MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 22, 2026: ASK E. JEAN

For anyone who hears the name “E. Jean Carroll” and thinks “that woman who sued Donald Trump,” do yourself a favor and watch Ivy Meeropol’s engaging documentary Ask E. Jean sooner than later. Because, yes, Carroll did do that, but she’s also done so much more (let’s just say that you don’t get nicknamed “the female Hunter S. Thompson” for being boring), and she deserves to be just as well known for all of that, too.

Meeropol weaves Carroll’s personal story together with the details of her two cases against Trump, whom, Carroll said in a 2019 New York magazine article called Hideous Men, raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. His denial of the accusations (and cruel, derogatory public comments about her) led Carroll to sue him for defamation twice — in 2019 and 2022 — and win both times. But before her path ever crossed with Trump’s, Carroll had made a name for herself as a bold freelance writer for magazines like Playboy (she was their first-ever female contributing editor), Outside, and Esquire, and, eventually, an outspoken advice columnist for Elle starting in 1993.

After having grown up in the Midwest (she was a champion cheerleader and won the title of Miss Indiana 1963), Carroll moved to Manhattan in the early 1980s and fell in love with the city’s chaos and glamour. Her reputation as a gonzo journalist helped raise her profile in New York — she was a writer for Saturday Night Live for a season — and she ended up parlaying her advice column into a cable talk show from 1994-96. Meeropol includes many clips from that show (also called Ask E. Jean) in the film, underlining the fact that Carroll has always been a staunch supporter of other women, encouraging them to be independent and honest and always believing their stories of assault and abuse.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that so many people doubt Carroll’s own assertions involving Trump. A montage of the deluge of hateful comments she received after her first suit against him — both in public and privately — is both heartbreaking and infuriating. And then there’s the fact that she still hasn’t seen any of the many millions of dollars Trump legally owes her for the damage he caused her. Carroll does her best to put on a brave face and brush it all off, but Meeropol includes moments of poignant vulnerability that make it very clear that the writer whose thirst for adventure once took her all over the globe has been suffering from trauma for decades. But E. Jean Carroll has never been one to fade into the background, and it’s also clear that she has no intention of doing that now. Brava! — Betsy Bozdech

Team #MOTW’s comments:

Sandie Angulo Chen: Documentary filmmaker Ivy Meeropol’s Ask E. Jean chronicles the life, career, and (literal) trials of E. Jean Carroll, the journalist and advice columnist who won two court cases against Donald Trump after he sexually assaulted and later defamed her. Meeropol follows Carroll’s journey from Indiana University national cheerleading champion to Montana freelance journalist to one of New York’s most celebrated writers, once dubbed “the female Hunter S. Thompson.” While the documentary delves into Carroll’s assault and subsequent trials against Trump, the most compelling aspects are its portrait of her decades-long career in journalism, advice columns, and television. Even at her most vulnerable, Carroll, now over 80, is a vivacious, courageous woman whose story is finally told in this thoughtful film.

Nell Minow: E. Jean Carroll says that she inherited two opposing qualities from her parents, so she is both “a wimp” and “a hardnose.” In this film, we see her as both, a wimp when she is assaulted by Donald Trump and insists on staying silent about it and a hardnose when, decades later, she goes public by suing him for sexual assault and defamation. “We were the chin up, move on, grin and bear it generation,” she says. Then after years of giving other women advice and seeing in the Harvey Weinstein story how pervasive abuse is, she goes public, and when Trump calls her a liar, she sues him. Well-chosen archival footage and interviews show us that she finally took her own advice not to give anyone the power to make you the victim.

Monique Jones Ask E. Jean illustrates the type of vibrant, self-possessed woman E. Jean Carroll is. What I find most impressive is how she was determined to keep her vibrancy after her sexual assault by Donald Trump. Her deposition about the assault is hard to watch, at least it was to me. It’s even harder to watch Trump in his deposition, but for much different, much grosser reasons. But seeing Carroll take her trauma and turn it into an arrow against the man who could have ruined her life is admirable. I loved seeing her use her journalistic talent to start reporting on Trump’s sexual allegations and hitting the pavement to get victims to speak on the record, rally her friends to testify on her behalf, and fight against the big boys in the industry (and the country). No one should have to experience assault. Ask E. Jean is a rallying cry for women to reclaim their power from any man who has hurt them in any capacity.

Leslie Combemale What is exceptional about Ivy Meeropol’s documentary is the way it bases E Jean’s story in her own life, her own personality, and experience. Ultimately it is about, as they say, “speaking truth to power”, but it does so firmly anchored in a baby boomer’s perspective. E Jean speaks for so many women who came up during and just after a time when we were just working to get to the top. That meant dealing with men’s rage as just an everyday experience. Ask E Jean as a film makes a strong case that E Jean represents a major shift in what women, of any age, will countenance. That is a huge deal. Will the folks who need to be watching this documentary in order to make that shift (I’m looking at you, conservative men) do so? Probably not, but that doesn’t make this film any less vital a piece of history.