The First Affair

McLaughlin and Krauss craft another narrative around tabloid headlines, this time exploring a White House intern’s downfall. After graduating from college into the worst job market since the Great Depression, Jamie McAllister lands a prestigious internship at the White House Department of Scheduling and Advance, hoping to pad her resume while looking for a paying position. The hours are long, and she doesn’t quite fit in with the straitlaced D.C. crowd, but Jamie has always been a high achiever and performs well. During a tense government shutdown, she and the other interns are called in to cover for furloughed employees, and an unexpected after-hours encounter with President Greg Rutland ends with a kiss, touching off a steamy affair. Suddenly, the president is calling Jamie at all hours of the night and inventing excuses for her to visit the Oval Office. When their secret inevitably escapes, Jamie finds herself enmeshed in a scandal that threatens to destroy not just the Rutland presidency but her career, friendships, and family. Jamie is initially hard to sympathize with, but her unreliability as a narrator and complexity as a character add an interesting dimension to a story that might otherwise have seemed trashy and exploitative. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment. (Aug.)