December 3, 2025 • 51 mins
Part 2 of our extended conversation with Monica Lewinsky charts the aftermath of a life turned upside down - the regrets, reflections, struggles and hard-fought success as an advocate for others.
Plus, find out Monica's take on what comes out of the Epstein Files, dynamics of power, and why Michelle Obama is on her mind.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, work in progress.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Friends.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
We are here for part two of this incredible interview
with Monica Lewinsky. Can I offer you something? And look,
I might be wrong here, maybe I'm projecting my own experience.
I think when you're really in something and you're the
(00:28):
uniqueness of having a human life on a public stage
cannot be overstated, and people want to roll their eyes
and go, oh, poor you. Nobody gets how hard this
is until they go through it. And I would wager
that just like where you work becomes relative, going to
the Pentagon becomes normal, going to the White House becomes normal,
(00:52):
there is a thing that happens when you are plucked
out of your life and put in a new environment,
very similarly to my own early twenties experience. You move
away from all your friends and family, You go to
work on a TV show. You're working fifteen, sixteen, seventeen
hours a day with these people, just like you all
were at the White House. You don't really know anyone.
(01:13):
Your relative experience shifts. Would you have confided in Linda
Tripp if your three best friends were.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
In DC with you? No?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
But in DC, the relative scale of who seemed like
a friend shifts to who you're picking out of in
the pool of people around, you know. I talk about
this with my partner and her experiences very similarly being
put on a team, and then your team is your
option for me, my cast, those are my people. For
(01:43):
you who you're working with there, those become your people.
You're so far away from your actual life, but you
have to invest in where you are. And so I
get why you would meet a friend.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's interesting because I did also confide in all my
closest friends just was you know, it just was different.
It was different because they, you know, they weren't. I'm
trying to remember I had a best friend in DC
Ashley that I'm still close to, and I'm trying to
remember when I told her. I can't remember, so but
(02:21):
I think that there was it. Really, I'll say it
a different way. I think that had I not been
sent off to the Pentagon, which was a world I
mean I joke about being like Private Benjamin, I really
was Private Benjamin. I mean I went to Banana Republic
to go shopping, to go on my first trip to Bosnia,
Like what do I wear to meet the troops? I mean,
(02:44):
like I just was. I was a fish out of
water there, sure, you know, real fish out of water
and you know, and I had some incredible experiences as
a young person too, and even my boss, so I
worked for the Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon, and I became
friendly with his wife while I was working there, and
(03:05):
I'm still friends with her to today. So I see
her whenever I'm in DC, and she's an amazing woman,
and I think that there's but I just I didn't
belong there, you know, I just really didn't. I didn't.
And in fact, I was just talking about this thing.
I think I had Laura Brown and Christina o'neillon to
(03:26):
talk about their book, their book, and I was saying
about how when I got fired from the White House
that or transferred that my supervisor said to me, well,
it's a much sexier job at the Pendent. I'm like,
can you imagine someone saying that in today's world?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, so cooler, perhaps, right, more impressive, but yeah, even
the idea that people would speak to a young woman
that way and say this is sexier.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
For you, yeah, gross, gross, you know it.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I hear you doing a thing that I understand, and
I want to clarify a few things. I deeply respect
how much responsibility you've taken. I hear you saying, you know,
I was a young woman. I was twenty two, then
I was twenty four. I also in looking Back, you know,
my earlier reference, my reclamation show, I look at the
(04:26):
girl I was.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I was a girl.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You know at twenty one and twenty two and twenty three,
we were still kids. Yes, we were young adults. But
there is this odd obsession with when you know enough.
And I think about the fact that your brain isn't
even done developing exactly. You can't even rent a car
by yourself exactly. So you know, it drives me crazy
(04:52):
that someone as you reference, like in Megan Kelly, could
be excusing what we are seeing in all of these
Epstein documents being released and say, well, fifteen's not really
that young, it's not really that uncommon.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
My question I wish I could ask her is okay,
So whose daughter do you think deserves to be raped
at fifteen? Megan? Yours are someone else's right, You know,
these are insane conversations we are having about children. And
I do understand, reflecting on my own life and hearing
you reflect on yours, that you're really in this kind
of in between phase in your early twenties, and it
(05:29):
strikes me there are things you bring up and I
watch your face, and I see you kind of looking
back at that hopeful young woman, and I don't think
it's a naivete I see almost a like youthful romanticism
when you reflect on it, a sort of idealistic young
(05:49):
woman who is succeeding and excited. Do you have expectations
about how things might turn out at the time before it?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh? Yes, I also think too, Just to just to
kind of round out what you're saying, I think what
we don't We have more examples of this now, but
I don't think at the time. I don't think in
the nineties and the early aughts, we had examples of
young women who are both they are both very mature.
(06:23):
Like you were saying, I was the same talking to adults.
I could, you know, got along with anybody's parents. I
had great manners, I knew how to have a conversation.
So there are these ways that we are far more
sophisticated than our peers, and then there are other parts
of us that are far more immature, far more naive,
(06:47):
far more you know, romantic or whatever that is, and
we don't. We didn't at the time, and you know
it's the both, the both of those and right, and
that's that young you know. I remember this guy I
knew who worked in this local supermarket and he said
(07:08):
to me, he was like, you know, when you turn
twenty one, you think you're such a grown up, you
think you're such an adult, and a few years later
you're going to realize how little you knew. Yep. And
it was one hundred percent true. So when I was
in my internship, I was, you know, studying. My plan
(07:28):
was to go to graduate school the next year, was
to make sure my scores were where they needed to
be to get into a PhD program. So this was like,
as I joked, a little pit stop on my resume,
you know, like, oh, it just crushes me for you.
I know, were Little Monica and her beret, so you know,
but and I was still I think something that opened
(07:53):
up for me while I was at the White House
was I became interested in communication, so that became a
little more interesting to me. But I still was planning
PhD forensic psychology, going back to school for that and
then whatever my career was going to go in that path,
but then I was there was this opening and Legislative Affairs.
(08:15):
When I interviewed for it, my boss or the person
who interviewed me, who has done the same one who
transferred me with the sexy comment, said we can only
give you the job if you commit to stay through
the election, because we can't have people leaving to go.
Everybody wants to go work on the campaign because it's exciting.
And so I decided to give that commitment, and so
(08:38):
had planned to sort of, I did to apply to
graduate school for that year.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Right, you thought, oh, yeah, I can do essentially a
gap year and be at the White House.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yes, exactly, exactly. So I think in the same way
that I have a friend who also doesn't have children,
who had also wanted kids, and she'll say sometimes she
has to remind herself that in her mind her child
would have been a perfect child, you know, And so
that when you're living in the fantasy of what you
(09:09):
didn't have or the you know, wish you'd had, that
that's often the most perfected state of it and very unrealistic.
So what my life might have looked like, you know,
had this not all happened is one version of a fantasy.
My best friend from college always jokes with me, She's like,
it always would have been hard for you to find
a husband, even ninety eight hadn't happened.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You know, No, I you know, I think that's part
of it too. You know you said something earlier about
the the kind of magic of feeling chosen in your
young life, and I think I understand that deeply because
I've had to come to terms with in my adulthood
that not until I turned forty did I realize, Oh,
I don't know that I've ever really chosen for myself.
(09:55):
I think the most I've ever done is been presented
with options, which is, these are the people who will
choose you. Out of these, what do you choose? R
Like that was the most profound, like, oh, look at
me making some choices and adulting construction of messaging, expectation, normativities,
(10:16):
including heteronormativity for me to go what do I choose?
And that was compounded in a really interesting way with
the difficulty of again going through a very long private
process that then when it became public, the public perception
was different. And I think part of what really drove
(10:38):
me crazy is because in my twenties when I had
an experience on a public stage with infidelity with a junior.
