Life Uncut - Hooked, Hitched & Hung Up sneak peek: Monica Lewinsky & Bill Clinton

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Lifers! It’s a special preview of our brand new podcast Hooked, Hitched & Hung Up where we re-live the makeups and breakups, the fall-outs and the forever-afters, the ups and downs of the spiciest celebrity romances. We’re diving deep into the most fascinating Hollywood hookups, leaving no blog or Variety article unread in the quest for truth about these larger-than-life affairs.From Laura’s hall-pall Jason ‘Aquaman’ Momoa, who as a kid dreamt of one day marrying Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet... and then did. To the time Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were trading insults on social media for the whole world to see. And by god, just how many women was golfer Tiger Woods actually secretly seeing?!+++SNEAK PEEK: Remember that time the whole world scapegoated a 20-something-year-old intern but not her very married, much older, very presidential secret lover?You might sort of know what happened between former US President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But the story’s taken on mythical status over the years, blurring the memories of those who watched it unfold on TV, and making it a confusing mess for those who didn’t.Britt and Laura take you into an understaffed White House where the interns are working late, and the world is wondering about the inappropriate actions of the President. Why did Monica have to hand her blue Gap dress over to the FBI? How did they get together in the first place? And how different does the whole love affair look with the benefit of hindsight, in a post-Me-Too world?To catch Hooked, Hitched & Hung Up and the full Monica Lewinsky & Bill Clinton episode, follow the show for free: https://shor.by/hookedhitchedandhungup +++Hooked, Hitched & Hung Up is an iHeartRadio podcast, produced by Deadset Studios.Hosted by Laura Byrne and Britt Hockley.We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land on which this show was made.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. Hi guys, and welcome back to a very special episode that is not an episode of Life Uncut. Britt and I want to share with you a very special project that we have been working our absolute arses off and it is a brand spanking new podcast called Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up. Who would have thought that we could speak any more about love, dating, ghosting, relationships and affairs, sex and romance? This has been like a little secret project we've been working on for a very long time.

Hooked, hitched and hung up, it is our new little baby and you know we love love. Our tagline, we love love, you've heard it. But we wanted to look at current relationships, relationships when we were growing up, relationships before we were born, just I guess those celebrity relationships of the time. And we have the ins and outs of these relationships, all the details that you may have forgotten, the things that you may never have known. Now, the reason why I loved doing this podcast series is because it's not just about all of the crazy things that happen, but it's actually looking back on these relationships with the lens of 2022.

And in particular with this story, which is our very first episode, Bill and Monica, it's understanding like how she was so, so victimized by this situation. And she was slut shamed to all hell. She was the ground zero of cancel culture and thinking about like, how would this have played out? This relationship played out if it happened today. 100%. We had so much fun recording this and we hope you guys enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed

making it. If you listen to this and you're like, yes, this is right up my alley, please jump on over, type it into the search bar wherever you're listening to this podcast. It's called Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up. Hit subscribe, hit follow, and then every week you will get a brand spanking new episode in your libraries. just a heads up guys this episode does have a bit of swearing in it so maybe don't play it around the little kitties so i want to talk to you today laura about the biggest most famous affair of all

time not just political affair but i think and i would love someone to tell me if there is a more famous affair of all time, but Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I feel like this is really one, I mean, it is one from the archives because it's been back quite a while. But do you remember how old you were when this all went down? I don't remember, but I don't remember a time that I didn't know about the Monica Lewinsky affair. And I never knew the details, but you always knew that there was a president that did the dirty with this bombshell called Monica Lewinsky. And growing up, You always knew that it was wrong and you knew it was this big infamous story. She was famous for probably the wrong reasons, but I never knew the details.

Well, I remember, I will never forget, I was sitting in the car and I remember the conversation around the dress on the radio and me in my mind being like, what? Like, it was on the dress. Like, I was absolutely fucking disgusted because I was 10, but I understood what it meant. Like, because it happened so long ago, I never really fully understand the details of it. Like, I need to know. I want to know, why is there a dress? Where did it come from?

Why did she still have it? There's so much here. Well, I didn't know actually about the dress in all honesty. I just literally knew that there was this hectic affair and the president did the dirty. But I think when you look back at this affair, relationship, whatever you want to call it, there's two ways you can look at it. You can almost look at it like, is this or was this a love affair? Was it two people that genuinely loved each other that obviously had these other extenuating

circumstances like, you know, being the president of the United States and being married. I mean, like probably not, probably a lot more sinister than that. Or. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's not jump ahead here. Do we look at it that it was a complete misuse of power? Was this a predator? Was this, it was an older man that was the president of the United States. You cannot get, you cannot get more powerful in the whole world that was taking advantage of literally a 21 year old female that worked for him and worked for him for free. Do you know the crazy thing about this as well? And the thing I'm so looking forward to unpacking is that how victimized Monica was in that time. But if we were to look at it with a 2022 lens, what that would look like and how

this story would have played out so differently when it came to media. I want to start by showing you a photo. And if anyone that's listening doesn't know the photo, it's a very, very famous photo. I'm going to describe it to you, Laura. I'm actually going to show you, but everyone, I want you to Google it. But it's a photo from 1996. It's Bill and Monica. They're on the lawn of the White House. There's a crowd of people around.

