FX will work once again with author Jeffrey Toobin for this season through an option of his book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President. If the TV adaptation follows the book, it will focus on the legal drama of the case, with Paula Jones, Kenneth Starr, and Monica Lewinsky at the center of the story.
Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who sued President Clinton for sexual harassment, a case that eventually led to his impeachment. Starr is the lawyer who oversaw the investigations of the Clinton administration. And Lewinsky, of course, is the White House intern that admitted to having an “inappropriate relationship” with President Clinton.
If this installment is anywhere near as intense as the first in the series, The People v. O.J. Simpson, it could cement American Crime Story as one of the best anthology series of late. The People v. O.J. Simpson, based on another Toobin novel, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, delved deep into the case that came at a time of a great racial divide, viewing it from the perspectives of the legal teams, and in a manner that hadn’t been approached in the mainstream media at the time — far more sympathetic to prosecutor Marcia Clark and her team. The series has garnered a number of awards since airing -– a total of 10 Emmy wins include nods for Outstanding Limited Series and Lead Actors for Courtney B. Vance, Sarah Paulson, and Sterling K. Brown. Most recently, the series picked up a Golden Globe award for Best Limited Series or Television Film and Paulson received another for Best Actress.
We may have to wait some time to see the television interpretation of the Clinton scandal, however, as it appears that two other seasons of the series are already in production. The next to air, called Katrina, will look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, but won’t debut until 2018. It will be followed about six months later by Versace, which will examine the 1997 murder of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, and will be based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth.
So we may not see this Clinton-Lewinsky project come to fruition for another few years — at least until 2019. But the season of The People v. O.J. Simpson gives us high hopes that it will be well worth the wait.
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