Dreams really do come true! Some lucky audience members got to see Monica Lewinsky sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on her birthday at a New York City bar on Monday, July 23.
As a fan video shows, the 45-year-old got on stage at Club Cumming — owned by actor Alan Cumming — and belted out the Wizard of Oz classic with piano accompaniment. At one point in the performance, her voice cracks, and she sheepishly covers her face, but the supportive crowd urges her on.
The crowd later serenaded Lewinsky with a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” as she documented in a Twitter video. “Lucky girl!” she wrote in the caption.
birthday singing @clubclumming! lucky girl! pic.twitter.com/5Rm1cn2TqW
— Monica Lewinsky (@MonicaLewinsky) July 24, 2018
Cumming and Lewinsky have been close for years. “She is really one of the kindest, most loyal, loving, tender, funny girls I’ve known,” the Good Wife alum said during a 2014 appearance on Watch What Happens Live. “I think she’s really one of my best friends. She’s been at my wedding, she knows my family. She’s lovely.”
Lewinsky, now an anti-bullying advocate, has been in the headlines recently since 2018 marks 20 years since her relationship with then-President Bill Clinton became national news.
Clinton himself had to answer to the scandal during an NBC News interview last month, during which he admitted he never reached out to Lewinsky, a White House intern at the time of the affair. “I have never talked to her, but I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry,” Clinton said.
Lewinsky’s story has also resurfaced recently because of the #MeToo movement, and she herself has been seeing her experience in a new light as a result.
“Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” Lewinsky wrote in a Vanity Fair essay in February.
She continued, “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. But it’s also complicated. Very, very complicated … But I know one thing for certain: Part of what has allowed me to shift is knowing I’m not alone anymore. And for that I am grateful.”
