We do–and she did. After all, Lewinsky got her own show; Bill Clinton got a dull date with Bob Dole on “60 Minutes.” Still, you can sense how difficult this has been, how ambivalent Lewinsky is about stepping into the limelight. Ask her what kind of makeover she’s had for the show, and she jumps to all the wrong conclusions. “Oh, come on now. I’ve never had a makeover. I feel like you’re asking me how vain I am,” she says. Ask her about becoming a public person again, and she gets flustered. “It’s such an awkward thing to discuss,” she says between sighs. “It really is.” So why is Lewinsky doing this to herself? “I feel like it is better to try and possibly fail at something than to not try at all,” she says. “I’ve realized that my life is public. I walk down the street and people recognize me. That happened before I decided to do this show, and it will happen after.”
That’s for damn sure. Even without Lewinsky, people would gossip about the twisted “Mr. Personality.” It’s something of a “Bachelorette” rip-off, only the woman in question, a stockbroker named Hayley, never sees the faces of the 20 men vying for her. They wear masks, forcing Hayley to choose based only on the men’s inner beauty. (There is, however, a creepy place called the Dark Room, where a guy can remove his mask so Hayley can feel his, uh, features.) It’s hard to not kid Lewinsky about how her reputation might suffer because she’s on Fox, the network behind “Celebrity Boxing” and “Temptation Island.” To her credit, she kids right back: “You don’t want me to comment on NEWSWEEK now, do you?” Even stranger is the fact that Lewinsky is more than the show’s host. She also acts as Hayley’s confidante, dishing about the men and, ironically, offering romantic advice. “I just think she said, ‘What the hey, I’m going for it, whatever happens.’ That shows a lot of chutzpah,” says executive producer Brian Gadinsky. Is she any good? “I watched the first episode today and was astounded at how natural she is,” Gadinsky says. “People either come through on screen or they don’t. She’s got it.”
At this point, Lewinsky has no idea if she’ll do more television. She’s still designing handbags, and she’s also considering law school or graduate school in psychology. “I’m trying to see what is going to work best for me and what is my career,” she says. “I’m trying to figure out my life.” Since she’s on a dating show, Lewinsky did reveal a tiny bit about her own love life. “Yes, I date,” she says. “I don’t have a serious boyfriend.” Certainly one perk of “Mr. Personality” is that she got to console the cute losers, right? “No, unfortunately,” she says. “I should have had that written into my contract.” Then again, maybe Lewinsky is better off avoiding another workplace romance.
