Monica Lewinsky - Subsequent Life

Subsequent Life

The affair led to pop culture celebrity for Lewinsky as she became the focus of a political storm. In 1999, Lewinsky declined to sign an autograph in an airport, saying, "I'm kind of known for something that's not so great to be known for."

On March 3, 1999, Lewinsky was interviewed by Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20. The program was watched by 70 million Americans, which ABC said was a record for a news show. She cooperated with Andrew Morton in his telling of her life and her side of the Clinton affair in Monica's Story. The book was published in March 1999 and also was excerpted as the cover story in Time magazine. Lewinsky made about $500,000 from her participation in the book and another $1 million from international rights to the Walters interview, but was still beset by high legal bills and living costs. Lewinsky made a cameo appearance as herself in two sketches during the May 8, 1999, episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live, a program that had lampooned her relationship with Clinton over the prior 16 months.

By her own account Lewinsky had survived the intense media attention during the scandal period by knitting. In September 1999, Lewinsky took this interest further by beginning to sell a line of handbags bearing her name under the company name The Real Monica, Inc. They were sold online as well as at Henri Bendel in New York, Fred Segal in California, and The Cross in London. Lewinsky both designed the bags—described by New York magazine as "hippie-ish, reversible totes"—and traveled frequently to supervise their manufacturing in Louisiana.

At the start of 2000, Lewinsky began appearing in television commercials for Jenny Craig, Inc. The $1 million endorsement deal, which required Lewinsky to lose 40 or more pounds in six months, gained considerable publicity at the time. Lewinsky said that despite her desire to return to a more private life, she needed the money to pay off legal fees and that she believed in the product. A Jenny Craig spokesperson said of Lewinsky, "She represents a busy active woman of today with a hectic lifestyle. And she has had weight issues and weight struggles for a long time. That represents a lot of women in America." The choice of Lewinsky as a role model proved controversial for Jenny Craig, and some of its private franchises switched to an older advertising campaign. Jenny Craig stopped running the Lewinsky ads in February 2000, concluded her campaign entirely in April 2000, and paid her only $300,000 for her involvement.

Also at the start of 2000, Lewinsky moved to New York City, living in the West Village and becoming an A-list guest in the Manhattan social scene. In February 2000, Lewinsky appeared on MTV's The Tom Green Show in an episode in which the host took her to his parents' home in Ottawa in search of fabric for her new business. Later in 2000, Lewinsky worked as a correspondent for British Channel 5 on the show Monica's Postcards, reporting on U.S. culture and trends from a variety of locations.

In March 2002, Lewinsky, no longer bound by the terms of her agreement with the United States Office of the Independent Counsel, appeared in the HBO special, "Monica in Black and White", part of the America Undercover series. In it she answered a studio audience's questions about her life and the Clinton affair.

Lewinsky was the host of the reality television dating program, Mr. Personality, on Fox Television Network in 2003. There she advised young women contestants who were picking men hidden by masks. Some Americans tried to organize a boycott of advertisers on the show, in protest of Lewinsky capitalizing on her notoriety. Nevertheless, the show debuted to very high ratings, and The New York Times said that "after years of trying to cash in on her fame by designing handbags and other self-marketing schemes, Ms. Lewinsky has finally found a fitting niche on television." The ratings, however, slid downward each successive week, and after the show completed its limited run, it did not reappear. The same year she appeared as a guest on the programs: V Graham Norton in the UK, High Chaparall in Sweden, and The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the U.S.

After Clinton's autobiography My Life appeared in 2004, Lewinsky said in an interview with the British tabloid Daily Mail:

He could have made it right with the book, but he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied. I really didn't expect him to go into detail about our relationship. But if he had and he'd done it honestly, I wouldn't have minded. I did, though, at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert. This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character.

By 2005, Lewinsky found that she could not escape the spotlight in the U.S., which made both her professional and personal life difficult. She stopped selling her handbag line and moved to London. In December 2006, Lewinsky graduated with a master's degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics where she had been studying since September 2005. Her thesis was titled "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third-person effect and Pre-Trial Publicity." Since then she has tried to avoid publicity.

Lewinsky corresponded in 2009 with scholar Ken Gormley, who was writing an in-depth study of the Clinton scandals, maintaining that Clinton had lied under oath when asked detailed and specific questions about his relationship with her.