The world of politics is a virtual minefield of sexual scandal. From Anthony Weiner to Andrew Cuomo to Al Franken, you can’t shake a voter’s ballot these days, it seems, without hitting a disgraced politician. So rife is the D.C. landscape with public misdeeds that as Jessica Bennett pointed out in a 2016 piece for Time, “We’re somewhat immune from the shock factor: we’d never remember where we were when one or another was first revealed. There have simply been too many to count.” One particular dalliance does stand out amongst the rest, though. Considered the political sex scandal to end all political sex scandals, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t remember where they were when President Bill Clinton uttered those infamous words, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
So it is no surprise that the sordid tale has now found its way to the screen. “Impeachment,” the latest season of Ryan Murphy’s popular “American Crime Story” anthology series, covers Clinton’s (Clive Owen) 1990s affair with then 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky (Beanie Feldman), as well as the massive fallout that ensued.
The script is, rather ironically, largely based upon the book “A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President” by Jeffrey Toobin, who famously dealt with a sex scandal of his own last year.
Titled “Exiles,” the first episode hit FX Tuesday and proved scintillating, if not a bit confusing due to a dizzyingly meandering timeline that flips and flops from 1998 to 1993 to 1994 and back again.
But, as is the case with most all Ryan Murphy productions, the show is certainly nice to look at! Not only have the actors been made up to resemble their respective characters to dazzling effect but “Impeachment” manages to compellingly transport audiences to a 1990s-era Washington, D.C. So it may come as a surprise that the series wasn’t filmed in the nation’s capital but a good 2,600 miles away in Los Angeles!
A few of the spots utilized in episode one include Redondo Beach’s South Bay Galleria which masks as Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, where Linda Tripp (Sarah Paulson) stages Monica’s surprise FBI meet-up in a scene that was shot much as it played out in real life. Downtown L.A.’s Dalia Cocino Mexicana also pops up, dressed to appear as Monica’s regular morning coffee stop. And Tripp shares a meal with cut-throat book editor Lucianne Goldberg (Margo Martindale) at the famed Gallery Bar and Cognac Room at The Biltmore Los Angeles hotel.
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Image Credit: FX But, like the Clinton scandal itself, one location stands out against the rest. Koreatown’s monumental Wilshire Colonnade office complex is where Linda and her co-worker Kathleen Willey (Elizabeth Reaser) meet with incoming White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler (Nicolas Coster) and his secretary, Cheryl (Lynn Downey), to ask for continued employment in the West Wing following the shocking suicide of Vincent Foster (Matthew Floyd Miller).
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Image Credit: LoopNet Occupying half a city block at 3701-3731 Wilshire Blvd., the striking property sits like a monolith towering 11 stories above the bustling road below. Initially known as the “Ahmanson Center,” the impressive structure was commissioned in 1966 by financier/philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson. Edward Durell Stone, the architect behind such famed buildings as D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the oft-filmed Stuart Pharmaceutical in Pasadena, was responsible for the design. Howard remained integral to the process, though. As Stone told The Los Angeles Times in 1968, “The architect provides aesthetic and technical skills but it has been said that it ‘takes a great client to create a great building.’”
Sady, by the time ground broke on the Ahmanson Center in 1969, Howard had passed away. The Los Angeles Conservancy notes that the building, which was completed in 1972 at a cost of $75 million, “became a monument to him and his contributions to Los Angeles finance and culture.”
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Image Credit: LoopNet The sprawling complex, which consists of two mirror-imaged travertine towers that flank a central plaza, was designed in the New Formalist style, which An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles describes as “a twentieth-century effort to enjoy architectural staging of the past with advantages of the present” and is marked by “symmetry, classical proportions, arches, and traditional rich materials such as marble and granite.” Indeed, Wilshire Colonnade encompasses all of those elements.
The inner sides of the towers curve symmetrically around the courtyard to form the property’s stunning colonnade, a horseshoe-shaped walkway denoted by a cacophony of 86 Pentelic marble-clad arches, midcentury-esque globe chandeliers and Carrara marble flooring. The picturesque plaza the walkway encircles features concentric fountains, vibrant flower beds, a smattering of trees and plenty of cement tables and chairs for lounging.
Boasting an incredible 180,000+ square feet of rentable space each, rates for offices at the two towers run from $33 to $35 a square foot annually, according to LoopNet. Onsite amenities include conference and meeting facilities, a café, a florist, a bank, a restaurant and a karaoke salon.
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Image Credit: FX Considering Wilshire Colonnade’s institutional feel, it is no wonder “Impeachment” producers pegged it to mask as a government building on the series. It certainly provided quite the dramatic backdrop for Linda’s speech to Cutler in which she cringingly extolls her various professional accomplishments and high-level connections in the hopes of securing a job under him. Her pitch does not work, of course, and Tripp is soon famously relegated to the Pentagon’s public affairs office, where she fatefully meets Monica two years later.
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Image Credit: Universal Pictures “Impeachment: American Crime Story” is not the building’s first foray onto the screen. The complex, masking as the fictional Wilson Plaza, also serves as an emergency aid station in the 1974 disaster flick “Earthquake.”
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures John Plummer (Jason Lee) and Walter P. “Duff” Duffy (Tom Green) find themselves unwitting accomplices to the robbery of a bank on Wilshire Colonnade’s ground floor in the 2002 comedy “Stealing Harvard.”
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Image Credit: Paramount Pictures Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) meet in the complex’s courtyard to discuss possible suspects in the 2007 crime drama “Zodiac.”
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Image Credit: Showtime Networks Wilshire Colonnade pops up a couple of times as the Los Angeles County Courthouse, where Hank Moody (David Duchovny) deals with various legal indiscretions during the fourth season of “Californication.”
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures Television Detective Patrick McKenna (Ryan McPartlin) speaks to the press there in the season one episode of “L.A.’s Finest” titled “Dangerous Minds.”
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Image Credit: Disney-ABC The building portrays the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, where former DA Maya Travis (Robin Tunney) is confronted by a murder victim’s father, in the pilot episode of “The Fix.”
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Image Credit: Disney-ABC On the ill-fated series “Rebel,” the law offices of Julian Cruz (Andy Garcia) are located at the building. As such, it made numerous appearances throughout the show’s scant 10-episode run.
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Image Credit: United Artists Armored truck drivers H (Jason Statham) and Bullet (Holt McCallany) also do a money drop at the Wilshire Colonnade, which is posing as Steinways Casino, in the 2021 action film “Wrath of Man.”