Billy Eichner is taking on his most challenging role yet—which isn’t a knock on his talents, but we imagine anyone might find it challenging to play Matt Drudge, as Eichner will on American Crime Story: Impeachment. Per Deadline, Eichner has signed on to reunite with Ryan Murphy for the third installment of the critically-acclaimed series, which tracks the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair scandal and Clinton’s subsequent impeachment trial. Drudge is, of course, the conservative journalist and founder of the Drudge Report, which broke the news of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky in January 1998. Drudge was also the mentor of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative political commentator who went onto start his own website.
Eichner, best known for his Emmy-winning series Billy On The Street, previously appeared in the seventh and eighth seasons of Murphy’s American Horror Story. He’s the latest addition to the cast of American Crime Story: Impeachment, which is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story Of The Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down A President. (The first season, The People V. O.J. Simpson, was also based on a book by Toobin.) Murphy is executive producing the series alongside writer Sarah Burgess. The casting so far has been pretty amazing, with Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, Clive Owen as Bill Clinton (perfect, when you think about it), and Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones. Filming is set to begin in March for an unspecified premiere date later this year.
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Read that as Mike Judge on my initial skim and I was rather confused.
Matt Drudge?!? Is that trilby wearing douchebag still a thing?
Drudge report hasn’t been worth a damn in a while, sadly. I use to go there regularly because even if they weren’t the ones breaking a story, their model meant they’d be first to link to actual interesting, breaking news.But now, all they’ve got left is GOP worship and POC fearmongering.
Oh whatever, they did all the GOP workship and POC fearmongering back in the 90s.
Is this the greatest example of casting in all of human history?Quite possibly.
The Drudge/Eichner likeness is not too bad! It’ll be interesting to see him cut his teeth on such a dramatic role. Same goes for Beanie Feldstein- she’s great so far, I am hopeful that the project will handle the portrayal of Lewinsky in a competent and respectful way.Now, who’s going to portray Leno as he hyucks through the whole affair at the lowest brow possible?
Peter Serafinowicz?
DEAR GOD WE NEED THIS
OMG Billy Eichner can Get. It. 6 ways till Sunday. Any day. Any time.He REALLY floods my basement.
American Crime Story is an amazing series. Both seasons so far you could inject right into my veins. So well done.
Too soon.
Wait, how did I miss the Clive Owen announcement? That is indeed pretty perfect.
I hope they have an egg budget.
Couldn’t have imagined casting this perfect.
“Do you want to punch me in the face? Don’t be ridiculous, OF COURSE YOU WANT TO PUNCH ME IN THE FACE!” ~ Matt Drudge (Billy Eichner), American Crime Story: Impeachment
“which isn’t a knock on his talents”Can’t knock what doesn’t exist.
I just finished reading Toobin’s book that this is going to be based on and it was excellent. There were so many details of the case I’d forgotten.While nobody comes out of the whole scandal looking good, Linda Trippand Paula Jones’ husband particularly come across like craven, awful people.The book also has Lewinsky playing a far more active role in pursing Clinton than I’d actually realised. Obviously the power imbalance between the two was shocking and what was done to her in the press and by both Starr and Clinton’s forces was terrible and she didn’t deserve to have her life totally destroyed.
You should check out the second season of the podcast Slow Burn. It deals with the Lewinsky Scandal and Clinton’s impeachment. It’s portrayla of Tripp is actually relatively sympathetic and they’ve actually got an interview with her. But you’re right that Tripp is a true American scumbag. Her friend comes to her with a terrible secret and Tripp’s first instinct is to politically weaponize this information.
The podcast has a lot of details that I hadn’t known before too, like when Lewinsky was being interviewed by the FBI she managed to slip away during a break and called the White House to try and warn Clinton, who was about to be deposed, that they knew about their relationship. They also said that Linda Tripp was one of the last people at the White House to see Vince Foster before he killed himself.
Oh cool! I loved the first season of that podcast! I’ll definitely give the second one a go!Thanks for the recommendation!
It’s really good. Clinton doesn’t come off too well in it in terms of how he treated Lewinsky. It’s clear that she was really in love with (naively cause she thought it was reciprocated) and that he was just using her for sex. They’ve got a whole episode IIRC where they look at the Lewinsky case in light of the MeToo era and examine how people, including feminists, reacted to it.