Monica Lewinsky leaves Clinton scandal in dust, joins Hollywood elite with bold new look, business venture
Monica Lewinsky has been welcomed with open arms by the Hollywood elite decades after her affair scandal with then President Bill Clinton in the '90s.
Lewinsky, who has been in the public eye since 2017, attended George Clooney's star-studded Broadway premiere of "Good Night, and Good Luck" in New York City on April 3.
While smiling for pictures before the event, Lewinsky wore a strapless, asymmetrical black gown that had ruffle detailing at the bottom. She paired her look with black heels and styled her hair down.
Several A-listers attended Clooney's big Broadway premiere. Cindy Crawford attended the show with her husband, Rande Gerber, and daughter Kaia.
Hugh Jackman, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Lopez and Julianna Margulies were also photographed at the event.
Nearly three decades ago, Lewinsky, who was a former White House intern while Clinton was president, had an affair with the former president. Clinton subsequently had an impeachment trial that came about in December 1998.
The president was 49 at the time of the incident. Lewinsky was 22. Following the scandal, Clinton was acquitted. After a few public appearances in an attempt to reinvent herself, Lewinsky disappeared from the spotlight in the mid-2000s.
In 2017, Lewinsky emerged back into the limelight and began writing for Vanity Fair. Now, according to its website, she is a contributing editor.
"She is an anti-bullying social activist, global public speaker, and producer with her company, Alt Ending Productions," the outlet states.
Her latest story for the outlet was on March 31, and before that was an article published before the 2024 presidential election.
In January, Lewinsky launched her own podcast, "Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky."
The synopsis of her show states, "Every week, I'll draw from my own unique experiences (like say, surviving a global scandal at 24 years old), and delve into the personal and often messy ways people find their way back to themselves."
Since launching, Lewinsky has had Olivia Munn, "Wicked" director Jon M. Chu and Tony Hawk on her podcast.
At the 2025 Vanity Fair Oscar party, Lewinsky posed with Munn and her husband, John Mulaney, for a photo.
A month after launching her own podcast, Lewinsky was a guest on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, which was then topping the charts.
During the appearance in February, podcast host Alex Cooper asked Lewinsky how she thought the media should have covered her scandal in the '90s.
"I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody's business and to resign, or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus," Lewinsky said.
Beyond her own life falling apart, Lewinsky explained how her scandal affected women everywhere.
"I think there was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman be pilloried on a world stage, to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything," Lewinsky said.
"I think there was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman be pilloried on a world stage, to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything."
In 2021, Lewinsky told People magazine that she has found the courage to examine what occurred "between the most powerful man in the world and an unpaid intern less than half his age."
"For me, at 22, there was this combination of the awe of being at the White House, the awe of the presidency and the awe of this man who had an amazing energy and charisma was paying attention to me," she explained. "I was enamored with him, like many others. He had a charisma to him, and it was a lethal charm, and I was intoxicated."
"I think there are a lot of people who might find themselves in these situations," she continued. "It might be a professor or a boss, your immediate supervisor at your job. We think we're on his terra firma in our early 20s, and yet we're really on this quicksand. [You think], I'm an adult now. It didn't matter that I couldn't get a rental car without a parental signature."
At the time, Lewinsky was a producer of "15 Minutes of Shame" on HBO Max, which explored cancel culture. Lewinsky insisted she no longer needed an apology from Clinton.
"If I had been asked five years ago, there would have been a part of me that needed something, that still wanted something," she said. "Not any kind of relationship, but a sense of closure or maybe understanding. And I feel incredibly grateful not to need any of that."
Lewinsky told the outlet at the time that she hoped her story would spark discussion about the dynamics between men in power and those without it.
