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Monica Lewinsky Reveals She Considered Suicide Following Bill Clinton Affair

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WASHINGTON (CBS) -- Monica Lewinsky is revealing new details about her affair with former President Bill Clinton in a new television series.

"He, you know, paid a lot of attention to me," Lewinsky said on A&E's "The Clinton Affair."

Lewinsky says she still feels ashamed of how she behaved after meeting Clinton as an intern at the White House in 1995.

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"My underwear had showing my thong underwear, and I thought, 'Well, I'll up the game,'" said Lewinsky. "It was unnoticeable to everybody else in the room, but he noticed."

Once the affair began, Lewinsky says parts of the relationship moved out of her control.

"If he called me, I couldn't call him back," Lewinsky said on the show. "I was completely at his mercy in that way."

Three years later, the affair made national headlines.

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Clinton eventually regained his footing on the public stage. However, Lewinsky revealed she considered suicide.

"I was mortified and what this was going to do to my family," explained Lewinsky.

Elura Nanos, an attorney and columnist who's written about Lewinsky for the website Law and Crime, says the public's perception of Lewinsky is changing in the "Me Too" era.

"Monica Lewinsky has recast herself as someone who was done harm by Clinton, by his presidency, by the press, by the public," said Nanos. "To some degree, she has flipped that script, but Bill Clinton is still a very powerful man. And as a result, she still does not have the full ability to rid herself of everything that went into vilifying her for decades."

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Lewinsky gave the keynote presentation earlier this month at a conference in Philadelphia hosted by The Renfrew Center Foundation earlier this month.

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