After a handful of false starts dating all the way back to 2017, Impeachment: American Crime Story—the latest installment of the Ryan Murphy-produced crime anthology—is finally making its way toward a screen near you. While it’s dropping in just about a month, the creative team behind the FX series isn’t ready to give much about Impeachment away yet, as evidenced by its new teaser (which you can watch above).
While we all know the basic storyline—in 1995, then-President Bill Clinton had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern, which led to his impeachment—American Crime Story has never really been about the story you know. As they did with the O.J. Simpson trial and the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace, the series is designed to let time and age allow viewers to relitigate these infamous incidents and scandals from a modern-day perspective and to consider what biases might have been at work in the initial media coverage.
In the case of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair—which for years had been referred to as “The Monica Lewinsky Scandal,” as if Clinton was just a hapless bystander who played a totally passive role in the relationship—it will be interesting to reexamine the case through the lens of the #MeToo movement. While powerful men who use their influence as sexual currency are being toppled as quickly as statues of Confederate “heroes,” the timing seems perfect to reexamine this case—especially knowing that Lewinsky was brought on as a producer, and signed off on each script.
Of course, in the irony of all ironies, the series is being adapted Jeffrey “Is This Camera On?” Toobin’s book, A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President, but we’ll just leave that alone.
Though we only get to see Beanie Feldstein as Lewinsky from the back—as she winds her way through the halls of the White House and makes her way to the Oval Office—and the camera cuts out before we get a good glimpse of Clive Owen as Clinton, this is one “teaser” that certainly lives up to its name.
Impeachment: American Crime Story will premiere on FX at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, September 7th.
(Via Variety)