"As we all came to see, it wasn't just about losing a job but about the power to be believed, the power to be inoculated from the press, the power to have others smear someone's reputation in all the ways that work, the power to understand consequence having held many important jobs where this was my first out of college," she said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Perspective: Surprise! Married parents aren't miserable — they're America's happiest adults
'Steve! (martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces' covers the eclectic career of one of the world's most successful comedians, Steve Martin. Comedy, acting, playwriting, art collecting, banjo playing — Martin's oeuvre encompassed an impressive array of interests and his friends, which included prominent actors, writers, artists and musicians. But Martin still found happiness elusive even at the heights of fame. Discovering a single empty table at one of his normally sold-out venues provoked enough insecurity to switch from comedy to movies, but the angst and loneliness persisted — until he married at 61 and had a child at 67. 'My whole life is backwards,' Martin observed in 2024. 'How did I go from riddled with anxiety in my 30s, to 75 and really happy? How did this happen?' The happiest group of Americans, according to leading marriage expert and researcher Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia, are people married with children — pushing back in his data-based book 'Get Married' on stereotypes of childless people as less stressed and more satisfied than parents. Wilcox's academic data challenges a popular narrative that emerged yet again when prominent pop singer Chappell Roan claimed 'all parents are miserable.' 'All of my friends who have kids are in hell,' Roan explained on the 'Call Her Daddy' podcast, setting off an explosion of commentary everywhere, from BuzzFeed to MSNBC to the Irish Independent, with many pushing back, but others agreeing that raising little kids in particular can be extremely difficult. 'Children are often a strain on marriage, and they seem to lead to a dip in marital quality,' Wilcox concedes, but 'the overall picture of marriage and parenthood is rosier than the popular press would suggest.' This familial contentment, however, depends on a selfless mindset, a 'we before me' approach crucial to making marriage meaningful and parenthood deeply fulfilling. 'When people get married, what do they do with their finances?' asked a recent caller to Dave Ramsey's financial advice podcast. She seemed taken aback by Ramsey's response that husbands and wives combine everything, asking, 'What if one person makes more than the other?' 'You're not a partnership, you're a marriage,' Ramsey pushed back. 'My wife doesn't have an income. I do not have an income. WE have an income.' Interestingly, couples with separate financial accounts are 20% more likely to divorce, according to a study conducted by the University of Colorado–Boulder. The same study also found that couples who shared their money were happier in their relationships than those who separated their accounts (including those who had both joint and separate accounts). An Indiana University study that randomly assigned newly married couples to joint accounts, separate accounts or any arrangement of the couple's choice found that, after two years, the joint-account couples 'exhibited significantly greater relationship quality' than the other couples. Wilcox brings up both studies to illustrate the effects a family-first approach has on marriage and family life — implications that are not minor. While marital advice today often emphasizes personal me-time, personal identity forging and the pursuit of personal ambitions, couples who end up sharing more in common are more likely to report happier marriages. And it's not just money. According to a YouGov survey, couples sharing the same last name not only held a stronger sense of family identity, but were more likely to be happily married and less likely to have plans to divorce than those who didn't. Sharing names, turning down job opportunities that detract from marital obligations and making personal sacrifices for each other reflects selfless attitudes that make a big difference in marriage, according to the State of Our Unions Survey of 2022. After controlling for education, income and race, the survey found 'we-before-me' couples much more likely to report being 'very happy' in marriage and also more likely to say divorce is 'not at all likely' in the future than couples with a 'my own needs first' attitude. Marriages in which only one spouse takes on most of the selflessness, however, 'can run aground' according to Wilcox. The sacrifices need to be mutual. Writer Julian Adorney shares that 'my marriage to my wife works because both of us practice a sort of self-emptying love.' He goes on to critique the book,'The Value of Others,' which ultimately views marriage as a dying institution to be replaced by gig-economy relationships lasting not 'till death' but 'until this relationship no longer provides adequate value for us both.' Today, notions of sacrifice and selflessness must not only compete with transactional-economic models, but also with a plethora of demands that make up what Northwestern University Professor Eli Finkel labels today's 'All-or-Nothing Marriage.' Finkel's book by the same name explains that 21st century couples hold high expectations for a partner to 'be all things to them.' Such inflated expectations of personal gratification and self-actualization, Finkel acknowledges, create a fragile basis for lasting unions and could be considered a major force behind family instability rates. Yet the book has some blind spots. 