Monica Lewinsky, 48, is sharing her opinion about Britney Spears‘ conservatorship case. The former White House staffer opened up about her own rocky past, which is showcased in the new FX series Impeachment: American Crime Story, and how she’s grown from it, when she mentioned the 39-year-old singer, in a new interview. After explaining that people are now offering her apologies after seeing her scandal with former President Bill Clinton with new eyes, she said she thinks the same should happen for Britney and other women in similar situations.
“I think it’s long overdue and wonderful to see it happening for different women in different arenas and scenarios,” she shared with InStyle. “I made a mistake. Britney didn’t.” She added that there “were other young women this happened to, and there’s an enormous amount of collateral damage. So I think it’s not just an apology to a person; it’s an apology to how you’ve affected a culture.”
“What is sexual agency?,” she continued. “What does it mean? It’s not surprising that this de-objectifying of women is happening alongside the #MeToo movement. They braid together in a way that makes sense.”
She also touched upon how she eventually realized that other women were being affected by media scrutiny just like her. “At that time I wasn’t able to have the perspective to recognize, ‘Oh, this is happening to other women’,” she said. “When the fat-shaming happened to Jessica Simpson [in 2009], I thought, ‘Oh, OK. This didn’t just happen to me. This is happening now to other people too.’ Not that that’s a good thing.”
Monica first stepped into the spotlight back in 1998 when it was revealed that she had an affair with President Clinton while working first as an unpaid intern in the office of White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and then as a paid staffer in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs between 1995 and 1997. It led to her quickly becoming the center of attention in pop culture and getting scrutinized, even becoming the punch line of many jokes.
She’s producing the new FX series, which premieres on Sept. 7, about that time in her life. The trailer can be seen here.