For some reason, it became my cross to bear and
not the person. And by the way, I'm even nervous
to say that because for some reason, even reflecting on it,
I get judged instead of being like, no, I actually
(10:58):
have quite a mature understanding what that was, and I
don't care anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It's been over twenty years, Like, get over it.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
But it was a weird way to in a way
be confronted with an untrue accusation because it was juicy
for the press, and then to have press confirmed they
knew it wasn't true, but say sorry, we got to
run the story for the clicks. It was so infuriating
to me and I went, oh, the misogyny is still
(11:27):
so alive. And I think part of the reason they
love it is because they can be so much more
misogynistic with women than they can be now with women
who go through things with men like this is the
frontier that feels like two thousand and three for the media. Wow,
and they know it's wrong and they don't care.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
It was this sort of mind blowing thing, And I
think about it in some of the conversations I get
to have with you, because I go, yeah, that's part
of it, right. People will know it's wrong, but you
give them so much currency that they don't care care.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And I'm fascinated by this, you know, in my arc
something twenty years ago and something more recently to your arc,
because you were basically patient zero of modern online shaming,
and now we're having these very kind of elevated conversations
(12:23):
as a society, supposedly right in our play of age
and power and consent. Yeah, and it's a lot to
grasp the size of misogyny, the size of the media
profit industry.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, and that women are not immune to misogyny either. Yes.
As philis Chesler wrote, I'm so.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Curious for you the ways you've reflected on that with us, Like.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It's I struggle, you know, it's it's something you know,
I think, I am. I don't know if you're this way,
but I feel like a thought, an idea, a ship
kind of comes in and I know it's like it's
put in a dish and is marinating, like it's a
bricketting inside and everything happened. I go check on it
(13:10):
and I'm like, huh, have we moved a bit? What's
going on over here? You know? And and so I
have I had this experience around watching John Proctor as
the villain. I mean that play, Oh my god, so good.
I am so glad it's being turned into a movie
(13:32):
or TV shit whatever, I just because I want everybody
to experience it. I had this realization that whether it
was the case or I determined because I decided it
was the case, who knows, it doesn't even matter. There
is a level of anger I never allowed myself to
get into, to talk publicly, and I see it with
(13:56):
I saw it in that play with a younger generation,
and I just thought, wow, Wow, what was that feel like?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yes, because God forbid, when you're being shamed, you're supposed
to take it. And God forbid a woman have so
much agency that she'd be furious at the way she's
been treated. And that's something I've marinated on a little bit,
is like, Oh, I've I too, have carried so much
anger for the mistreatment from the world that and is
(14:29):
that the thing people want to poke at? You know,
over twenty years of always wanting to ask women right,
never asking anyone.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Else like oh yeah, go like, oh, is maybe.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
The reason you still want to ask the question because
you've never seen me get angry? And by the way,
I don't know that you could handle my anger. Well,
I don't know that you actually want a piece of that.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I for me, I think, you know, I think I'm
not even in touch with it. I think it scares me.
It's seeing glimpses of it there. And I I had
my I had a spec scan done with doctor Amon
(15:10):
not long ago. I want to do that interesting I was.
I had wanted to do it a million years ago,
and then when Miley came on and she was talking
about it, I was like, oh, I'm going to do
this now. But one of the things he was talking
to me about, which I am a hundred thousand, bajillion
percent going to try, is a sort of rage therapy
(15:31):
where you really dive into that rage and what does
it mean to confront that? And so at some point
I'm I'm curious to do that and interested to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And now a word from our sponsors who make this
show possible. When you think about that, you know that
sort of righteous anger and I'm sure wounded anger and
(16:10):
all the versions of those feelings that we're not supposed
to feel, but we know live in us. Do you
think if at that time social media existed in the
way it does today, it would have made things worse
or better? Because in one way, I wonder, would you
(16:31):
have been able to be clearer about your own narrative
right or would it just have been even more of
the recycled garbage that the Internet feels like today.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I think it would have been both. I think that
there would have both existed more of an opportunity to
have a fuller sense of who I was as a person.
But as we all remember, with Justine Socko, who you know,
made a joke to her small group of friends who
understood her her level of humor no matter what that meant,
(17:03):
not something for public consumption, got on a plane, went
to Africa, and landed with a very different life. You know,
I could very easily see my humor the way I
am also being taken out of context. But yes, there
would have been more than just my high school yearbook
collage page to understand me as as Yeah, for twenty
(17:26):
hours of you know, surptitiously recorded phone calls that you
know are gabbing to a friend so these are sort
of the materials, and then of course the spin you know,
that comes in so and then who is that somebody
reminded me even it was like, oh yeah, I wrote
a poem about a pizza when I was in second grade.
(17:47):
Even that surfaced, like, I mean, it's like, god, you
know that somehow, somehow a poem I wrote about pizza
in second grazy kids. It's worth it's worth putting in print,
you know. But so I think that there there would
have been more there. But then there would have been
you know, the beret and the dress and all the
(18:09):
things would have had their own handles, and there would
have been more you know, memes and jokes and so.
But I also think because I meet people a lot
who sort of say, you know, I was always on
your side, and it might have been nice to see
(18:30):
something of that because I could know was any sort
of public support was if someone wrote me a letter,
you know, the old fashioned way. So but it was,
I mean, and the letter the mail I got, I
would get Monica Lewinsky, Washington, d C. And it would
arrive to the Watergate, was addressed to the White House,
(18:53):
came to where I was living.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
It was to Wow. You know, I think about that,
the the attention and you know, for example, the mail,
how did you handle? I mean, I'm so glad there
were people who were writing kindly to you because the
world was being so deeply unkind and not remembering that
you were a human being who was helping you with
(19:16):
the scary parts, because I know what it's like to
get the threats and the things, and did you have
anyone to support you through that part of the process
as well.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think there was a few weeks in I had
to spend the first few weeks of the investigation without
any psychological help because they weren't sure if I was
going to get immunity or not, and so it's a
whole long thing. But I eventually I had a ended
up with a forensic psychiatrist who helped save my life
(19:51):
a couple of times. It was amazing Doctor Susan And
then Judy Smith came on board, who worked with Shonda
Rhimes on Scandal, so she is sort of the to
help with the with the pr which you know, it's like, Yes,
I grew up in la and around the industry in
(20:12):
some ways. I mean, my dad's a doctor and my
mom was a mom or I don't know what. I
don't know the phrase we use anymore, just a mom,
stay at home mom. I stayed at home mom, stay
at home mom. Okay, stay at home mom. So but
I didn't know this world, you know, And so there
was that I. I was just with my best friend
(20:34):
from college this past weekend, Catherine, and after she had
to testify before the grand jury, we were I was
able to talk to her again. So I knew I
had one friend in the world. Like those pieces helped
carry me through. And some drugs, you know, prescription drugs right,
antidepressants right, and some cupcakes and peanut eminem's. So I imagine
(20:59):
that not.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Only did you have to figure out how to process shame,
how to eventually analyze anger, there must have been some
pretty intense grieving for career, privacy, dreams, identity, the things
that you had forward vision on for yourself that didn't
(21:21):
get to materialize because of this explosion. When in that
process were you able to begin to find the light,
like the moments to appreciate the aspects of your new reality.
What good could also come with this tremendous amount of hardship,
(21:48):
You know, I.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Think that I think that things happened in ways, right,
So the first, you know, I was saying that I'm
not really in touch with my anger. I think there
have been moments where I obviously have. There was a
(22:09):
period of time I think ten years out, but that
was the first time I expressed, like, really recognized my
anger because it was when I came out of graduate
school and I couldn't get a job, and so that
was a very rude awakening to me about, oh, this
is how much I've lost. And I think the grieving
(22:34):
has had to happen in tiny pockets as I've moved forward,
because I've also had to try to rebuild and try
to rebuild in a landscape that it's like, oh, we
don't know that a new house can be built on
this kind of ground. It was not a given, you know,
(22:56):
Oh a house existed here before, and therefore you can
rebuild this house, right, is it is new territory. Yeah.
And the fact that I've been able to move forward
and build a life with meaning and purpose, you know,
that's happened in the last ten to eleven years. I'm incredibly
(23:19):
grateful for it. But it was by no means a given,
you know, And so I think there are a lot
of other ways that this could have ended up to.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right, Well, it strikes me that you've had to really
excavate that ground yourself, and you probably had to start
by hand, and that's something a lot of people didn't.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Get, no, And I've had a lot of helpers, you know,
and it's you know, it's something that I really I
don't work enough at it. I think there are other
people out in the world too, probably do more. But
it's a passionate about trying to find ways for people
(24:04):
who don't have the resources to get help, to get help,
and for people to really understand that getting help doesn't
just mean services. It's how do you have the time
off from work? How do you have the time to process,
Like you can't just go on your lunch break and
talk about trauma and go back to lunch. And so
(24:26):
that is, you know, that is the thing that not
being able to get a job or died me. That
I was able to have this time to work on
myself and heal and rise, and but that there are
certain conditions that have to be present for that, and
how do we how do we help other people, and
(24:48):
how do we help people who have the resources understand
that we live in a much better world when everybody
is lifted. Yes, the heaviness of trauma, you know, and
so that is where that's where the world is better.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, oh yes, yes, yes, I mean from the rooftops.