'Something you will not find discussed anywhere in All-or-Nothing Marriage is the importance of sacrifice,' writes marriage and family professor Scott Sibley. Marriage expert Alan Hawkins emphasizes the importance of helping couples understand that there are seasons of life when most couples must live in the valleys, sacrificing some lofty ambitions to manage busy lives with children and work. Rather than working to find their highest fulfillment, he says, couples sometimes just need help to 'keep things good enough to make it through a stressful season of life together.' Demands for transcendence, wholeness, meaning, worth and communion within a single relationship, theorized Sarah K. Balstrup in an insightful study, burdens romantic relationships with a host of needs formerly satisfied through religion. Relationships, she writes, 'have become the primary mythology of the sacred in the collective tongue' of Western culture; however, mere mortals have difficulty providing the needs that religion and God formerly satisfied. Wilcox's 'Get Married' book delves into the ways religious affiliation meets the higher needs of couples while prioritizing values like selflessness, fidelity and the worth of child-raising, according to an impressive array of research and data. To summarize, church attenders are significantly happier in marriages, less likely to divorce and are more satisfied with their lives in general. Moreover, religious couples exhibit greater sexual fidelity and commitment, and higher levels of relationship quality, including greater sexual frequency and satisfaction. Not all religious couples are happy, Wilcox acknowledges, but those who regularly attend church, mosque or synagogue tap into social networks that encourage self-denial and healthy marital interaction while discouraging behaviors that derail relationships. Add to that a meaningful sense of the cosmos and rituals that help couples deal with suffering (shared prayer is a predictor of higher quality marriages), and even a good–enough marriage with family-first priorities may not need to spend 24/7 on self-actualization to reach higher levels of happiness. In the divorce drama 'Kramer vs. Kramer,' the highest-grossing film of 1979, Dustin Hoffman's character Ted, whose wife has left him, gradually trades his workaholism for a deep father-son bond forged through countless meals, chores, conversations, and a harrowing trip to the emergency room. Ted's trajectory also includes a growing selflessness born of sacrificing for another's growth. When Ted faces an uphill battle for child custody, he sits down with a legal pad one night to weigh the pros and cons of keeping Billy. As the con list lengthens with exhausting annoyances, the pro list remains vacant until Ted slips into Billy's room and holds his sleeping child. After that, Ted calls the lawyer and says he's willing to fight for custody. The intangible benefits of having kids are difficult to calculate in the short-term, day-to-day frenzy of meal-making, mess-cleaning, tantrum-throwing and adult-child boomeranging that is child-rearing. Maybe that's why society's advantages vs. disadvantages list of having kids circa 2025 looks similar to Ted's — minus the tender child-hugging that wipes out the cons in the end. Wilcox explains that, amid the divorce surges of the 1970s, fertility levels fell below the replacement rate for the first time in United States history, only to rise to replacement level until around 2009. After that came a decade of ambivalence about child-bearing that saw cultural forces of individualism, hedonism and workism take precedence over kids, who limit, says Wilcox, 'options, choices, and freedom — and force us to grow up.' The 'Childfree Life' depicted in the iconic 2013 Time cover story replete with a vacationing couple on the beach became more appealing, as did more time spent at the office building careers. Currently, childlessness has now risen to the point that 1 in 4 young women today will have no posterity. Contributing to the perception that children aren't worth it may have been a 2016 study reporting that parents are 13% less happy than their childless peers. However, 'there is only one problem with this handwringing about parenthood,' Wilcox points out. 'It no longer fits the data ... today, that is most definitely not true.' Current research backs up this reversal. Parents, especially married parents, are more likely to report their lives are more meaningful and happier than nonparents while childless Americans are more likely to report their lives are lonely and less meaningful and happy. Indeed, 'today's men and women (ages 18 to 55) in their prime who have children report the greatest happiness and the most meaning in their lives,' writes Wilcox, 'even after controlling for factors like education, race, and ages.' Wilcox refers to psychologist Paul Bloom's insightful book 'The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning' to explain the paradox of children bringing both distress and happiness into parents' lives. While too much suffering can be debilitating, too little struggle in a life of pleasure and pursuits of the self leads to meaningless and unhappiness. The ups and downs of parenthood provide opportunities for adversity and stress — along with generous doses of meaning, compassion and greater selflessness that even medical studies correlate with 'authentic-durable happiness.' While marriages tend to see a dip in happiness as they transition into parenthood and the relationship becomes more strained, a review of literature on parenting finds that 'many initial challenges encountered at the time of new parenthood are transient in nature.' Marriages that were solid before the baby inserted itself into daily life usually remain solid, even with all the new stresses and sleepless nights. (It's marriages that were struggling before the transition to parenthood that are the ones most likely to see a significant dip.) 