Less than a year after her death and the liberal media still won’t let Linda Tripp rest in peace. Since she’s no longer around to be in the news, these days it’s liberals in Hollywood savaging her as “a person with a deplorable reputation.”
In Deadline on Wednesday, Anthony D'Alessandro spoke to lefty actress Sarah Paulson “On Finding The Humanity In Linda Tripp,” because apparently that’s such a puzzle:
She is busy again doing double duty as an EP and playing a complex character on [Ryan] Murphy’s upcoming FX series American Crime Story: Impeachment as famed double-crossing Monica Lewinsky confidante and Clinton affair scandal player, Linda Tripp. Despite Tripp’s patriotic defense on why she taped her calls with Lewinsky about the White House intern’s sexual encounters with the 42nd President of the United States, Paulson shared with us this morning how she’s able to tap into Tripp’s humanity.
Funny, I don’t recall any of the whistleblowers and secret recorders of the Trump era being branded as double-crossers or having their patriotism or humanity questioned by the liberal media.
D'Alessandro seemed awed at the “challenge to play a person with a deplorable reputation as the late Tripp.” Paulson revealed that to play Tripp, she relied on the advice the director of 12 Years a Slave gave her about playing the evil wife of a sadistic slaveholder in that film. Yes, Paulson channeled the skills needed to play a character IndieWire described as “a sad, alienated racist” in order to manage to perform as the woman who ensured there was enough evidence to prevent President Clinton from covering up his problematic affair:
“I think about something that Steve McQueen said to me when we were shooting 12 Years a Slave with him, how important it was for me to stand back from my own judgement of the character and to not sit in a space of judgement, and that it wouldn’t help me play the part, and it wouldn’t help me tell the story. So, I remember that from many years ago, and it’s something I’ve been reaching for on this part. Unlike Marcia Clarke, who was so misunderstood and vilified erroneously, this story with Linda is much more complicated.
I don’t think a lot of people in life don’t stand in the mirror and constantly assess what they’re doing. I think Linda was just not one of those people who was, perhaps, not aware of just how far this story was going to go, and what her part was going be. It’s totally challenging in a way that is very exciting to me as an actor, but it’s not super easy to live inside of it as a human being,” said Paulson who won a Globe in 2017 for her turn as Clarke in the first edition of American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson.
So, “as an actor,” it’s exciting to play Tripp, but not “as a human being.” If Bill Clinton had been a Republican, Linda Tripp would be a national hero and feminist icon who Paulson and every other actress in Hollywood would be honored and proud to play. Instead, she is still being trashed from beyond the grave.
American Crime Story: Impeachment has been in the works for several years. It was mysteriously delayed in January 2020 due to a “toxic media environment” before COVID further pushed production. Along with Paulson, it stars Beanie Feldstein as Lewinsky, Clive Owen as President Clinton, Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, and Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge, with Lewinsky herself reportedly signed on as a producer.
It is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s 2000 book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President. The Media Research Center reported at the time the book was published:
Toobin's still crusading in what today's New York Times review called a "highly partisan" and "willfully subjective" book. It noted Toobin presents the President as "A victim of 'extremists of the political right who tried to use the legal system to undo elections -- in particular the two that put Bill Clinton in the White House.'"
All this, plus Ryan Murphy at the helm, pretty much guarantees that Impeachment will be more like American Horror Story for conservatives.