It's the way the world can heal. And you're right,
it requires time and it requires support. And I think
when we try to rush it or we don't honor it,
that's where things really spin out sideways. I think about
(25:27):
that in terms of some of these amazing moves that
you've made. Someone we have in common now is Amanda Knox.
You know, she's come on the show. I've been an
incredible fan of her books, and you helped her produce
the scripted series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox for Hulu,
(25:48):
and she very similarly to you, with someone whose story
was told for her, Her story was told with so
many inaccuracies. I mean, I remember hearing about the sex
games and the thrupple and the right intimate night gone wrong,
and not only was that not true, there was literally
(26:11):
not one single shred of evidence that it ever happened
had happened. It was truly something the police made up
because they thought it would paint her in a way
that would guarantee a conviction. Right, And to know that
that happened to someone who just so happened to be
(26:33):
the first person home after her roommate was tragically murdered,
to know that they had fingerprints in DNA and they
didn't care. They still pointed at her. I mean, it's
just it's so egregious and similarly to you, and similarly
to things I know I've experienced in so many women
I know I've experienced in the public eye. There was
(26:55):
glee at her destruction, even though the destruction was.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Based on a lie. Right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
How did the two of you connect? Were you someone
that somebody out there connected her to and said you
have a lot to talk about, you could be a
support system. Were you interested in telling her story and
you met that way?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Like?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
How how did this stunning piece of television art that
also is a reclamation? How did it happen?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I think that so Amanda and I first met. I
think it was twenty seventeen. She was doing her very
first public talk and I was speaking at this event
the day before, and I think she had known John
Ronson before, So I you know, John Ronson had talked
to her, talked to me about her a bit, and
(27:52):
we connected and I, you know, recognized a pain that
I knew very well, you know, and in talking to her,
and we stayed in touch over the years, and in
twenty I guess it was, oh my god, I can't
We've worked on this show for so fucking long. It
(28:14):
takes twenty twenty one. So the fall of twenty twenty one,
I was in a first look deal at twentieth Television
and I read this interview that Amanda had given to
The New York Times and she was talking about wanting
to make a movie of her memoir. So I thought, oh, well,
you know what about a limited series? And when my
(28:36):
executive kind of got sign off there, went to Amanda,
brought everybody together, and we then together found our show
runner kJ Steinberg, who has just done an exquisite job
I think with the show. I mean, I am biased,
but one of the things, you know, So in the
(28:57):
micro sense, the show was important to me because I
felt Amanda deserved to have this, this sort of relensing
of her story and that reclamation. On a macro sense
I was interested in exploring, even in myself that question
of why do I know Foxy Noxy and still remember
(29:21):
Foxy NOXI I don't know who the fruity Gooday is
and I did not know that they had found Meredith murder. Yes,
And so that macro is so reflective of the culture.
It's so reflective of what we have come to do
to young women in the public eye. Yes, and it is.
(29:42):
That piece of it was interesting to me on a
you know, yea psychosocial level and wanting to explore that.
And we were really lucky. It was important to both
Amanda and myself that Hulu and twenty and our producing
partners Little Field Company and kJ Stenberger showrunner were all
(30:07):
supportive of this idea of showing the aftermath. It was
really really important because there are moments of the aftermath
that are universal for people. I don't you know, I
don't know. I know your experience was different in ways,
but I don't know if there was there were moments
that felt resonant to you there, but it just that
(30:32):
was really important to me.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, it was incredibly resonant to me, and I think
it's really interesting. You know, there were moments where I
had to pause episodes, like I had to take a
break it. It was so true and touched such a
a live wire of the trauma I work on that
(30:57):
I needed space from it. And it's interesting to watch
with you know, some friends who were like, no, we
have to finish, and I'm going I need a break
me as I am. I need a break because I'm
so emotionally overwhelmed for her, and it turns on all
my own overwhelming myself. And I think that is such
(31:18):
a testament to the truth you were able to tell
for her.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
And with her because right she was she was an
executive producer too. Yes, I think that it's well, it
was something I learned really working on Ryan Murphy's impeachment,
and that was around this idea of emotional truth and
so that there, you know, there whatever degree of very
(31:44):
similitude an actor wants to bring to a to a role,
the thing that is really important is that emotional truth
because that then taps into the broader experiences that other
people have had when it's not the exact same d details.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah. Yeah, in a way, it allows you to tell
a very specific story that resonates universally exactly. Yeah, And
now a word from our sponsors. In watching particularly in
(32:23):
the last few weeks, the truth of this trove of
Jeffrey Epstein emails and files and all of it come
to light. I think about the truth for a lot
of those women, for those survivors who've been telling us
what happened to them for so long and who weren't believed,
(32:46):
and everybody, I would say most of us knew. We
trust people. We also trust the evidence and the photographs
and the things that we've seen. What really strikes me
right now is this incredible double standard of the way
the White House was held to task in the nineties
versus at current And it's like, my brain can't understand
(33:12):
how our current president as one of the most mentioned
people in this trove. You know, the ruling finding him
guilty of raping Agen Carol, the defamation, you know, the
details that have come out about these twelve and thirteen
year old girls, and these affidavits of these court cases
(33:33):
who withdrew the case because one disappeared and one was
so scared she was going to get killed. Like this
is on a level of depravity that is so extreme,
and the spectrum of these abuses of power are breathtaking
(33:54):
to me and heartbreaking to me. And I on the
one hand, I feel like women are going, well, you're
finally looking at it in print. Do you believe us now?
And on the other when I think about my friends
who've been through things you included, I'm like, are you okay?
Because this is the sort of thing that can be
everywhere and really push on that bruise we carry.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Are you having and I told you so a moment.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Are you are? Are you getting in touch with anger?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Are like? How is this for you?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I think what I find heartbreaking is that we have
first we as a society, whether you know, sure there
may have been individuals of us who felt differently or
some I didn't speak up, but some have in defense
of the survivors. But we failed these young women as
(34:52):
a society. We failed these young women. And I have
felt for a while that all of this should be
driven by the survivors. What do the survivors want? What
is best for the survivors according to them? Right? And
(35:12):
you know I think that I I don't care what
side of the aisle someone is on. I don't care
how revered they've been in history, how much they have
done to help society. It is it's one thing for
(35:33):
there to have been people who flew on a plane
not to the island and used bad judgment and the
degree to which they knew, which is we see that
complication in stories like Weinstein Too Sure, where there's sort
of the level of what someone knew, what they didn't know,
making assumptions. But there is zero chance of anybody who
(35:57):
went to that island who did not know what was
goinging on. There zero chance of people who spent an
enormous amount of time in Jeffrey Epstein's presence to have
not had a sense there was something darker happening there
and scene around. And that's the part where you know,
(36:18):
you just think, Okay, what do we do so this
doesn't happen again, and also have to ask ourselves the question,
where is this still happening now that we're not looking
we don't want to see? Yeah, you know, my publicist
was Virginia Duffrey's publicist, and so you know, it is
(36:40):
just it's heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking to think about what
that young woman went through and what she carried totally,
you know.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And when I think about the level of public scrutiny,
it's heartbreaking to me that that breaks some people.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
It makes me.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Further impressed by and protective of people like yourself who've managed.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
To stay through it.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Grateful that you've had the support in the moments you've
needed it. Grateful that I have too. You know, I'm
really curious about the middle the place of reclaiming because
in this Amanda Knox story in your podcast, even when
I look at what these survivors of the Epstein world
(37:39):
have been fighting for, it is to tell and reclaim
their story. When you are part of a story that
lives in the world with or without your consent, you
can't really reclaim it unless you get to put your
story in the world. Because when you're only talked about,
but your voice is stolen from you, that's another harm.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Absolutely, absolutely, And I.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Think as a person who is still trying to figure
out how to reclaim my total voice on certain subjects,
watching you, becoming friends with you, watching what you and
Amanda have done together for Amanda's story, I feel like
you're really you've built your house on new terrain, but
(38:27):
I feel like now you're building a road in a
previously uncharted landscape for a lot of us to travel together.
