Even so, the 51-year-old made it clear that, while she was referred to the internship program by a family friend, she earned her position all on her own.

“My very first job out of college was working in the White House,” she explained. “I don’t think that that’s the kind of trajectory that someone thinks then 10, 12 years later, that person’s not going to be able to get hired.”

“Then I worked in the Pentagon as well and travelled the world with my boss—who was the Pentagon spokesman—and we travelled with the Secretary of Defense,” she continued. “I’m by no means a genius, by no means going to be the cream of the crop, but I wasn’t a bimbo. I wasn’t a dumb bimbo.”

But despite knowing her own worth, Lewinsky admitted that it was a “big struggle” to cope with being portrayed as the naïve “other woman” by the public.