'The fact that more than three-fourths of adults already have or want to have children should itself be evidence that something very fundamental is at work,' writes James L. McQuivey, whose review of the research finds that more than a third of Americans wish they had more children than they currently have, and that 'an astonishing 88% agree that 'having children is one of the most important things I have done.'' Clearly, not everyone wants to or can become a parent. Reasons for not having kids are deeply personal and vary widely. While some may indeed want to sit leisurely on a beach, others, like Mother Teresa, prove that parents don't corner the market on selflessness. Many young adults feel ambivalent because their financial situations are too tenuous to buy a home or support a family, and still others wanted to parent, but infertility or life circumstances interfered. Catherine Rossi's poignant essay 'Not in the (Motherhood) Club,' describes her 20s full of work, a boyfriend and energy that somehow shifted in her 30s. 'With the seven-year guy long gone, I struggled to find another,' she writes, and then 'was hit full force in the face,' as her 30s became 40s, that 'there was a club.' Motherhood. And she would never be in it, feeling ostracized as everyone's lives began and continued to revolve around their children. No one should be stereotyped as selfish or feel ostracized for not having children, but a societal narrative that 'all parents are miserable' is not only untrue, but dissuades young adults from participating in what many find the most rewarding part of life. George Bailey. What a life. First the longed for dream of travel and Europe postponed, actually demolished, to salvage the family business and keep Bedford Falls from falling prey to Mr. Potter's evil machinations. Then marriage to Mary followed by multiple children — further imploding dreams of architecture, explorations and making it big. No wonder George questions, at a desperate juncture, whether his life is worth anything in Frank Capra's film classic 'It's a Wonderful Life,' as all his selflessness seems for naught. One of today's influencers might call George miserable, living in hell. It takes a hapless angel named Clarence to give George a vision of what his family and friends' lives would be like without his altruism (spoiler alert: pretty terrible). The movie ends with George surrounded by a grateful wife and thankful kids, relatives and a household full of friends. Mr. Potter, with money and power to make every wish come true, comes off as the truly miserable one compared to George's wonderful life. Maybe family-first, we-before-me selflessness offers its own angelic perspective during the desperate junctures of marriage and child-rearing, removing us from near-sighted annoyances and heartaches to give us the long view that sacrifices are worth it, and that hard times can bring out the best in us. Writer-surgeon Richard Selzer (1928-2016) was particularly adept at taking miserable medical situations and reframing them through the ennobling actions of a selfless spouse. In Selzer's essay 'Tube Feeding,' a husband tenderly ministers to a wife with an inoperable brain tumor, unable to eat. He devotedly carries out his daily duty when the feeding tube suddenly dislodges, so he nervously scrambles to reattach the tube, a nauseating process. Not wanting his wife to sense his distress, the husband discreetly hurries to a bathroom where she hears him throwing up. In another Selzer essay, he must cut a small nerve to remove the tumor in a woman's cheek — leaving the young wife with a twisted, clownish mouth. As Selzer encounters his patient and her husband back in her hospital room, he asks himself, 'Who are they? ... He and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at each other so generously, greedily?' 'Will my mouth always be like this?' she asks, and Selzer replies yes, 'because the nerve was cut.' The wife remains silent, but the husband smiles and says, 'I like it ... it is kind of cute.' 'All at once I know who he is,' Selzer continues. 'I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.' This article is the fourth of a series on the future of marriage in America.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Surviving Ohio State' Review: HBO's Sexual Abuse Doc Is Thorough and Persuasive, but Lacks a New Smoking Gun
The latest entry in a genre one wishes weren't so burgeoning is HBO's Surviving Ohio State, following in the sadly necessary footsteps of documentaries about sexual abuse in the athletic departments at Michigan State (Athlete A and At the Heart of Gold) and Penn State (Happy Valley). When Surviving Ohio State was announced, anticipation hinged on the participation of producer George Clooney and the possibility that exploring the abuses of Dr. Richard Strauss and alleged negligence by authority figures at Ohio State might topple Jim Jordan, Ohio Congressman and Trump lapdog. More from The Hollywood Reporter Broadway Box Office: 'Good Night, and Good Luck' and 'Othello' End Runs on New Highs 'A Tree Fell in the Woods' Review: Josh Gad and Alexandra Daddario in an Uneven, Occasionally Insightful Relationship Dramedy Jim Sheridan's 'Re-creation' Puts One of Ireland's Most Troubling Murder Cases Back on Trial If your interest in Surviving Ohio State revolves entirely around Jim Jordan-related schadenfreude, you can probably skip it. Jordan, who refused to participate in the documentary for self-evident reasons, comes across as heartless and negligent, but the doc lacks any sort of smoking gun likely to dissuade his dedicated constituents, who have known about all of these allegations for each of the last three times they've voted for him. Jordan, unfortunately, also proves to be a distraction to the filmmakers, especially in the documentary's second half. Caught up in the they-said/he-said-in-previous-statements disagreements, director Eva Orner largely fails to explore the institutional side of the scandal. I shouldn't come away from a documentary like this fixated on the name of a single assistant wrestling coach (one who was not and has not been accused of anything criminal) and completely unable to name the Ohio State president, athletic director and key administrators under whose watch these abuses occurred. For the first half of its 108-minute running time, Surviving Ohio State is, as its title suggests, a compelling examination of the survivors of abuse and the mechanisms through which large-scale abuse can occur at a major university. Per a 2019 independent