And I wonder, thank you, Yeah, it's really profound. And
I wonder what you think about.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Trying you are.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
And I wonder you know, some of these women or
other people who deserve to have their stories told accurately.
How do you feel about that now with a few
read tellings under your belt? Yeah, you know, as a producer,
as a creative, as a person who makes narrative story
(39:07):
with the truth at the center, how do you think
about how they, or we or women around the world
might heal from telling their stories?
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Right? I think you know. One thing that I think
is important to sort of put around a conversation like
this is a little like a conversation we have in
the anti bullying world around. I have a really hard
time when people say you have to stand up to
(39:37):
a bully. Okay, that's not true for everybody, right and
so part and so that's where I feel like, I think,
you know, and I've spoken privately to a number of
people who've gone through public, public humiliations. Whether I think
(39:57):
what they did was okay not okay. I take my
own personal judgment out of it because I know the
pain of not wanting to be here anymore because of
the weight of that humiliation. So I understand it. And
but people will say, well, you know, how did you
reclaim your story? And it's like it is there is
no three step process, there's no there is no universal
(40:21):
way that is works for each person, and it's and
so I want to make sure that people know you
can do reclaiming in the way that works for you. Right.
For many of us, it is about vocalizing that story,
(40:43):
you know, especially my I had a professor at graduate
school who had said to me, you know that, like
my narrative had been constructed by powerful people and there
is no competing narrative there. I had no narrative coming
from me, and that until there was a competing narrative,
(41:03):
there was no other option, right, And so you know,
I wasn't ready to hear it when she first said
it to me, but it's it lodged in there somewhere
and helped me, And so I think there are you
know what it means like sometimes even when we talk
about reclaiming, sometimes replacing what you had and was lost
(41:27):
or taken from you is the same in getting it back,
it's like and so that's that's sort of part of it,
is that I don't I think I've had experiences, and
maybe I should be more specific. I've had a few
experiences where sometimes people have said to me I think
I should write a book or I think I should
do this, and I should, and it's like, yes, you
(41:48):
can do that, but be aware of the bigger circle.
You know, you got into medical school, go to medical school.
You know it's or if you want to do this,
it's fine, but make sure you're going to be okay
when the publishers. After the publishers have sort of exacted
their flesh from your story, like what do you have
(42:11):
after that? So, is writing a book and going public
is that going to provide you? Because it's not a
panacea in some of these instances. It may be a
step that's farther down the road. That's my opinion, you know,
from my experiences, and so I I don't know. Does
(42:31):
that make sense?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Absolutely? I think there's so much wisdom in that. And
I think you know the reality that wraps around all
of this, that's true for every subject we've talked about.
Is everything's really shades of gray. Yeah, it's a spectrum.
There's no black and white, there's no right or wrong,
there's no yes or no. It's it's really a spectrum
(42:57):
of lived experience and many things are true at the
same time and.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Well, and I think that's, you know, in both the
Twisted Tail of Amanda Knox. I think kJ built the
show that the spine of the show is the anatomy
of bias in understanding not just what happened, but how
did this happen? Yeah, And I think in the podcast,
the kind of conversations I'm wanting to have are you know.
(43:23):
I mean, I hope you felt that way for mar Chad.
I was so grateful you came on and it's like
I want to know all the things. You know, it's
all the shades that are in there and what because
I think that's that's where I think you could be
helping other people. And like, I'm very I think you're
(43:44):
the same. I'm not prescriptive on my podcast at all.
And it's like I want the listener to find what
they need in the conversation because I trust that people
are wise enough. Prescriptive is great, and there are plenty
of people who do prescriptive and it is really helpful
to people. It can be really helpful to me at times.
But I also think there's something to navigating what you're feeling,
(44:08):
what you're hearing, what's coming up for you, what are
you thinking about differently that you hadn't thought about before?
And you can only do that in the soup of context.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Totally, and now a word from our wonderful sponsors, when
you think about the podcast in particular, because you do,
you give so many people space to reclaim narratives. You
(44:39):
get to bring your full self into every conversation, and
so everyone who listens gets to know you better too.
What do you think is the most meaningful part of
your own reclamation in that interview series.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I think it's a great question. I need to think
about it for a second. I would say, I think
it's it's it's funny because I guess what's coming up
for me is very typical me. It's like, Okay, what
(45:16):
can I be doing for someone else? Which is not
always a good thing though it may seem whatever. But
for me, it's been very meaningful that people who've come
on the show have told me they felt safe, that
people who listen to the show have said, oh, I
feel like I saw or heard a different side to
(45:37):
this person and I didn't realize or didn't know I've
heard from one a young woman who was in the
Who's associate producer on The Amanda Knox Show, who was like,
I don't know how you do it, but when I
finished listening to an episode, I feel less alone, Like,
I mean, what bigger gift could you get? Or you know,
the lady who made my smoothie when I got a
(45:59):
ten million dollar or smoothi at Airwine, you know who,
and my name is on the thing because of my
my points there and she's like, I love your podcast,
you know. So it's just those moments of connection like
that all feels. I think it feels like part of
my reclaiming because it's purpose and it fills it fills
me in a very deep way. I love it. Yeah,
(46:23):
so it's it's a lot. I mean, as you know,
it's so much more work than I ever could have
imagined ever, you know, And I want to protect people
and yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, absolutely, and and and I think one of the
things I've learned from it is I don't have to
ask every question that everyone else there might want me to. Yeah,
I don't have to do that. I think we we
really can shift away from some of what feels typical
(47:01):
and sad and that's really nice.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I think it's trying to be Actually, I learned
this from Torona Burke when she came on, and she
talked so much about how important it is to not
ask survivors or to expect that a survivor is going
to tell their story. Yes that you know, we can
(47:25):
and I've heard you do this on your podcast too,
So it's you know, in your conversations, which is creating
a space if someone wants to they can, but also
that that option of I can summarize for the audience
so they know what happened, and it's just we're not
like playing in the sandbox of trauma porn. Yes, you know,
I think that that's really important.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
And I think, especially when you've been through it, we're
so much more than the worst things that have ever
happened to us. And when that's all anyone wants to
talk to you about, it's like, really, yeah, to your point,
you look at this whole resume and it's this, yeah, like,
let me be a human, not a topic, right, And
(48:09):
I think there's something really special about those of us
who want to not just have a great conversation but
take care of our people. Yeah, taking up more space
in this arena.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's why one of the reasons I
admire I know one of your favorite guests that I'm
like maybe one day, but Michelle Obama is just I mean,
she's just such an extraordinary woman and one of those
people that in decades, hundreds of years from now, if
we're still exist on the planet, there will be people saying,
(48:45):
imagine being alive at the same time she was, Yes,
imagine being in the world. I haven't met her, but
I know a lot of people who know her, and
I just obviously as a person, I see what she
puts into the world. It is.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
Yeah, it's extraordinary, so special when you when you sit
at this vantage point, you know, looking out at all
this incredible work that you've done and the work you're
still doing.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
You know, things you're developing the self, you're still developing
what feels like your work in progress right now.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Oh my god, there's so much and it's so funny.
I love I love the title of your podcast so
much because there's that Latin phrase which I always say wrong,
mutatus mutandis I think it is. It's like used in
legal things with change is still being made, and I've
often joked that that's going to be on my tombstone, so.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
You know, I love that.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
But I you know, I think professionally, I'm really excited
about continuing to grow the podcast and grow the conversations
I'm having. I think in that way, developing entertainment in
that space that moves conversations forward in whatever lane or
(50:11):
topic that might be. Yeah, and I think that, I mean,
my personal I'm like working on every I had a
really tough day yesterday and just you know, the like
sitting in the tears and sitting in the numbness and
just kind of going, okay, this is this is where
I am today, you know, and my world reflected it.
(50:32):
I came home from being away for a couple of
days to a leak, and then driving in the car
that night, I hit something in my side view mirror
broke love, you know, and it was just like okay,
sometimes like you just get in a hot bath and
you cry and it's okay, you know, okay, it's okay,
And so all the things, you know, all the things.
