“Hi, handsome.” FX unveiled a brand new full-length look on at the upcoming season of American Crime Story: Impeachment.
Telling the story of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the trailer centers around the friendship between Beanie Feldstein’s Monica Lewinsky and Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, with the latter becoming the White House intern’s confidante regarding her secret affair with President Bill Clinton (played by Clive Owen).
“I have to admit, you’re a knockout; you must be dating some big D.C. player,” Paulson-as-Tripp says to a coy Lewinsky. “Tell me about him. Someone from work…Someone important?”
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The trailer then pivots to show Tripp betraying Lewinsky by recording their conversations and turning the tapes over to the FBI. “Monica can never find out,” she insists before the screen flashes to FBI agents intercepting Lewinsky at her planned January 16, 1998 meeting with Tripp at D.C.’s Pentagon City Mall, just one day before President Clinton’s deposition in the Paula Jones case.
As the tension ratchets up, the clip — which also gives fans a first, shadowy glimpse of Margo Martindale as Tripp’s adviser and co-conspirator Lucianne Goldberg — then ends with Lewinsky receiving a phone call at home from Clinton himself, a flirtatious smile spreading over her face as he whispers from the Oval Office. Watch the full trailer after the jump.
The third season of American Crime Story is set to premiere September 7th, and also stars Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton and Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, with appearances by Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge, Cobie Smulders as Ann Coulter, Elizabeth Reaser as Kathleen Willey, and more. The real-life Lewinsky, meanwhile, served a consultant on the ripped-from-the-headlines anthology series.
During a Television Critics Association panel to unveil the trailer, executive producer Brad Simpson called the upcoming series “an origin story” for the current moment’s increasingly polarized and divided media culture. “It was the beginning of some of the hyper-partisanship and tribalism we see today,” he said.
