Writer James Downey fought against her SNL guest appearance, believing the cameo was “a little trashy.” He noted his dissent by writing a sketch about Lewinsky winning “the presidential kneepads,” then got frustrated when her publicist said no way. “I thought if I were Monica Lewinsky," says Downey in Live From New York, an SNL oral history, “I would have a little more sense of humor.”
As for Clinton? Darrell Hammond’s version didn’t exactly hold the president’s feet to the fire. This rascally horndog always got the ladies, and even when he was in trouble, he celebrated his lecherous conquests. In a sketch that featured Clinton reading sexual harassment accuser Paula Jones’ actual deposition — “he placed my hand on his penis” — he paused to give us a thumbs up and exclaim, “This is hot!”
Was Lewinsky a casualty of the boys’ club mentality at SNL? Perhaps, but Tina Fey was head writer for one of those seasons, and chided Lewinsky in 2011’s Bossypants for being a little too open with her personal details: “I’m just saying. Linda Tripp may not have been the intelligence-gathering mastermind you thought she was.”
Back in the late 1990s, things got meaner for Lewinsky during the week. Leno notoriously made lazy Lewinsky jokes for years, devoting an entire monologue to the day she was interviewed on ABC’s 20/20. He wasn’t exactly apologetic about it either, telling Oprah in 2003, “The Monica Lewinsky scandal was the golden age of comedy.”