Monica Lewinsky Opens Up on ‘Dark Moments’ After Bill Clinton Scandal

Monica Lewinsky has spoken publicly about the psychological toll of the scandal that erupted from her relationship with former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, describing in frank terms the “very dark moments” she endured in the years that followed and the lasting emotional weight of being judged by what she described as billions of strangers.

Lewinsky was speaking at The Beverly Hills Hotel while being honoured as the 2026 Woman of the 21st Century by the Women’s Guild Cedars-Sinai, in conversation with author Jane Buckingham, when she gave some of her most candid remarks to date about the internal experience of surviving one of the most publicly humiliating episodes in modern American life.

“There have been some very dark moments,” Lewinsky said, declining to soften the statement for the setting. “I don’t want to sugar coat it. I know we’re at a lovely luncheon, but I think it’s so important for people to understand.”

She spoke about the scale of the public hostility she encountered, describing the experience of receiving “negative energy” from what she characterised as billions of strangers around the world, a phenomenon she said her “energetic field wasn’t ready” for, and which she has spent decades trying to process and move beyond.

Lewinsky has previously acknowledged that she contemplated suicide during the height of the scandal, and told The Times earlier this year that the public humiliation was “excruciating” and that life had felt “almost unbearable” at multiple points, disclosures that have shaped her transformation into one of the most prominent voices in anti-bullying advocacy.

She began as an unpaid White House intern in July 1995 at the age of 21, turned 22 that summer, and entered into a consensual relationship with Clinton, then 49 years old, beginning in November 1995.

The affair became public only after Lewinsky confided in Pentagon colleague Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their conversations, which were subsequently used in Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, setting off a media and political firestorm that consumed the final years of the Clinton presidency.

Clinton famously denied the relationship at a January 1998 news conference, stating he “did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and the ensuing publicity sent Lewinsky into hiding as her name became the defining symbol of the scandal despite Clinton bearing the presidential authority and institutional responsibility in the relationship.

Clinton was impeached in December 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and acquitted two months later, while Lewinsky bore the sustained reputational damage and public ridicule that followed in the years after the proceedings concluded.

The Beverly Hills event marked one of several high-profile appearances Lewinsky has made in 2026, including the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in March where she spoke about comparing the public shaming she experienced to a “public burning” evoking the Salem witch trials, and attendance at the Academy Museum premiere of Hulu’s The Testaments.

Her “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky” podcast has become the primary vehicle through which she has continued to publicly process and reframe her experience, though she acknowledged on a recent episode that a persistent undercurrent of fear remains. “I still live in a lot of fear,” she said, describing a recurring anxiety that “everything I’ve built in the last 11 years will be taken away again.”