Bill is hugging Monica. Monica's hugging. A little side eye here happening as well. A little side eye. Monica's hugging him back. And this is in the public in the middle of the day. Everyone's milling around and they are embracing each other. She's got this little beret on.

She looks very cute. She looks like she's the happiest woman in the world. This photo is very, very famous because in this photo, they were already an item, right? They were already canoodling in the White House. But obviously no one knew that. No, well, that's the whole point of having a secret affair for two years. No one knew that. Spoiler alert, Laura. This was a secret. They went out. They weren't talking about it. Monica had gotten an internship. So she's only 21 years old. She's only fresh out of college. She'd gotten an internship that was unpaid. So she was just volunteering through like

some family connections that she had. Now, I don't know what those family connections are, but she's turned up to the White House for free. She's got a huge crush on Bill Clinton. Turns out Bill Clinton has a bit of a crush on her back. So in this photo they're already seeing each other. But my question is if you were trying to hide an affair, why would you publicly embrace the woman you're having an affair with? Does he walk along with the White House staff and hug every single person?

He's so like blinded by how powerful he is, by how much he can get away with, and that he probably thinks he can, he won't get caught out. Like he thinks he's above it because he is so powerful. Well, the other thing is he's been president at this point for three years and nine months. I've done the math, so that sounds very specific. You said Monica's 21, but how old is he at this point? He was in his late forties. He'd been president for nearly four years, just under four years. Could be her dad. 100%. Yeah. That's, that's exactly what it was. Okay. So what else do we know about Monica? The story came out that Monica, it wasn't the first time she'd had an affair with someone that was married. It wasn't the first time she'd had

an affair with someone that was powerful or in a position of power. And it wasn't the first time she'd had an affair with someone that was quite a lot older. So Monica had had an affair with her high school teacher, but it wasn't when she was at high school. So the story goes, when they finished high school and she went on to college, she started an affair with that teacher. Now he was a lot older than her. His name's Andy Blyler. So she was like 18 or 19 and he was a lot older. He was married. They had an affair for years. Wait, so if she was 18, she had to have just left school, which in my books is kind of still not her fault. Like a 17 year old who's just finished school, the most powerful person in your life are your school teachers, other people who

decide whether you do or don't pass and get to go to university. Like there is already such a mismatch in that relationship dynamic a hundred percent and the only the only person that has actually come out and said that this affair happened when she was in college when she had left school was him so the testimony is coming from him so he's never going to put his hand up and say oh I admit it I was taking advantage of someone that was in high school my student like he's never going to say that so we can't we can speculate for sure but the only facts that we have is that the affair started afterwards. So whether they're lying and there was a very big mismatching power

and he was doing the wrong thing and taking advantage of his student or maybe they just had this crush on each other and, you know, I think I had a crush on my teacher when I was at school. I had like a hot surfing teacher. You're not going to have sex with your teacher after. Okay, the thing with this though is like in today's day and age, even if it had been a few years, like a teacher can't have a relationship with an ex-student at all, you'll be fired.

It doesn't matter if they're all 17s out of bounds, but 18s, that's okay. 18 in the States, you can't even drink alcohol. But this interesting thing is that her affair with Andy, the old teacher, actually crossed over with the affair with Bill Clinton. She really went up a notch, didn't she? Well, yeah. And this is why this is interesting because she wanted to make Andy jealous because Andy ended up coming out saying she used to call me, like she was still calling me multiple times a day, four or five times a day. But she made a joke apparently to him. And I'm saying allegedly and apparently because this is all testimony coming from him. And I don't know how much you can believe someone that was obviously doing the

wrong thing with his student. But he said that she even called up saying, I need to invest in some White House knee pads. Referring to blowjobs that she was giving the president. Yeah. So a lot of stuff ended up coming out. But if this happened now, if there was a young woman, 20 years old, 18, 19, 20, 21, that a teacher had had an affair with her. And then the president had had an affair with her. There is no way she would be being blamed and dragged through the media like Monica Lewinsky was then because she was the start. She was the epitome. She was ground zero for cancel culture. It's just that back then they didn't have social media, but the whole world publicly canceled her on news articles and radio and everyone knew her name. Everything was dragged

through the mud, but it was always about her. This is a sneak peek of our new podcast, Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up, where we take a look inside one of the most infamous love affairs of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. So what did Monica actually do at the White House? What was her actual role, apart from just being an intern? I mean, basically, she was the male girl. That's how she started. She worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs. So she was just an unpaid male girl. But that eventually escalated to a few different jobs when she She did become a paid intern eventually, but he was like,

