Allison Tripp, the only daughter of Linda Tripp, is understandably guarded.

About 25 years ago, her private teenage life exploded into an internationally covered nightmare after her mother, a former White House and Pentagon employee, turned over secret audiotapes that would lead to Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment. Tripp, a lifelong civil servant, had her complicated reasons for making the tapes, and secretly recording her friend Monica Lewinsky—but any understanding or empathy for the female characters in the Clinton saga were overshadowed by media scrutiny, cruel punch lines, and callous remarks.

The Linda Tripp insults on the airwaves were echoed in Allison’s high school hallways and on the family answering machine, making her final school years a living hell. Yet when her mother stood on the U.S. District Courthouse steps in 1998 to give a speech after her final day of grand-jury testimony—a speech Allison implores you to rewatch now in the light of 2021 sensitivity and understanding—a 19-year-old Allison was standing behind her in long floral skirt and gold necklace, head held high.

Three decades later, Allison—now a real estate agent, buyer for her mother’s Christmas store, consultant for the clothing boutique For Love and Sapphires, and mother of four living in Virginia—is stoically bracing herself through another difficult chapter for the Tripp family. In April 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic surged around the globe, her mother, Linda, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. By the time her doctor discovered the cancer, it had already spread throughout her body. “She was either very secretive about feeling ill or it just didn’t really hit her until the very end,” says Allison. Just one week after the diagnosis, alone with Allison and Linda’s second husband, Dieter—the only two people allowed in the hospital room because of COVID restrictions—Linda died. She did not hear from any of the central characters from the Clinton scandal—but she did hear from the many of the critics: “There were so many nasty messages from people throughout the country saying, ‘Your mother deserved to die. It has been a long time coming.’”

Within seven months, Allison also lost her father and her grandmother—a shock wave of loss that is only registering now. “Last year it was just surreal with the emotions of everything and the pandemic on top of that,” says Allison. “I think all of this has hit me this year, allowing me to truly be able to mourn fully.”

When Linda died, she was working on a book with a ghostwriter about the Lewinsky days and the Clinton impeachment from her perspective. In the prologue, she explained that she was motivated by several factors, “the worst [of which] was when my granddaughter came home from school one day, many years ago, saying, ‘Omi, I didn’t know you were famous. Were you a bad person?’ I was at a loss for how to respond to this sweet six-year-old…She is 14 now but she deserves to hear the truth.” When Linda died, the book was only three-quarters finished.

This is all to say that Allison had more important matters to grapple with when it was announced that Ryan Murphy would center the third season of his American Crime Story franchise on Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, and Paula Jones. Allison has not watched the other seasons of the franchise; was not particularly familiar with the work of Sarah Paulson, the Emmy-winning actor cast as her mother; and said she was not consulted by American Crime Story during production. (Monica Lewinsky, a contributor for Vanity Fair, is billed as a producer.) So when she tuned in to Tuesday’s premiere of the series, “Exiles,” she wasn’t sure what to expect.

“I have to say—and I’m only limited to the one episode that I’ve seen—but I do think Sarah did a good job,” says Allison, speaking on Zoom from her living room. “Of course there were some inaccuracies I see as her daughter, but I think she did a good job relaying to the audience that my mother was about loyalty and integrity and doing what was right…. She captured a lot of my mom—just how smart and witty she was…. I had to laugh at a couple of lines because that’s how she got through the pain…the show did a good job digging deep to find out truly how she ticked.”

Allison says she is also impressed by the care that the show’s writer and executive producer Sarah Burgess put into piecing together Tripp’s complicated backstory. Tripp said her actions during the Lewinsky saga were influenced by her history as a civil servant, what she witnessed in the White House around Vince Foster’s death, and her concern over the Clinton administration’s behavior—a complex backstory that American Crime Story wove into its first episode.

“She lived a life that was very much about following the rules,” says Allison. “Especially being a military wife and a government employee for so long. She had the utmost integrity in her role representing her country. And I do feel that, from what I’ve seen from the show so far. Sarah Paulson was getting that across even just from those limited scenes. My mom saw corruption and wrongdoings, some cover-ups, disrespecting women. And coming from the Bush administration, which was run very differently…. My mom was always independent [politically] but I do believe that made her feel very wronged as a citizen. Just: ‘This is our country. This is our White House.’ And maybe wishing that there was more respect from the president.”

Much has been made of the lengths Paulson went to transform herself to Linda—wearing a (controversial) fat suit, a wig, prosthetic nose, and big glasses. But compared to how Linda was portrayed in her lifetime—John Goodman’s skewering on Saturday Night Live, for example—Allison found American Crime Story’s depiction suitable. “This episode portrayed her—it’s sad to say—but in a more flattering way than how she was portrayed when she was alive,” says Allison. Her mother’s looks were eviscerated by talking heads almost for sport—and, in the late ’90s, she succumbed to plastic surgery. “If you had to endure that and feel that and hear that…and it wasn’t just my mom. People laughed at and mocked Monica and Paula Jones…I think she felt compelled to soften her appearance. Because it was always just one jagged, unflattering photo after the next. They had plenty of good photography to choose from, yet they continued to revert back to just the worst photos. At the time, the messaging was, ‘Get over it, [the criticism] is not a big deal.’ But it is a big deal. That criticism would not be allowed today.”

