The first season of FX’s American Crime Story covered the O.J. Simpson trial, and was a smash hit (though at times, it was way too over the top). The topics for the second and third seasons have already been announced, covering Hurricane Katrina and the murder of Gianni Versace, respectively. But it looks like there’s a topic for season four already, too: the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that’s the subject matter showrunner Ryan Murphy is looking at, and like he did for season one, he’s eyeing a Jeffrey Toobin book as his inspiration.
Murphy has set his sights on exploring the Monica Lewinsky scandal for a subsequent season of the franchise, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. To that end, Murphy and American Crime Story producers Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions have optioned author Jeffrey Toobin’s 2000 best-seller A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President as source material. Toobin’s book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson served as the inspiration for the Emmy-winning first season of the anthology. Toobin was deeply involved in the first season and served as a consultant to the writing staff.
Now this has my interest piqued. If this is what ends up being chosen for the subject of the fourth season, it will mean that three of the four seasons cover topics from the mid-to-late 1990s — right in the wheelhouse of that 18-to-34 year old demographic that has vague memories of the decade.
Murphy and a variety of producers on the show are already meeting with actresses to star as Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. I wonder who they’re going to get to play President Bill Clinton. How about David Schwimmer with a dye job? It worked so well during the first season.
Both seasons two and three of American Crime Story will air in 2018. Until then, if you want your dose of true crime, you’ll have to settle for NBC’s Law & Order: True Crime. Or Netflix’s Making a Murderer. Or HBO’s The Jinx. Or the Serial podcast. Or one of the multiple JonBenet Ramsey series that have aired recently. Or anything on Investigation Discovery. Or…
All right, you get the point. True crime series are everywhere. I think we can live without a new edition of American Crime Story in 2017.