I probably should pay her. Anyway. So often. So from like how long did this span, like how long did this affair go for and like what was the intensity or the frequency of it? I mean they saw each other every day because they worked together. The affair went over approximately two years, but the really crazy thing about that,

and I don't know whether I or the world believes it, but apparently over that two years they only ever had sexual relations in Bill Clinton's terms, nine times. And do you know what? The little fucker, nine times, she had to blow him every time and he never did it back. That is what a waste of time. What a waste of time.

Yeah. Wait, did she get anything out of it? Like, okay, that sounds terrible. Did she get anything out of this? But, I mean, like, surely she wasn't just going to his office, giving him pizza and giving him a blow-in and leaving for the day. Like, that's a terrible job. think back to how obsessively in love you were with your first person at 20 years old like when

you fall in love when you fall in love you fall in love so hard and this is the president he's so powerful he's so charismatic she was obsessed with him she would have done any and she did she would have done anything that he wanted and at the time you 20 I don't know what her sexual experience was other than that but she probably didn't really care about getting anything back because she's like well I just blew the president well I think it also just kind of plays into that whole age dynamic and how like eager you are to please at that age like when you really want to be loved when you really want to be like fully accepted like I think that we sometimes can go way above and beyond because we want to please so much and like in this case girlfriend I would

be waiting for something in return but I find it hard to believe that when they're both apparently in love like he was in love with her as well when you're both having these relationships and you're seeing each other every day I find it hard to believe that it was only nine times over two years well also if it's only nine times over two years then how did it unfold like how did it come out? Why were people so suspicious that there was something untoward going on? Because I feel like nine times in two years, you'd be able to hide that. Whereas there must have been so many other telltale signs that were happening in the office. People must have been aware that there was some energy or flirtation or something going on. Good question, Laura.

Yeah, thank you. Give me an A plus student. So Bill and Monica started getting close during this big government shutdown that was in around 95, when a bunch of the staff at the White House had to stop working for a while. So this meant the number of people that worked there each day went from around 430 to only 90 people. So 430 people down to 90. This is why people started to fill in for other people. This is when they started to do job shares and everyone was picking up little extra jobs. This meant that it was a little bit less suspect for people to be places where they probably wouldn't usually be. And that, my friend, includes Monica Lewinsky, the unpaid in turn because they could still work during the shutdown so she didn't have to leave she was still

there and she was picking up all the other jobs so basically it was all right for monica to spend a bit more time with the president than usual no one turned an eye to it so one night everyone's working late doing all their fancy fancy white house stuff they order pizza someone accidentally knocks a pizza onto monica so she gets up goes to the bathroom to clean it up when she's coming out Bill is actually standing in the doorway and he tells her, you should bring me some pizza to my office. So he walks away. She does as she told.

She goes back to the pizza box. She gets some pizza and she strides on up to the Oval Office and she knocks on the door. The secretary answers. The president asked for some pizza. So Bill's secretary opens the door and lets her in because she's there with the pizza. Sir, the girl's here with the pizza.

She goes inside. And then, as was customary for then, they go into his private study. And I guess they study privately. But that is what you did then. It was so normal to walk into the president's office and go into the little side office, the little private study, so that not everyone was watching in. He used to take presidential phone calls while she was giving him a head job in his office. He would just take a call like it was nothing while she was on her knees with knee pads.

But don't you also think that that just plays into the full level of disrespect? like taking important phone calls that probably like are dictating the course of the future of America. Yes, release the bomb. Yeah, whilst I release my bomb. You're cooked. No, you're cooked. No, Bill Clinton's cooked.

Whilst they only had sex nine times over the... Allegedly. Allegedly, over the two years. I think this part makes it worse. They acted like a couple. The way that they spoke together, the things they spoke about, the future, their ideas. She would give him ideas for how to run the office, which she says is like silly, but she's like, I have, I have ideas about how things could run. They used to speak about

their childhoods. They had an emotional connection, which as we know, can be a lot worse than just a physical connection. So they had both. And Monica said, this wasn't just like a fling. This wasn't an affair. I was in love. We were in a relationship and she felt like he was in love as well. They used to buy each other presents. He bought her like a really romantic book. One of the gifts that she got him was she bought him these like really cute little neckties. So he would wear them and then they would make little, you know, make eyes at each other. So it was, it was a symbol. There was always these constant symbols of like, I'm here, I'm thinking of you, I'm doing this for you, but you know, publicly never going to be with you. So I guess at this point they are

