Beanie Feldstein on Portraying Monica Lewinsky

BEANIE FELDSTEIN, ACTRESS: I think that, as an actor, it’s always been my dream to portray complex women. But I also studied sociology in university. And so, for me, it’s always been important to find rules that are impactful socially, and I don’t know if you could find one more impactful than the Monica Lewinsky story, because it was so — she’s so deeply misunderstood by the public because of the way she was portrayed in the media and our society in the ’90s. She was really food for society and the media to feast upon. She was picked apart for her weight and the way she sounded and how she grew up and just everything about her. And so, for me, it was — to be a part of retelling her story, giving her story back to audiences and hopefully really reframing the ideology through which they look at her was incredibly meaningful to me.

AMANPOUR: So she basically said that, having met you — and I know it was quite difficult to have a lot of together time during COVID and even before when you were working on this — that she was — quote — “in good hands with Beanie as an actor.” How much of I suppose guidance from her did you get? What was it like actually the few times that you did meet? What did you — what was necessary for you to have those meetings to portray her in this series?

FELDSTEIN: Every time I see her, it feels sort of surreal for both of us. During filming — we filmed for 10 months, so it was quite a long process. And she texted me once, we haven’t spoken in a long time. And I was like, I talk to you every single day. I talk to you in my head as I’m brushing my teeth, when I’m going to bed, when I’m driving to work. There wasn’t a moment in sort of these 10 months that I wasn’t constantly in communication with her just by myself in my own head. So, when we are together, it is incredibly surreal. But, because she’s a full producer on the project and the subject of the piece, one of the subjects of the piece, it was important for me to do my own research independently, so that, when I did come to her, I wasn’t making her rehash these very traumatic, terrifying moments of her life for me over and over again. I wanted to come armed with research and armed with knowledge so that, by the time I met Monica, it was just a human-to-human interaction, and all the questions that I was asking her were much more specific, so things that I could never find in my research. So her best friend’s name is Catherine. I was like, do you call her Cathy? Do you call her Cat? Like, these little details that I just wanted to make sure were exactly correct. But Monica was deposed 22 times by the Office of Independent Counsel. So the amount of conversation and detail that she had to give them during that time was so extensive that I had so much to sort of arm myself with before I even met her.