Ryan Murphy’s Clinton impeachment American Crime Story could be ready for the 2018 midterms

In a Vox podcast, Murphy revealed he plans to begin filming later this year.

It’s possible that in 2018, citizens of the United States could be voting in midterm elections and then firing up Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story dedicated to the Bill Clinton impeachment saga when they get home.

In Todd VanDerWerff’s new Vox podcast, I Think You’re Interesting, Murphy talked about the upcoming Clinton impeachment season in particular, and gave us his best guess as to when the season would begin filming.

“Ironically, right when the election was happening, on American Crime Story we were working on the Monica Lewinsky/Linda Tripp story,” Murphy said. “We’re making that series. We’re gonna start shooting later this year.”

Shooting commencing at the end of 2017 means we could conceivably see Murphy’s interpretation of Clinton’s impeachment come to our television screens by fall 2018.

Murphy’s show about the Clinton administration premiering around the same time as the midterm elections — which essentially function as President Donald Trump’s progress report — would be an interesting, perhaps even poetic, clash of culture and politics.

What’s even more intriguing, though, is hearing how Murphy plans to frame that story: He tells VanDerWerff that he sees it as the beginning of an anti-Clinton movement, one that would factor into the 2016 election.

“That story was really about the birth of a certain movement. The alt-right movement in some ways — a movement that was so riled up against the Clintons,” he said.

The Clinton impeachment anthology is currently scheduled to be American Crime Story’s fourth season (though that may change, depending on shooting schedules), and would follow stories about the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace and the government’s horrendous response to Hurricane Katrina. According to Vanity Fair, the Versace season of the show will begin shooting this month, while the season dedicated to Hurricane Katrina seems to be finalizing its cast — Matthew Broderick’s casting was announced a week ago.

That’s a lot of American Crime Story to shoot and get on the air before the impeachment anthology. (At August's Television Critics Association summer press tour, FX Networks president John Landgraf said he hoped to air two American Crime Story seasons in 2018, since none will air in 2017.) But both the shooting schedule and the framing that Murphy told VanDerWerff he has planned for the fourth installment suggest he might be aiming to get American Crime Story: Impeachment on the air around the same time Americans are heading toward the voting booths in 2018.

I Think You’re Interesting is available on iTunes and Android apps, or you can stream the entire interview here.