(50:54):
This has been so lovely.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Sophia the best, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
We will we will make a plan for soon yes,
I would love nothing more.
Welcome back, work in progress.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Friends.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
We are here for part two of this incredible interview
with Monica Lewinsky. Can I offer you something? And look,
I might be wrong here, maybe I'm projecting my own experience.
I think when you're really in something and you're the
(00:28):
uniqueness of having a human life on a public stage
cannot be overstated, and people want to roll their eyes
and go, oh, poor you. Nobody gets how hard this
is until they go through it. And I would wager
that just like where you work becomes relative, going to
the Pentagon becomes normal, going to the White House becomes normal,
(00:52):
there is a thing that happens when you are plucked
out of your life and put in a new environment,
very similarly to my own early twenties experience. You move
away from all your friends and family, You go to
work on a TV show. You're working fifteen, sixteen, seventeen
hours a day with these people, just like you all
were at the White House. You don't really know anyone.
(01:13):
Your relative experience shifts. Would you have confided in Linda
Tripp if your three best friends were.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
In DC with you? No?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
But in DC, the relative scale of who seemed like
a friend shifts to who you're picking out of in
the pool of people around, you know. I talk about
this with my partner and her experiences very similarly being
put on a team, and then your team is your
option for me, my cast, those are my people. For
(01:43):
you who you're working with there, those become your people.
You're so far away from your actual life, but you
have to invest in where you are. And so I
get why you would meet a friend.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's interesting because I did also confide in all my
closest friends just was you know, it just was different.
It was different because they, you know, they weren't. I'm
trying to remember I had a best friend in DC
Ashley that I'm still close to, and I'm trying to
remember when I told her. I can't remember, so but
(02:21):
I think that there was it. Really, I'll say it
a different way. I think that had I not been
sent off to the Pentagon, which was a world I
mean I joke about being like Private Benjamin, I really
was Private Benjamin. I mean I went to Banana Republic
to go shopping, to go on my first trip to Bosnia,
Like what do I wear to meet the troops? I mean,
(02:44):
like I just was. I was a fish out of
water there, sure, you know, real fish out of water
and you know, and I had some incredible experiences as
a young person too, and even my boss, so I
worked for the Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon, and I became
friendly with his wife while I was working there, and
(03:05):
I'm still friends with her to today. So I see
her whenever I'm in DC, and she's an amazing woman,
and I think that there's but I just I didn't
belong there, you know, I just really didn't. I didn't.
And in fact, I was just talking about this thing.
I think I had Laura Brown and Christina o'neillon to
(03:26):
talk about their book, their book, and I was saying
about how when I got fired from the White House
that or transferred that my supervisor said to me, well,
it's a much sexier job at the Pendent. I'm like,
can you imagine someone saying that in today's world?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, so cooler, perhaps, right, more impressive, but yeah, even
the idea that people would speak to a young woman
that way and say this is sexier.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
For you, yeah, gross, gross, you know it.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I hear you doing a thing that I understand, and
I want to clarify a few things. I deeply respect
how much responsibility you've taken. I hear you saying, you know,
I was a young woman. I was twenty two, then
I was twenty four. I also in looking Back, you know,
my earlier reference, my reclamation show, I look at the
(04:26):
girl I was.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I was a girl.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You know at twenty one and twenty two and twenty three,
we were still kids. Yes, we were young adults. But
there is this odd obsession with when you know enough.
And I think about the fact that your brain isn't
even done developing exactly. You can't even rent a car
by yourself exactly. So you know, it drives me crazy
(04:52):
that someone as you reference, like in Megan Kelly, could
be excusing what we are seeing in all of these
Epstein documents being released and say, well, fifteen's not really
that young, it's not really that uncommon.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
My question I wish I could ask her is okay,
So whose daughter do you think deserves to be raped
at fifteen? Megan? Yours are someone else's right, You know,
these are insane conversations we are having about children. And
I do understand, reflecting on my own life and hearing
you reflect on yours, that you're really in this kind
of in between phase in your early twenties, and it
(05:29):
strikes me there are things you bring up and I
watch your face, and I see you kind of looking
back at that hopeful young woman, and I don't think
it's a naivete I see almost a like youthful romanticism
when you reflect on it, a sort of idealistic young
(05:49):
woman who is succeeding and excited. Do you have expectations
about how things might turn out at the time before it?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh? Yes, I also think too, Just to just to
kind of round out what you're saying, I think what
we don't We have more examples of this now, but
I don't think at the time. I don't think in
the nineties and the early aughts, we had examples of
young women who are both they are both very mature.
(06:23):
Like you were saying, I was the same talking to adults.
I could, you know, got along with anybody's parents. I
had great manners, I knew how to have a conversation.
So there are these ways that we are far more
sophisticated than our peers, and then there are other parts
of us that are far more immature, far more naive,
(06:47):
far more you know, romantic or whatever that is, and
we don't. We didn't at the time, and you know
it's the both, the both of those and right, and
that's that young you know. I remember this guy I
knew who worked in this local supermarket and he said
(07:08):
to me, he was like, you know, when you turn
twenty one, you think you're such a grown up, you
think you're such an adult, and a few years later
you're going to realize how little you knew. Yep. And
it was one hundred percent true. So when I was
in my internship, I was, you know, studying. My plan
(07:28):
was to go to graduate school the next year, was
to make sure my scores were where they needed to
be to get into a PhD program. So this was like,
as I joked, a little pit stop on my resume,
you know, like, oh, it just crushes me for you.
I know, were Little Monica and her beret, so you know,
but and I was still I think something that opened
(07:53):
up for me while I was at the White House
was I became interested in communication, so that became a
little more interesting to me. But I still was planning
PhD forensic psychology, going back to school for that and
then whatever my career was going to go in that path,
but then I was there was this opening and Legislative Affairs.
(08:15):
When I interviewed for it, my boss or the person
who interviewed me, who has done the same one who
transferred me with the sexy comment, said we can only
give you the job if you commit to stay through
the election, because we can't have people leaving to go.
Everybody wants to go work on the campaign because it's exciting.
And so I decided to give that commitment, and so
(08:38):
had planned to sort of, I did to apply to
graduate school for that year.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Right, you thought, oh, yeah, I can do essentially a
gap year and be at the White House.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yes, exactly, exactly. So I think in the same way
that I have a friend who also doesn't have children,
who had also wanted kids, and she'll say sometimes she
has to remind herself that in her mind her child
would have been a perfect child, you know, And so
that when you're living in the fantasy of what you
(09:09):
didn't have or the you know, wish you'd had, that
that's often the most perfected state of it and very unrealistic.
So what my life might have looked like, you know,
had this not all happened is one version of a fantasy.
My best friend from college always jokes with me, She's like,
it always would have been hard for you to find
a husband, even ninety eight hadn't happened.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You know, No, I you know, I think that's part
of it too. You know you said something earlier about
the the kind of magic of feeling chosen in your
young life, and I think I understand that deeply because
I've had to come to terms with in my adulthood
that not until I turned forty did I realize, Oh,
I don't know that I've ever really chosen for myself.
(09:55):
I think the most I've ever done is been presented
with options, which is, these are the people who will
choose you. Out of these, what do you choose? R
Like that was the most profound, like, oh, look at
me making some choices and adulting construction of messaging, expectation, normativities,
(10:16):
including heteronormativity for me to go what do I choose?
And that was compounded in a really interesting way with
the difficulty of again going through a very long private
process that then when it became public, the public perception
was different. And I think part of what really drove
(10:38):
me crazy is because in my twenties when I had
an experience on a public stage with infidelity with a junior.
For some reason, it became my cross to bear and
not the person. And by the way, I'm even nervous
to say that because for some reason, even reflecting on it,
I get judged instead of being like, no, I actually
(10:58):
have quite a mature understanding what that was, and I
don't care anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It's been over twenty years, Like, get over it.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
But it was a weird way to in a way
be confronted with an untrue accusation because it was juicy
for the press, and then to have press confirmed they
knew it wasn't true, but say sorry, we got to
run the story for the clicks. It was so infuriating
to me and I went, oh, the misogyny is still
(11:27):
so alive. And I think part of the reason they
love it is because they can be so much more
misogynistic with women than they can be now with women
who go through things with men like this is the
frontier that feels like two thousand and three for the media. Wow,
and they know it's wrong and they don't care.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
It was this sort of mind blowing thing, And I
think about it in some of the conversations I get
to have with you, because I go, yeah, that's part
of it, right. People will know it's wrong, but you
give them so much currency that they don't care care.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And I'm fascinated by this, you know, in my arc
something twenty years ago and something more recently to your arc,
because you were basically patient zero of modern online shaming,
and now we're having these very kind of elevated conversations
(12:23):
as a society, supposedly right in our play of age
and power and consent. Yeah, and it's a lot to
grasp the size of misogyny, the size of the media
profit industry.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, and that women are not immune to misogyny either. Yes.
