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“If you were worried about dragging yourself in the mud,” asks the lawyer Alina Habba“Why would you choose to sue Donald Trump?”
Calm and steady, It’s Jean Carroll He removed his glasses and answered firmly: “Because he called me a liar, he called me a liar, and I couldn’t let it go.”
Carroll’s private placement from 2022 has been revealed for the first time Ask E JeanIvy Meeropol’s documentary about a strong, courageous and sharp-witted woman who refuses to be cast as a victim or a bit player in Trump’s cinematic universe.
CarrollThe 82-year-old journalist, author and consultant is the only woman to beat Trump in court, which she did not once but twice. In 2019 he claimed that he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room in a department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s, leading to two criminal charges.
Ask E Jean he answers the question about why she waited so many years to come forward and make a convincing case that she belongs to the “silent generation” – a group of women who had to endure the criminal behavior of men with a shrug and a smile.
“I was born in 1943,” he explains in the film. “We are a proud, moving, shaking generation. We didn’t complain, it would never have happened to me. We just smiled and moved on. That’s how we did things.”
Carroll is a former Miss Indiana University and Miss Cheerleader USA who became the first female editor of Playboy magazine and wrote Elle’s “Ask E Jean” column from 1993 to 2019. She has hosted her own TV show, written for one season of Saturday Night Live and written. invalid record of fellow gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson.
When Trump abused her in the dining room at Bergdorf GoodmanCarroll did what countless women of her time did, confiding in trusted friends — author Lisa Birnbach and TV reporter Carol Martin — and then buried the memory. And his first reaction, when he tried to laugh, often turned out to be a weapon against him.
Meeropol handles this sympathetically, showing how laughter served as a shield against the needy. “It’s not being forgiven and a lot of women have realized that in themselves,” she says via Zoom from her home in Cold Spring, New York. “Of course, you can try to laugh it off because it’s — ‘Wait a minute, what’s going on here? I don’t want this guy to get angry. It sounds good but it gets messed up in the way we talk about these things.'”
Carroll’s trip to court was not planned. He initially compiled a list of “hidden men” – including Trump – because the #MeToo movement had a strong impact on him, and his readers were asking for guidance in coming forward with their own stories of abuse.
It was Trump’s actions that lit the fuse. Standing on the White House lawn, the US president – who has been accused of sexual immorality and about 27 women, which he has denied – calling him a liar and a “job of abuse” and insisting he is “not my type”. For Carroll, who spent decades building a career on his own credibility and wit, the constant denigration was constant.
He agreed with him Robert Kaplancivil litigator described by his colleagues as a “street fighter” and a “force of nature”. In 2023 the judge found Trump suitable for rape and defamation but she didn’t know he raped her, giving Carroll $5m.
At the time, Trump was shown a 1987 photo of him and his first wife, Ivana Trump, and Carroll and Carroll’s husband at the time, John Johnsonat a public event in New York. Trump did not recognize Carroll as his ex-wife, Marla Maples, undermined his “not my race” defense.
In 2024 a second judge awarded Carroll $83.3m for defamation of Trump over his continued social media activity – intended as a punitive measure to prevent further defamation. But Trump’s lawyers are seeking to overturn the verdicts and Carroll has yet to receive a cent.
Carroll says in the film: “When I charged Donald Trump about being raped, I didn’t know what I was doing. The mudslides have been unbelievable.”
In this period, getting him to agree with the literature required the persistence that Meeropol, 57, has excelled in the work of exploring the dynamics of human and political life. At first, Carroll wanted nothing to do with it.
“I was lucky because he told everybody – I don’t use sarcasm – but the line he said from his assistant to my manager was, ‘I’m fine, eat my shoe.’ I find it so funny because it’s so old.“
The breakthrough came when a friend forced Carroll to watch the popular HBO documentary Meeropol. A bully. Coward. A victim. The story of Roy Cohnabout the famous lawyer who advised the younger Trump and sued Meeropol’s grandfather, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. A Zoom meeting ensued, the connection was made immediately and Carroll said: “Okay Ivy, let’s do it.”
Meeropol found a woman who was still active, good-looking, funny, generous in her support and, despite her high social status in New York, protective of her privacy. “He needs his time alone; he is a writer; that’s what he likes to do. He likes to stay in his house with his dogs, drink tea and write or report. A lot of things he had to endure are trials and all publicity was difficult for him.”
But getting the money to support the project was difficult. Investors and studios repeatedly rejected the film, blaming Trump’s fatigue, many #MeToo films or Carroll not being popular enough. Meeropol said: “I was surprised and disappointed. I thought, we have the most amazing person in history, maybe.”
The film finally secured independent financing in 2023, with a budget of less than $2m. Meanwhile Meeropol and his team were digging through Carroll’s storage and basement, rescuing boxes of dusty VHS tapes.
“The next day they called me and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this. The basement flooded.'” The recovered tapes, along with 25 other segments unearthed by NBCUniversal, provided a snapshot of Carroll’s 1990s television show, which aired on the television station America’s Talking, hosted by Roger Ailes.
Looking at the footage, Meeropol was struck by how progressive Carroll’s advice was at the time. “She’s giving amazing advice at a time when women didn’t hear that.” Like, ‘You’re not supposed to get married at 30. Who told you that? Don’t beat yourself up for not getting married at 30. If you’re bored at home because your husband goes to work and you drop your kid off at school, go to college.’
“It’s really interesting to see because it’s the time capsule of the mid-90s. As E Jean says, women were finally talking about their careers and what they wanted to do with their lives, which wasn’t something she’d experienced except that she was this trailblazer who made her own way when she arrived in New York City and started her career in the male-dominated world of magazines.”
Meeropol was determined not to make Carroll a victim. “He rejects these words himself – even ‘survivor.’ Sometimes I don’t know what language to use because it is modern but he is against that. Gisele Pelicot (a French woman who revoked her right to anonymity as a multiple rape victim) has been saying about Epstein’s survivors coming out: the shame must be exchanged.
“I thought about this a lot with E Jean. He himself represents the part of shame because he sits there and says, yes, I flirt with Donald Trump, I tried to laugh and I like men. It’s refreshing. The worst thing for him would be – he says in his show when he talks to a girl who talks about being raped.“
Meeropol believes the document speaks volumes about one woman’s experience. “We cannot allow these issues to be covered,” insists the officer. “The Trump administration or whoever is hiding in the Epstein files? I’m sick and so is E Jean. Most of us, men and women, are fed up so explain things and show the facts.”
