places. But I guess the kind of good news and bad news is, the good news is that

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Those moments will dissipate like that shame spear that that stabs you. That wound will heal. The bad news is that we like keep dealing with shame in in different ways throughout life. Yeah. Um, and I think for me, the the thing that is, I think of shame almost being like a bacteria in a Petri dish, that it's like when you put it into this Petri dish and it's all by itself, it just grows, but it's still alone. And that's the thing to know the most is that almost everything anybody might feel shame about, somebody else is feeling the same thing.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  Like it is not, it doesn't necessarily mean there's, you're not going to feel some shame, but for it to lessen a bit. Yeah. Um, in some ways, and it it is.

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  I wish, I wish, wish, wish, you know, we get to a place in our world where women can just sort of like shirk the shame, you know, and just, you can't even be shamed. Yeah. Because that's what we see with some men in the world, um, who are shameless. Yeah. And that's, um, it's complicated. It is, it's something I still deal with, you know, so less and less.

• 1:11:02Alex Cooper?

  I want to just kind of conclude on the double standards.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:11:06Alex Cooper?

  Any advice for women when it comes to navigating double standards in how we are treated versus men? I can only imagine the amount of women listening that have a workplace dynamic with a boss or a relationship or like you said, some a financial situation. Like, do you have any advice?

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  I don't know how successful I have been in trying to navigate the double standards. I think in some ways, my own reclaiming is, um, trying to, has been trying to open a path or continue a path, um, that not a lot of women have been able to go through before, which is to be a fallen woman and to rise. And so.

• 1:11:50Speaker 03

  Letting many other women know it doesn't, I'm not the one to say this, this is like a well-known quote of just, you know, it doesn't matter how many times you fall down, it matters how many you get up. And so I think that's, that's the most important thing. So I'm sorry, I don't have a better answer for you on that.

• 1:12:09Alex Cooper?

  Monica, it's the most honest answer you can give because I have sat with so many people, I literally call my mom about it in moments where I'm frustrated if I see something online or in my real personal life. Like, I grapple with it constantly because I start conversations like this. Like, what do we do, Monica? Like, you experienced something on the biggest platform in the world. How do we change this? Because as much as I would like to say, it wouldn't happen to another woman again. I do think it could happen to another woman again, looking at like, what's going on in our world. And so I do think the reality as upsetting as it is, is to say is like, I don't think there is a solution yet.

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because We're working, you know, and I think the thing that is so important about change, and it's one of the things I, I admire about you, and I'm so excited for you and grateful to you, is that you are, you are pushing forward in a path in, in business and podcasts as a young woman, right up there, right up there with these men who are, you know, who are valuing what their contribution is in their podcast, and they're being, they're having that reflected to them and what they've sold them for. And you have done that, Alex. Like, I hope you take that in every day. Because of you, other women are going to be able to have successful

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  podcasts that they then move on to other places for, for.

• 1:13:41Alex Cooper?

  I can't, no, I can't, first of all, I can't thank you enough for saying that. But I hope you know, I feel the same way about you. The fact that you have chosen to sit here and continue to sit in front of cameras and speak about your experience, it like, makes me emotional. It's like, There are so many women that look at you and it's like, if she can get through that, then I can get through this. And I, it's not that it should be your job to make people feel more seen and more hopeful, but it is so incredible that you haven't given up and that you didn't just go away and just decide to like pull back. Like you kept your fucking name, Monica Lewinsky, and you're not going anywhere. And that's why I'm so

• 1:14:25Alex Cooper?

  excited for you. Podcasting is so incredible. It's so hard. It's so hard, but it's so. It's so hard. It's so much harder than I thought. Everyone will give you grace in the fact that you are going on to this new venture. Okay. I am so excited for you. I am going to give you my personal number and I'm here. Okay. If you need any advice. Okay. Okay, last question. Okay. If you could go back. Yeah. And talk to your 22 year old self. Mm hmm. What would you tell her? Do not go to Washington.

• 1:14:58Alex Cooper?

  Monica. Thank you so much for cutting me on Call Her Daddy. Thank you, Alex. This was so lovely.

• 1:15:19Alex Cooper?

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