As philis Chesler wrote, I'm so.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Curious for you the ways you've reflected on that with us, Like.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It's I struggle, you know, it's it's something you know,
I think, I am. I don't know if you're this way,
but I feel like a thought, an idea, a ship
kind of comes in and I know it's like it's
put in a dish and is marinating, like it's a
bricketting inside and everything happened. I go check on it
(13:10):
and I'm like, huh, have we moved a bit? What's
going on over here? You know? And and so I
have I had this experience around watching John Proctor as
the villain. I mean that play, Oh my god, so good.
I am so glad it's being turned into a movie
(13:32):
or TV shit whatever, I just because I want everybody
to experience it. I had this realization that whether it
was the case or I determined because I decided it
was the case, who knows, it doesn't even matter. There
is a level of anger I never allowed myself to
get into, to talk publicly, and I see it with
(13:56):
I saw it in that play with a younger generation,
and I just thought, wow, Wow, what was that feel like?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yes, because God forbid, when you're being shamed, you're supposed
to take it. And God forbid a woman have so
much agency that she'd be furious at the way she's
been treated. And that's something I've marinated on a little bit,
is like, Oh, I've I too, have carried so much
anger for the mistreatment from the world that and is
(14:29):
that the thing people want to poke at? You know,
over twenty years of always wanting to ask women right,
never asking anyone.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Else like oh yeah, go like, oh, is maybe.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
The reason you still want to ask the question because
you've never seen me get angry? And by the way,
I don't know that you could handle my anger. Well,
I don't know that you actually want a piece of that.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I for me, I think, you know, I think I'm
not even in touch with it. I think it scares me.
It's seeing glimpses of it there. And I I had
my I had a spec scan done with doctor Amon
(15:10):
not long ago. I want to do that interesting I was.
I had wanted to do it a million years ago,
and then when Miley came on and she was talking
about it, I was like, oh, I'm going to do
this now. But one of the things he was talking
to me about, which I am a hundred thousand, bajillion
percent going to try, is a sort of rage therapy
(15:31):
where you really dive into that rage and what does
it mean to confront that? And so at some point
I'm I'm curious to do that and interested to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And now a word from our sponsors who make this
show possible. When you think about that, you know that
sort of righteous anger and I'm sure wounded anger and
(16:10):
all the versions of those feelings that we're not supposed
to feel, but we know live in us. Do you
think if at that time social media existed in the
way it does today, it would have made things worse
or better? Because in one way, I wonder, would you
(16:31):
have been able to be clearer about your own narrative
right or would it just have been even more of
the recycled garbage that the Internet feels like today.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I think it would have been both. I think that
there would have both existed more of an opportunity to
have a fuller sense of who I was as a person.
But as we all remember, with Justine Socko, who you know,
made a joke to her small group of friends who
understood her her level of humor no matter what that meant,
(17:03):
not something for public consumption, got on a plane, went
to Africa, and landed with a very different life. You know,
I could very easily see my humor the way I
am also being taken out of context. But yes, there
would have been more than just my high school yearbook
collage page to understand me as as Yeah, for twenty
(17:26):
hours of you know, surptitiously recorded phone calls that you
know are gabbing to a friend so these are sort
of the materials, and then of course the spin you know,
that comes in so and then who is that somebody
reminded me even it was like, oh yeah, I wrote
a poem about a pizza when I was in second grade.
(17:47):
Even that surfaced, like, I mean, it's like, god, you
know that somehow, somehow a poem I wrote about pizza
in second grazy kids. It's worth it's worth putting in print,
you know. But so I think that there there would
have been more there. But then there would have been
you know, the beret and the dress and all the
(18:09):
things would have had their own handles, and there would
have been more you know, memes and jokes and so.
But I also think because I meet people a lot
who sort of say, you know, I was always on
your side, and it might have been nice to see
(18:30):
something of that because I could know was any sort
of public support was if someone wrote me a letter,
you know, the old fashioned way. So but it was,
I mean, and the letter the mail I got, I
would get Monica Lewinsky, Washington, d C. And it would
arrive to the Watergate, was addressed to the White House,
(18:53):
came to where I was living.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
It was to Wow. You know, I think about that,
the the attention and you know, for example, the mail,
how did you handle? I mean, I'm so glad there
were people who were writing kindly to you because the
world was being so deeply unkind and not remembering that
you were a human being who was helping you with
(19:16):
the scary parts, because I know what it's like to
get the threats and the things, and did you have
anyone to support you through that part of the process
as well.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think there was a few weeks in I had
to spend the first few weeks of the investigation without
any psychological help because they weren't sure if I was
going to get immunity or not, and so it's a
whole long thing. But I eventually I had a ended
up with a forensic psychiatrist who helped save my life
(19:51):
a couple of times. It was amazing Doctor Susan And
then Judy Smith came on board, who worked with Shonda
Rhimes on Scandal, so she is sort of the to
help with the with the pr which you know, it's like, Yes,
I grew up in la and around the industry in
(20:12):
some ways. I mean, my dad's a doctor and my
mom was a mom or I don't know what. I
don't know the phrase we use anymore, just a mom,
stay at home mom. I stayed at home mom, stay
at home mom. Okay, stay at home mom. So but
I didn't know this world, you know, And so there
was that I. I was just with my best friend
(20:34):
from college this past weekend, Catherine, and after she had
to testify before the grand jury, we were I was
able to talk to her again. So I knew I
had one friend in the world. Like those pieces helped
carry me through. And some drugs, you know, prescription drugs right,
antidepressants right, and some cupcakes and peanut eminem's. So I imagine
(20:59):
that not.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Only did you have to figure out how to process shame,
how to eventually analyze anger, there must have been some
pretty intense grieving for career, privacy, dreams, identity, the things
that you had forward vision on for yourself that didn't
(21:21):
get to materialize because of this explosion. When in that
process were you able to begin to find the light,
like the moments to appreciate the aspects of your new reality.
What good could also come with this tremendous amount of hardship,
(21:48):
You know, I.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Think that I think that things happened in ways, right,
So the first, you know, I was saying that I'm
not really in touch with my anger. I think there
have been moments where I obviously have. There was a
(22:09):
period of time I think ten years out, but that
was the first time I expressed, like, really recognized my
anger because it was when I came out of graduate
school and I couldn't get a job, and so that
was a very rude awakening to me about, oh, this
is how much I've lost. And I think the grieving
(22:34):
has had to happen in tiny pockets as I've moved forward,
because I've also had to try to rebuild and try
to rebuild in a landscape that it's like, oh, we
don't know that a new house can be built on
this kind of ground. It was not a given, you know,
(22:56):
Oh a house existed here before, and therefore you can
rebuild this house, right, is it is new territory. Yeah.
And the fact that I've been able to move forward
and build a life with meaning and purpose, you know,
that's happened in the last ten to eleven years. I'm incredibly
(23:19):
grateful for it. But it was by no means a given,
you know, And so I think there are a lot
of other ways that this could have ended up to.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right, Well, it strikes me that you've had to really
excavate that ground yourself, and you probably had to start
by hand, and that's something a lot of people didn't.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Get, no, And I've had a lot of helpers, you know,
and it's you know, it's something that I really I
don't work enough at it. I think there are other
people out in the world too, probably do more. But
it's a passionate about trying to find ways for people
(24:04):
who don't have the resources to get help, to get help,
and for people to really understand that getting help doesn't
just mean services. It's how do you have the time
off from work? How do you have the time to process,
Like you can't just go on your lunch break and
talk about trauma and go back to lunch. And so
(24:26):
that is, you know, that is the thing that not
being able to get a job or died me. That
I was able to have this time to work on
myself and heal and rise, and but that there are
certain conditions that have to be present for that, and
how do we how do we help other people, and
(24:48):
how do we help people who have the resources understand
that we live in a much better world when everybody
is lifted. Yes, the heaviness of trauma, you know, and
so that is where that's where the world is better.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, oh yes, yes, yes, I mean from the rooftops.
