On Wednesday, FX’s CEO John Landgraf sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss what role Hillary Clinton will play in the third installment of American Crime Story entitled Impeachment. Monica Lewinsky is producing the show, which will retell the 1990s scandal that shook the United States. Although the third season of American Crime Story will focus on the affair between Bill Clinton and Lewinsky, according to Landgraf, Hillary Clinton will not be a major character in the series.
“Hillary is actually not a significant character in Impeachment because it’s really told from the point of view of these women who were really far from the center of power,” Landgraf said in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s really a revisionist history as told through the point of view of these women whose stories did not seem in any way central to the political stakes of what was going on but who became really central to that. Hillary is a character in it, but she’s not one of the main characters in it.”
The CEO went on to explain that Impeachment would not have been made had Hillary Clinton been victorious against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. “I don’t know that that would change the validity of what we’re doing,” Landgraf said. “The perspective about women and the powerless and women who are powerless has changed so profoundly in the time that has passed. That’s what Sarah Burgess is writing about. That’s just valid from an artistic standpoint; it’s a very compelling story. And part of why it’s compelling is it’s being told from the perspective you haven’t seen before.”
Sarah Paulson, who starred as Marcia Clark The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, has been slated to play former civil servant Linda Tripp. She will be joined by fellow actors Beanie Feldstein, who will play Monica Lewinsky, and Annaleigh Ashford, who has been cast as Paula Jones.
Impeachment will premiere on September 27, 2020, and will consist of eight episodes.