already both not just physically, but also emotionally entwined and it is a fucking dumpster fire of a situation. But what is it that raises suspicion? Up until now, no one's really thought much of seeing, you know, the sporadic times that they saw Bill and Monica together. But this is the messed up thing. The reason it came out is because Bill Clinton had to get Lloyd up. Okay. Bad boy. Bad boy Bill. Bad boy Billy. but before bad boy billy was president he was the governor of arkansas okay so bear with me there was a conference in a city called little rock and there was this woman named paula jones now paula jones works for the government so basically she was working for bill clinton at the time she

was working directly for bad boy belly yes that's correct gotcha okay i'm glad you're staying with me so paula's in a hotel room one night probably just having a really nice time reading a book having a tea. I don't know. I don't have facts on that, but that's what I imagine she's doing in the hotel room. Bill summons her to his hotel room. And I mean, he's her boss. So she's like, yeah, okay, sure. Well, of course the president, he's not the president, he's the governor of Arkansas. But when anyone summons you, when your boss summons you somewhere, I guess you go, right? Sure. Even though I've summoned you a few times. I'm not going to go. I've got my tea and my face mask on. I'm not going to your room at 9.30 at night. She's like, okay, cool. The governor's

asked me, of course I'm going to go. I'm not going to fight this. She had no idea what was about to happen and she had no idea what was going to follow them around after this moment for years to come. Paula says when she gets into Bill's room, he exposes himself. Like he whips it out. He whipped it out. Oh God. She's like, uh-uh, I am not that kind of person. Put that away. And she leaves the room. So it's important to note here, Bill always denied this. Of course he would. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You're not gonna be like, well, okay. Sprung. Especially not when you're the president. No. But at the end of the day, they reached a settlement and out of court. So long story short, he paid her off. He's like, he paid her silence. He was

like, let's just pretend this never happened. Here's a whole lot of money. Okay. So obviously this is a huge headache for Bill Clinton, but the worst thing about this is the timing of it all, because all of this hectic stuff with Paula went down in 1991, but she didn't bring the lawsuit until 1994. Now by this time, Bill is of course the president of the United States. So all of that happened when he was governor of Arkansas. Now he is the president. So this is a really, really big freaking deal. This court case is where people start sniffing around. So this has come back up. This has resurfaced and everyone's like, hang on, I've got some questions to ask. And this is where it all begins to unravel. So this is obviously what's made everybody so suspicious

of him as a person. And now they're starting to connect the dots between him and Monica. They're like, oh, who's this hot young thing who's always in his office? Yeah. Why is this young thing always got pizza in his office. Something doesn't add up. It is 7 a.m. in the morning. So after that, I'm guessing that is where the rest of the dirty laundry is brought out. Okay. So I'm going to just, I want you to sit with me for a second here. I'm literally sitting next to you. Yeah. Okay. Sit with me metaphorically, literally, physically. This happened in 1994, but in 1992, so two years prior when he was running for presidency, another woman came out. Now her name is Jennifer Flowers. she came forward whilst he was running for presidency and she said hey we've been having

a 12 year affair oh my god now she didn't come and say that he had sexually assaulted her or abuse so it was a consensual affair this was just a consensual affair so paula jones was the first person that publicly came out and said hey this is not a good person but it wasn't the first time that his presidency or campaign has been rocked it almost derailed his campaign but it didn't because the tabloid that picked it up to run the story and be like, hey, look, the president's having this 12 year affair. They're a pretty trashy, nothing tabloid. And it was sort of, I guess the presidency, the president went and said, you know, like this, let's just can this. No one's going to believe this. It's trashy gossip. I would never have an affair. So no one

really believed it. It didn't really have any impact. Everyone was like, the president would never do that. Where is Hillary in all of this? Like, did she believe him or did she believe what was being reported in the news? I mean, if you were Hillary, you're wondering what's up. You're sniffing around, you're like, something doesn't add up here. But the interesting thing is what she has to say after the whole Jennifer Flowers thing came out. This is it. You know, I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honour what he's been through and what we've been through together. And, you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.

So it's very clear that Hilary is well and truly standing by Bill Clinton. She's 100% by his side. You're probably wondering why I'm talking about all these other women in the past. It's not just background, but it all links to how this whole Monica and Bill affair came to light. Now, we don't want to leave you hanging midway through the episode, but there is so much more to this story like what happens when the FBI gets involved and what about when Monica's friends start secretly recording all of their conversations. There is so much more to this episode you are going to want to hear it. All you have to do is go into your podcast app

wherever you have your podcasts type in hooked hitched and hung up to hear the rest of the episode but make sure you hit the follow button or subscribe button so that these will pop into your feed. Skip to the 21 minute mark to pick up on the episode where you left off and don't forget to tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends and share the love because we love love.