It's the way the world can heal. And you're right,
it requires time and it requires support. And I think
when we try to rush it or we don't honor it,
that's where things really spin out sideways. I think about
(25:27):
that in terms of some of these amazing moves that
you've made. Someone we have in common now is Amanda Knox.
You know, she's come on the show. I've been an
incredible fan of her books, and you helped her produce
the scripted series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox for Hulu,
(25:48):
and she very similarly to you, with someone whose story
was told for her, Her story was told with so
many inaccuracies. I mean, I remember hearing about the sex
games and the thrupple and the right intimate night gone wrong,
and not only was that not true, there was literally
(26:11):
not one single shred of evidence that it ever happened
had happened. It was truly something the police made up
because they thought it would paint her in a way
that would guarantee a conviction. Right, And to know that
that happened to someone who just so happened to be
(26:33):
the first person home after her roommate was tragically murdered,
to know that they had fingerprints in DNA and they
didn't care. They still pointed at her. I mean, it's
just it's so egregious and similarly to you, and similarly
to things I know I've experienced in so many women
I know I've experienced in the public eye. There was
(26:55):
glee at her destruction, even though the destruction was.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Based on a lie. Right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
How did the two of you connect? Were you someone
that somebody out there connected her to and said you
have a lot to talk about, you could be a
support system. Were you interested in telling her story and
you met that way?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Like?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
How how did this stunning piece of television art that
also is a reclamation? How did it happen?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I think that so Amanda and I first met. I
think it was twenty seventeen. She was doing her very
first public talk and I was speaking at this event
the day before, and I think she had known John
Ronson before, So I you know, John Ronson had talked
to her, talked to me about her a bit, and
(27:52):
we connected and I, you know, recognized a pain that
I knew very well, you know, and in talking to her,
and we stayed in touch over the years, and in
twenty I guess it was, oh my god, I can't
We've worked on this show for so fucking long. It
(28:14):
takes twenty twenty one. So the fall of twenty twenty one,
I was in a first look deal at twentieth Television
and I read this interview that Amanda had given to
The New York Times and she was talking about wanting
to make a movie of her memoir. So I thought, oh, well,
you know what about a limited series? And when my
(28:36):
executive kind of got sign off there, went to Amanda,
brought everybody together, and we then together found our show
runner kJ Steinberg, who has just done an exquisite job
I think with the show. I mean, I am biased,
but one of the things, you know, So in the
(28:57):
micro sense, the show was important to me because I
felt Amanda deserved to have this, this sort of relensing
of her story and that reclamation. On a macro sense
I was interested in exploring, even in myself that question
of why do I know Foxy Noxy and still remember
(29:21):
Foxy NOXI I don't know who the fruity Gooday is
and I did not know that they had found Meredith murder. Yes,
And so that macro is so reflective of the culture.
It's so reflective of what we have come to do
to young women in the public eye. Yes, and it is.
(29:42):
That piece of it was interesting to me on a
you know, yea psychosocial level and wanting to explore that.
And we were really lucky. It was important to both
Amanda and myself that Hulu and twenty and our producing
partners Little Field Company and kJ Stenberger showrunner were all
(30:07):
supportive of this idea of showing the aftermath. It was
really really important because there are moments of the aftermath
that are universal for people. I don't you know, I
don't know. I know your experience was different in ways,
but I don't know if there was there were moments
that felt resonant to you there, but it just that
(30:32):
was really important to me.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, it was incredibly resonant to me, and I think
it's really interesting. You know, there were moments where I
had to pause episodes, like I had to take a
break it. It was so true and touched such a
a live wire of the trauma I work on that
(30:57):
I needed space from it. And it's interesting to watch
with you know, some friends who were like, no, we
have to finish, and I'm going I need a break
me as I am. I need a break because I'm
so emotionally overwhelmed for her, and it turns on all
my own overwhelming myself. And I think that is such
(31:18):
a testament to the truth you were able to tell
for her.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
And with her because right she was she was an
executive producer too. Yes, I think that it's well, it
was something I learned really working on Ryan Murphy's impeachment,
and that was around this idea of emotional truth and
so that there, you know, there whatever degree of very
(31:44):
similitude an actor wants to bring to a to a role,
the thing that is really important is that emotional truth
because that then taps into the broader experiences that other
people have had when it's not the exact same d details.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah. Yeah, in a way, it allows you to tell
a very specific story that resonates universally exactly. Yeah, And
now a word from our sponsors. In watching particularly in
(32:23):
the last few weeks, the truth of this trove of
Jeffrey Epstein emails and files and all of it come
to light. I think about the truth for a lot
of those women, for those survivors who've been telling us
what happened to them for so long and who weren't believed,
(32:46):
and everybody, I would say most of us knew. We
trust people. We also trust the evidence and the photographs
and the things that we've seen. What really strikes me
right now is this incredible double standard of the way
the White House was held to task in the nineties
versus at current And it's like, my brain can't understand
(33:12):
how our current president as one of the most mentioned
people in this trove. You know, the ruling finding him
guilty of raping Agen Carol, the defamation, you know, the
details that have come out about these twelve and thirteen
year old girls, and these affidavits of these court cases
(33:33):
who withdrew the case because one disappeared and one was
so scared she was going to get killed. Like this
is on a level of depravity that is so extreme,
and the spectrum of these abuses of power are breathtaking
(33:54):
to me and heartbreaking to me. And I on the
one hand, I feel like women are going, well, you're
finally looking at it in print. Do you believe us now?
And on the other when I think about my friends
who've been through things you included, I'm like, are you okay?
Because this is the sort of thing that can be
everywhere and really push on that bruise we carry.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Are you having and I told you so a moment.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Are you are? Are you getting in touch with anger?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Are like? How is this for you?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I think what I find heartbreaking is that we have
first we as a society, whether you know, sure there
may have been individuals of us who felt differently or
some I didn't speak up, but some have in defense
of the survivors. But we failed these young women as
(34:52):
a society. We failed these young women. And I have
felt for a while that all of this should be
driven by the survivors. What do the survivors want? What
is best for the survivors according to them? Right? And
(35:12):
you know I think that I I don't care what
side of the aisle someone is on. I don't care
how revered they've been in history, how much they have
done to help society. It is it's one thing for
(35:33):
there to have been people who flew on a plane
not to the island and used bad judgment and the
degree to which they knew, which is we see that
complication in stories like Weinstein Too Sure, where there's sort
of the level of what someone knew, what they didn't know,
making assumptions. But there is zero chance of anybody who
(35:57):
went to that island who did not know what was
goinging on. There zero chance of people who spent an
enormous amount of time in Jeffrey Epstein's presence to have
not had a sense there was something darker happening there
and scene around. And that's the part where you know,
(36:18):
you just think, Okay, what do we do so this
doesn't happen again, and also have to ask ourselves the question,
where is this still happening now that we're not looking
we don't want to see? Yeah, you know, my publicist
was Virginia Duffrey's publicist, and so you know, it is
(36:40):
just it's heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking to think about what
that young woman went through and what she carried totally,
you know.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And when I think about the level of public scrutiny,
it's heartbreaking to me that that breaks some people.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
It makes me.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Further impressed by and protective of people like yourself who've managed.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
To stay through it.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Grateful that you've had the support in the moments you've
needed it. Grateful that I have too. You know, I'm
really curious about the middle the place of reclaiming because
in this Amanda Knox story in your podcast, even when
I look at what these survivors of the Epstein world
(37:39):
have been fighting for, it is to tell and reclaim
their story. When you are part of a story that
lives in the world with or without your consent, you
can't really reclaim it unless you get to put your
story in the world. Because when you're only talked about,
but your voice is stolen from you, that's another harm.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Absolutely, absolutely, And I.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Think as a person who is still trying to figure
out how to reclaim my total voice on certain subjects,
watching you, becoming friends with you, watching what you and
Amanda have done together for Amanda's story, I feel like
you're really you've built your house on new terrain, but
(38:27):
I feel like now you're building a road in a
previously uncharted landscape for a lot of us to travel together.
