E. Jean Carroll has been many things: a journalist, an advice columnist, a raconteur, a television personality and, most recently, the woman who sued President Trump twice — and won.
So it was not a surprise when the documentarian Ivy Meeropol came asking to make a film about her life and her lawsuits, in which juries found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse. The response Meeropol received from the colorful octogenarian was also not surprising: She’d rather eat her shoe.
“I’m an old, old lady,” Carroll said in a video interview. “I live in a hovel on a mountain. Nobody in the world is going to be interested in old E. Jean. It just didn’t make sense to me.”
It made perfect sense to Meeropol, who had spent her career tracking the lives and deaths of her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Jewish American couple convicted of espionage and executed in 1953. She made an “Heir to an Execution: A Granddaughter’s Story” in 2004 and a 2019 film on Roy Cohn, a prosecutor in her grandparents’ case and a consigliere to Trump. Carroll’s story, in some ways, would complete a trilogy.
Once Carroll saw Meeropol’s “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn,” she changed her mind. “I thought, Ivy Meeropol gets the evil of Donald Trump,” she said.
The two are now ready to share their story. “Ask E. Jean” will debut at the Telluride Film Festival, which takes place in a Colorado box canyon over Labor Day weekend and is often seen as an early bellwether of the Oscar race.
Meeropol and Carroll are looking for a buyer to give the film a wide release, and their timing couldn’t be more fraught.
For the past year, documentaries with a political bent have had a tough time selling. Last year’s Oscar winner for best documentary feature, “No Other Land,” never found a buyer. And many media companies are reaching agreements with the current administration out of fear of retribution. In the past year, both ABC and CBS settled lawsuits with Trump. ABC paid $16 million after the anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately characterized a jury verdict in Carroll’s sexual abuse lawsuit against Trump. CBS paid the same amount to settle a lawsuit involving a “60 Minutes” interview with former presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Still, Meeropol and Carroll remain optimistic their film will sell.
“I want the world,” Meeropol said. “I want a theatrical release. I want a big streamer to embrace us and put it out there.” She said she was hopeful that Telluride would be a good starting point. “A lot of buyers will be there, and I’m excited for them to see it. I believe there’s a big audience for this.”
Telluride is no stranger to hot-button films. The festival, now in its 52nd year, doesn’t announce its lineup until the day before it starts, a factor that keeps a lot of protest away. Its hard-to-get-to locale and decidedly progressive bent have made it a haven to many filmmakers.
But the festival’s director, Julie Huntsinger, agreed that “Ask E. Jean” would have a tough time finding a buyer. “Everyone is going to be afraid of that,” she said, before noting that accepting the film was “an easy yes.”
“I want young women to look up to her and understand that you can be sassy, smart, funny, cultured, irreverent, a little edgy, but also in touch with your femininity,” she said. “I just think she’s such a cool person and beyond brave.”
The film tells the story of Carroll’s life, from her early days as a gonzo journalist who was often compared to Hunter S. Thompson (she once took Fran Lebowitz camping) to her stint as a host of a 1990s television advice show for women, “Ask E. Jean.” The central theme: Men don’t determine your value.
In one revelatory moment of the documentary, Carroll admits that after Trump sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, she never had sex again. She didn’t realize how lasting the trauma of the event was until she met with a therapist ahead of the trial.
“I have given up one of the great gifts of life,” she said in the interview with The Times, adding that the therapist “made me realize everything I had lost.” She went on, in reference to the $5 million sexual-abuse jury verdict: “That is one of the reasons the damages were so high in that trial. Trump causes damage wherever he goes. I’m just one little tiny bit of it.”
(Trump has denied her accusations, and in December, a federal appeals court rejected his appeal to overturn the $5 million judgment. In June, a lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that the judgment in the $83.3 million defamation case should be tossed out because of presidential immunity. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the film.)
Carroll, who released a memoir in June that chronicles her legal battles with the president, found participating in the documentary to be cathartic, though she said she was ready for “a sewage flood of threats” should it get the release the filmmaker is hoping for.
She is not afraid, she said: “I don’t care if they shoot me. I don’t care. I’ve had a great life.”
Besides, she added, the documentary has given her a better understanding of the film world. “I decided this morning about the difference between movies and documentaries,” she said. “A movie is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and men come and save her. A documentary is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and then makes that monster pay $83 million.”
Nicole Sperling covers Hollywood and the streaming industry. She has been a reporter for more than two decades.
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