Back in the mid-90s in New York City, E. Jean Carroll was an accomplished gonzo journalist and a funny, sharp advice columnist for Elle magazine — “Auntie E” to her readers. She also had a daily cable TV advice show. She was so recognizable that when Donald Trump ran into her at the Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue early one evening he said, as she has recalled, “Hey, you’re that advice lady!” She was 52 at the time.
Still, I confess that I didn’t know who E. Jean Carroll was when I saw her on the cover of New York magazine in 2019, when she told that story of meeting Mr. Trump and how the encounter led to a sexual assault. By then, he had become the president of the United States. After the article was published, Mr. Trump denied her account, and she sued him for defamation for saying that she was “totally lying” and that he had never met her and suggesting that her accusation was politically and financially motivated. In 2022, after New York State passed the Adult Survivors Act, reopening the time period during which people could bring a claim of sexual abuse, she sued him again, adding a claim of battery to a new defamation claim based on statements Mr. Trump made that year.
In 2019, I contacted her and asked if she would consider being the subject of a documentary. I had a gut instinct that she was a voice in the wake of the #MeToo movement that we needed to hear. Little did I know about the wildly uncertain and, at times, terrifying ride I was about to go on with E. Jean and her lead attorney, Robbie Kaplan, during which I had a window into the challenges people can face when crossing Mr. Trump.
I called it the Trump effect.
E. Jean and I spent the pandemic getting to know each other, and later I did some filming at her home as she prepared to take Mr. Trump to court on her claims of sexual abuse and defamation (which he had continued to deny). E. Jean’s lawyers were less than thrilled. The last thing they wanted was a camera crew hanging around their client, especially because Mr. Trump argued that E. Jean was somehow benefiting from the attention.
I attended the trial in 2023 as an observer. On the third day, while she was on the stand, one of E. Jean’s lawyers asked her, “Has anyone reached out to you, Ms. Carroll, about potentially filming a documentary about you?” She said yes, many filmmakers had. She said she ignored them all, except one — me. I was shaking with fear when she said my name. (No, I wasn’t paying her to participate in the film.)
The jury in that trial found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The jury awarded E. Jean $5 million in damages. The next day Mr. Trump appeared on a rowdy CNN town hall event and mocked E. Jean again. He wondered aloud, “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?” He called her a “wack job” to laughs from the audience.
E. Jean and Ms. Kaplan filed an amendment to the original 2019 defamation lawsuit, claiming Trump had defamed her again. While the trial for that case, which began on Jan. 16, 2024, was going on, Mr. Trump continued to go after E. Jean on Truth Social. On Jan. 26, a jury ordered Mr. Trump to pay $83 million, though an appeals court recently ruled that payment will be put on hold pending action by the Supreme Court.
As we approached completion of the film, a series of problems started arising with the documentary project. We abruptly lost the rights to a song we’d been using for months as E. Jean’s theme song. We had to reschedule the mix, hire a composer to write a new song and spend more of our dwindling budget to do so. Some of our producers, and most upsetting, crew members with green cards, decided to pull their names from the credits.
By summer 2025, a few months into the second Trump administration, “Ask E. Jean” was ready for the world to see. I felt optimistic. The Telluride Film Festival gave us a dream launchpad for the film on Labor Day weekend.
We were told how exciting the film was and what a hoot E. Jean is. Yet we received no offers from distributors at the festival to release it.
We then picked up the best documentary award at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, an audience award at Sun Valley.
We thought we had a deal from a distributor, but then we were ghosted. To be clear, the landscape for most documentary filmmakers is grim. Many award-winning and excellent films do not get distribution or streaming deals. Yet given everything we had to go through to make the documentary, the collapse of the deal felt suspect. I blamed the Trump effect. But we’ll probably never really know.
Another film out of Telluride from a year earlier that the big studios and streamers wouldn’t touch was “The Apprentice,” starring Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump. (It was later picked up by an independent distributor). It seemed to me to be part of a larger pattern of people being afraid to cross the Trump administration, which is quick to go after its critics — from Jimmy Kimmel to “60 Minutes” to “The View.”
Stephen Colbert’s final episode, a premature retirement that many believe was politically motivated, will run Thursday. As it happens, the next day “Ask E. Jean” will open in New York. Our band of brave and generous people, mostly women, who invested in our film, regrouped and we are working with the independent distributor Abramorama to release the film across the country.
We are all hungry for inspiration. I didn’t know how much I craved it when I first reached out to E. Jean. Along the way, I was able to see how women forging bonds together can be a powerful antidote to fear. I saw how we can stand up to bullies and win. I saw how inspiration spreads and can take on a life of its own. The women of the #MeToo movement told their stories, which then gave E. Jean strength to tell hers. And now E. Jean telling her story provides strength to countless others, myself included.
Ivy Meeropol is the maker of the documentaries “Heir to an Execution,” “Bully. Coward. Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn” and “Ask E. Jean.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post The Truth About E. Jean Carroll appeared first on New York Times.