And I wonder, thank you, Yeah, it's really profound. And
I wonder what you think about.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Trying you are.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
And I wonder you know, some of these women or
other people who deserve to have their stories told accurately.
How do you feel about that now with a few
read tellings under your belt? Yeah, you know, as a producer,
as a creative, as a person who makes narrative story
(39:07):
with the truth at the center, how do you think
about how they, or we or women around the world
might heal from telling their stories?
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Right? I think you know. One thing that I think
is important to sort of put around a conversation like
this is a little like a conversation we have in
the anti bullying world around. I have a really hard
time when people say you have to stand up to
(39:37):
a bully. Okay, that's not true for everybody, right and
so part and so that's where I feel like, I think,
you know, and I've spoken privately to a number of
people who've gone through public, public humiliations. Whether I think
(39:57):
what they did was okay not okay. I take my
own personal judgment out of it because I know the
pain of not wanting to be here anymore because of
the weight of that humiliation. So I understand it. And
but people will say, well, you know, how did you
reclaim your story? And it's like it is there is
no three step process, there's no there is no universal
(40:21):
way that is works for each person, and it's and
so I want to make sure that people know you
can do reclaiming in the way that works for you. Right.
For many of us, it is about vocalizing that story,
(40:43):
you know, especially my I had a professor at graduate
school who had said to me, you know that, like
my narrative had been constructed by powerful people and there
is no competing narrative there. I had no narrative coming
from me, and that until there was a competing narrative,
(41:03):
there was no other option, right, And so you know,
I wasn't ready to hear it when she first said
it to me, but it's it lodged in there somewhere
and helped me, And so I think there are you
know what it means like sometimes even when we talk
about reclaiming, sometimes replacing what you had and was lost
(41:27):
or taken from you is the same in getting it back,
it's like and so that's that's sort of part of it,
is that I don't I think I've had experiences, and
maybe I should be more specific. I've had a few
experiences where sometimes people have said to me I think
I should write a book or I think I should
do this, and I should, and it's like, yes, you
(41:48):
can do that, but be aware of the bigger circle.
You know, you got into medical school, go to medical school.
You know it's or if you want to do this,
it's fine, but make sure you're going to be okay
when the publishers. After the publishers have sort of exacted
their flesh from your story, like what do you have
(42:11):
after that? So, is writing a book and going public
is that going to provide you? Because it's not a
panacea in some of these instances. It may be a
step that's farther down the road. That's my opinion, you know,
from my experiences, and so I I don't know. Does
(42:31):
that make sense?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Absolutely? I think there's so much wisdom in that. And
I think you know the reality that wraps around all
of this, that's true for every subject we've talked about.
Is everything's really shades of gray. Yeah, it's a spectrum.
There's no black and white, there's no right or wrong,
there's no yes or no. It's it's really a spectrum
(42:57):
of lived experience and many things are true at the
same time and.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Well, and I think that's, you know, in both the
Twisted Tail of Amanda Knox. I think kJ built the
show that the spine of the show is the anatomy
of bias in understanding not just what happened, but how
did this happen? Yeah, And I think in the podcast,
the kind of conversations I'm wanting to have are you know.
(43:23):
I mean, I hope you felt that way for mar Chad.
I was so grateful you came on and it's like
I want to know all the things. You know, it's
all the shades that are in there and what because
I think that's that's where I think you could be
helping other people. And like, I'm very I think you're
(43:44):
the same. I'm not prescriptive on my podcast at all.
And it's like I want the listener to find what
they need in the conversation because I trust that people
are wise enough. Prescriptive is great, and there are plenty
of people who do prescriptive and it is really helpful
to people. It can be really helpful to me at times.
But I also think there's something to navigating what you're feeling,
(44:08):
what you're hearing, what's coming up for you, what are
you thinking about differently that you hadn't thought about before?
And you can only do that in the soup of context.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Totally, and now a word from our wonderful sponsors, when
you think about the podcast in particular, because you do,
you give so many people space to reclaim narratives. You
(44:39):
get to bring your full self into every conversation, and
so everyone who listens gets to know you better too.
What do you think is the most meaningful part of
your own reclamation in that interview series.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I think it's a great question. I need to think
about it for a second. I would say, I think
it's it's it's funny because I guess what's coming up
for me is very typical me. It's like, Okay, what
(45:16):
can I be doing for someone else? Which is not
always a good thing though it may seem whatever. But
for me, it's been very meaningful that people who've come
on the show have told me they felt safe, that
people who listen to the show have said, oh, I
feel like I saw or heard a different side to
(45:37):
this person and I didn't realize or didn't know I've
heard from one a young woman who was in the
Who's associate producer on The Amanda Knox Show, who was like,
I don't know how you do it, but when I
finished listening to an episode, I feel less alone, Like,
I mean, what bigger gift could you get? Or you know,
the lady who made my smoothie when I got a
(45:59):
ten million dollar or smoothi at Airwine, you know who,
and my name is on the thing because of my
my points there and she's like, I love your podcast,
you know. So it's just those moments of connection like
that all feels. I think it feels like part of
my reclaiming because it's purpose and it fills it fills
me in a very deep way. I love it. Yeah,
(46:23):
so it's it's a lot. I mean, as you know,
it's so much more work than I ever could have
imagined ever, you know, And I want to protect people
and yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, absolutely, and and and I think one of the
things I've learned from it is I don't have to
ask every question that everyone else there might want me to. Yeah,
I don't have to do that. I think we we
really can shift away from some of what feels typical
(47:01):
and sad and that's really nice.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, I think it's trying to be Actually, I learned
this from Torona Burke when she came on, and she
talked so much about how important it is to not
ask survivors or to expect that a survivor is going
to tell their story. Yes that you know, we can
(47:25):
and I've heard you do this on your podcast too,
So it's you know, in your conversations, which is creating
a space if someone wants to they can, but also
that that option of I can summarize for the audience
so they know what happened, and it's just we're not
like playing in the sandbox of trauma porn. Yes, you know,
I think that that's really important.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
And I think, especially when you've been through it, we're
so much more than the worst things that have ever
happened to us. And when that's all anyone wants to
talk to you about, it's like, really, yeah, to your point,
you look at this whole resume and it's this, yeah, like,
let me be a human, not a topic, right, And
(48:09):
I think there's something really special about those of us
who want to not just have a great conversation but
take care of our people. Yeah, taking up more space
in this arena.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's why one of the reasons I
admire I know one of your favorite guests that I'm
like maybe one day, but Michelle Obama is just I mean,
she's just such an extraordinary woman and one of those
people that in decades, hundreds of years from now, if
we're still exist on the planet, there will be people saying,
(48:45):
imagine being alive at the same time she was, Yes,
imagine being in the world. I haven't met her, but
I know a lot of people who know her, and
I just obviously as a person, I see what she
puts into the world. It is.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
Yeah, it's extraordinary, so special when you when you sit
at this vantage point, you know, looking out at all
this incredible work that you've done and the work you're
still doing.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
You know, things you're developing the self, you're still developing
what feels like your work in progress right now.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Oh my god, there's so much and it's so funny.
I love I love the title of your podcast so
much because there's that Latin phrase which I always say wrong,
mutatus mutandis I think it is. It's like used in
legal things with change is still being made, and I've
often joked that that's going to be on my tombstone, so.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
You know, I love that.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
But I you know, I think professionally, I'm really excited
about continuing to grow the podcast and grow the conversations
I'm having. I think in that way, developing entertainment in
that space that moves conversations forward in whatever lane or
(50:11):
topic that might be. Yeah, and I think that, I mean,
my personal I'm like working on every I had a
really tough day yesterday and just you know, the like
sitting in the tears and sitting in the numbness and
just kind of going, okay, this is this is where
I am today, you know, and my world reflected it.
(50:32):
I came home from being away for a couple of
days to a leak, and then driving in the car
that night, I hit something in my side view mirror
broke love, you know, and it was just like okay,
sometimes like you just get in a hot bath and
you cry and it's okay, you know, okay, it's okay,
And so all the things, you know, all the things.
(50:54):
This has been so lovely.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Sophia the best, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
We will we will make a plan for soon yes,
I would love nothing more.
Hosts And Creators
Sophia Bush
Bethany Joy Lenz
Robert Buckley
Hilarie Burton
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