investigation, from 1978 to 1998 Dr. Richard Strauss abused at least 177 male students at Ohio State. Strauss had particularly close ties to a number of Buckeyes sports programs, including fencing, hockey and the wrestling team, coached by Russ Hellickson, with two-time NCAA champ Jordan as his primary assistant. The accusations from athletes involved Strauss' inappropriate examinations, his tendency to take regular, extended showers in several athletic locker rooms, and grooming behavior escalating ultimately into rape. For some of that time, Strauss worked at the Student Health Center and thus had access to the entire student body, and although he was relieved of certain of those duties after complaints, he retired from Ohio State entirely on his own terms. A group of wrestlers from the mid-90s are Orner's primary points of entry, and this group of survivors proves crucial to both the strongest aspects of the documentary and the distraction that leaves it less effective than it could be. At least a half dozen of those wrestlers tell their stories to the camera, accompanied by filler re-enactments — a shower head spurting water, the hallway leading to a medical examination room — that add very little. The stories themselves are candid and graphic, the haunted men today contrasted with vintage footage of wrestling matches and the various athletes in their high-achieving youth. Well aware of skepticism from online trolls who have wondered how veterans of a combat sport could allow this sort of 'victimization,' the men talk about the surprise and shame that led them not to respond in the moment and to remain silent about the incidents for decades. It's the film's way of setting up the psychology of male survivors and, perhaps more than that, of explaining why the OSU scandal hasn't received the instant attention and sympathy that greeted revelations from generations of female gymnasts about Michigan State and United States national team doctor Larry Nassar. The truth is that Jordan's involvement has contributed to what visibility the Ohio State situation has had. All of the wrestlers present in this documentary have made it clear that Strauss' behavior wasn't a secret, and that the coaches all knew about the inappropriate showers and concerns about the examinations, taking little action in Hellickson's case and no action in Jordan's case. Jordan has belligerently and vehemently denied that he knew anything at all, which makes him at best an oblivious caretaker of young men. The wrestlers, plus at least one referee with a story of his own, are completely persuasive, and Orner is able to give a sense of pervasive rumors about Strauss' creepiness. But that's been the story since these allegations against Strauss came out back in 2018 — and other than one small, thoroughly speculative detail about Jordan's actions well after the scandal broke, no new information is provided and no dots connected regarding Jordan or Hellickson or anything else. The frustration of Surviving Ohio State is how fixated it becomes on Hellickson and Jordan and unnamed figures at the university — Hellickson and the board of trustees, like Jordan, declined to provide any response — without that smoking gun or that key piece of dot-connecting. Given how potent the survivor interviews are and how negligible the details are on the systemic failures, Surviving Ohio State would have been better with more focus on the former and less unsubstantiated insinuation — however persuasive — about the latter. The documentary is extremely effective at giving voice to those survivors and providing context and understanding for their silence — and that's extremely important, especially alongside those documentaries about what happened at Penn State and Michigan State. It may not be as sensational and buzzy as bringing down a major university or a sitting congressman, but since Surviving Ohio State won't do either thing, it's worth praising the potency of what it does well. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Harry Potter' Star, 66, Turns Heads in Optical Illusion Suit
'Harry Potter' Star, 66, Turns Heads in Optical Illusion Suit originally appeared on Parade. Fiona Shaw turned heads at the European premiere of Echo Valley at BFI Southbank in London. The Harry Potter actress, 66, arrived on the red carpet on Tuesday, June 10, wearing a navy three-piece suit with a dizzying pattern. Shaw completed the look with a pair of platform sandals. Echo Valley is an Apple TV+ psychological thriller starring Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney. The film, written by Brad Ingelsby and directed by Michael Pearce features a supporting cast that includes Shaw, alongside Domhnall Gleeson and Kyle MacLachlan. Echo Valley debuted in select North American theaters on June 6, and will be available for streaming on Apple TV+ starting on June 13. While many may recognize Shaw from playing the stern Aunt Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter film series, her career spans decades. Some of her other notable roles include Medea and Richard II on stage, Marnie Stonebrook in True Blood, Carolyn Martens in Killing Eve, and Grace Williams in Bad a 1989 interview with The New York Times, Shaw, who was 31 years old at the time, admitted she was fearful about the future of her career. 'All I know is that I awake every morning thinking the hourglass is running out,' she said. 'It's not that I feel old, but that I think there is something I must say, something I must do before I die.' Looking back on that interview in a 2024 conversation with Vanity Fair, Shaw said, 'Aren't you glad you're not meeting that woman now? Maybe at that time, the careers for men were so much better that I was so pleased to have one ... so I suspect the intensity came from that. That and: 'When you're being interviewed, you want to say very important things. I've stopped trying to do that.'" 'Harry Potter' Star, 66, Turns Heads in Optical Illusion Suit first appeared on Parade on Jun 10, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 10, 2025, where it first appeared.
