Lady Bird and Booksmart star Beanie Feldstein is usually making us laugh. But her most recent role as Monica Lewinsky in drama American Crime Story: Impeachment is a serious one because it explores the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
“Impeachment is not only a drama, but it’s someone’s real life,” Feldstein told Seth Meyers on Late Night on Thursday.
“Monica was a producer on the show. So it was a tremendous amount of responsibility for me, I really felt like I wanted to do right by her in every way that I possibly could,” she added. “She’s the producer and the subject so that’s a really tricky thing to navigate, and I didn’t want to make her rehash the most traumatic days of her life.”
By the time Feldstein met Lewinsky, she had been researching her for 10 months and had read everything that was publicly available about Lewinsky’s life and the impeachment trial.
“I wanted [to know] things you’ll never be able to find like, her best friend’s name is Catherine and I was like ‘is she Cat, is she Cathy? When the two of you are alone and hanging, who is she to you?’ These things I just couldn’t get from any book.”
American Crime Story: Impeachment is now streaming on FX and Hulu.
Want more?
‘American Crime Story: Impeachment’ is a transfixing horror saga
‘How to Build a Girl’ cements Beanie Feldstein as the everygirl of the 2010s
John Oliver asks Monica Lewinsky about her experience of public shaming