The episode also helped jog Allison’s memory about the impeachment era, though she’s careful to clarify that she was, up until the mid-’90s, a normal self-involved teenager.

She remembers meeting Lewinsky a handful of times—and always having pleasant interactions.

She remembers a rare vacation that the Tripp family took to Lake Placid during the Lewinsky years. “We didn’t get to take vacations often between mom’s work schedule, finances, so this was a big vacation—a week in Lake Placid skiing. But somehow or another [Lewinsky] got the hotel room number and started calling. That’s when [my mom] sat my brother and I down, and said, ‘This is what’s happening. I’m sorry this is interfering with our vacation.’” At the time, Allison says, “I was young and of course, like, ‘Okay well what slope are we going on next?’”

Asked if she remembers the infamous tape recorder, Allison says those recollections are hazy—but she remembers seeing something attached to the phone on which her mom was making calls. “I didn’t ask questions and neither did my brother because, again with her, I always knew the path that she would take was the path that would do the right thing.”

Linda’s driving forces, as Allison remembers them, were 1) What’s the right thing to do? 2) How am I as a single mother going to be able to instill the right thing to do? 3) How can I keep my job, which means so much to me, even as I’m watching people being plucked out around me?

Speaking about the recordings her mother made of Lewinsky, Allison says, “She didn’t want to perjure herself. It wasn’t ever about writing a book. It wasn’t ever about cashing out. It was never about selling those tapes.” Allison claims her mother was offered houses and second homes to “stay on the path they wanted. But she didn’t want that.” Asked to clarify who “they” is, Allison says, “The administration. All I can say is that she was offered those things to quiet her.”

On the subject of Tripp’s friendship with Monica, Allison says, “I think my mom did try to protect Monica. She tried to play a motherly role to Monica and guide her. And she saw a little bit of self-destruction going on with Monica. And unfortunately, people have to kind of make their own mistakes in life, right? She felt that she was going to be forced to testify and didn’t want to perjure herself. She knew she needed hard evidence. And a lot of certain evidence had been removed from her office [after Foster’s death]. So, for whatever reason, she felt the need to do this. But again, it needs to continually be stressed that it was not for the motive painted back then.”

After Linda’s death, Allison wanted to find a way to honor her mother and establish a legacy apart from the political scandal and all the “white noise,” as Linda referred to it. Horses had been a through line in Allison’s relationship with her mother—dating back to when the family lived in Holland, and Linda enrolled a five-year-old Allison in lessons. Allison took to it immediately, and when the family returned to the U.S., she says her mother made sacrifices so that Allison could continue with the expensive sport in spite of Tripp’s government salary. Though Linda rarely hopped into the saddle herself—“she didn’t give herself enough credit athletically”—she committed completely as a mother, helping Allison clean out horse stalls, tend to the animals, and cheer her on at shows. “She had a big commute into D.C. and had to wake up quite early to take a long bus ride over and back,” says Allison. “So it was exhausting. She didn’t have time for anything else, but that was fine with her because that’s what she wanted. Her life was children and work.”

Allison says that neither she nor her mother took part in traditional therapy following the scandal, but rather found healing through family and horses. “She was a very private person,” says Allison. “I live 10 minutes down the road from the farm so we would have dinner together all the time, lunch together. She would help me with the kids. But being out in nature on this gorgeous farm with horses, being able to drive up her driveway and see these horses just loving life, eating grass, being in the barn—that was her therapy too.”

Earlier this year, Allison created the Linda Rose Foundation, a charitable equine therapy program to help children heal from trauma by working with horses. The farm is located in The Plains, Virginia, and has already begun offering classes. “It’s geared toward lower-income families that don’t have the means to go out and take lessons—to get them out and experience the horses, the care, and purpose that they give. My mom was so supportive of me and I’ve seen so many instances where horses have brought therapy.”

In her later years, Linda apologized to Allison and her brother about the media scandal that engulfed the family. “I didn’t feel like she needed to apologize though,” says Allison, tearing up. “Because as your mom that is your worst nightmare to put your child through that…it brings me a great sense of pride to be her daughter. I’m just very thankful for the time I had with her, for all she did teach me, and my kids.”

Allison recorded the first episode of American Crime Story and plans to let her children—ages 16, 13, 11, and six—see it. “My 16-year-old is pretty savvy. She’s done research,” says Allison. “But my kids have always been very proud of her, and standing up for what is right.”

Allison hopes that the limited series continues to “humanize my mother. So far, again only in episode one, they’ve shown her as a hard-working, loyal, gritty woman who has a lot of integrity.” That portrayal alone—even if it amounts to a small part of the ensemble episode—is more than Allison feels her mother got in her lifetime. “I can [imagine] my mother’s reactions in my head,” says Allison. “To be perfectly honest, I think she would be blown away by that episode and how they portrayed her…she always said that the truth eventually does come out.”

“That’s the biggest thing, and that’s why it saddens me,” says Allison. “My mom didn’t get to see this story finally coming out in a more realistic lens and not a vilifying lens. At least my children will get to see it because they too have seen and heard about a lot of that hurt through the years. Hopefully the series will continue on this path. But it gave me a sense of pride to watch her being portrayed this way. I know it will give my children that as well.”

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