How Ivy Meeropol Made 'Ask E. Jean,' the Most Powerful—And Delightful—Documentary You’ll See This Year

The documentary filmmaker Ivy Meeropol had never heard the name "E. Jean Carroll" when she read the writer's now-famous essay accusing Donald Trump of assault. Meeropol remembers where she was when she saw the piece had been published in New York Magazine. That feature was an excerpt from Carroll's book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, and it described an incident in the mid-1990s in which she said Trump attacked her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.

I remember the essay's publication, too. Except I knew just who E. Jean was. I grew up reading her and had worked with her at ELLE magazine. She was its advice columnist. I was fresh out of college and dumbfounded to be in her orbit. She was, and remains, one of the most iconic advice columnists of all time. Plus, a towering wit and a hilarious interlocutor. I was walking out of an appointment when I saw a barrage of texts. Had I seen the article? I devoured it in one sour gulp, awed that E. Jean had found the words to describe something so violating without compromising even one iota of her usual flair and humor.

After the article—and her book—came out in 2019, Trump would claim the assault she described could not have happened because E. Jean was not his type. She took him to court over that comment and several others, claiming that his disparagement of her amounted to defamation. Juries agreed. In 2025, a federal appeals court later upheld the $83.3 million judgment against him. It was and remains one of the few times the legal system has managed to impose a real and personal penalty on Donald Trump.

Back in 2019, Meeropol was astounded and impressed. She reached out to E. Jean long before the trial started, hoping to convince her to participate in a film. She succeeded, and the result is the documentary Ask E. Jean, so named after her brilliant and longstanding ELLE column. It's now playing in select theaters nationwide, premiering in May 2026—the same month that news broke that the Justice Department would open a criminal investigation into its subject, exploring whether E. Jean had lied under oath about how she was financing her case against the president. The film has continued to expand to new theaters in the weeks since.

The timing is "suspicious," Meeropol tells Marie Claire. And also frightening and shocking and, in a sense, validating. This film—and its message—matters.

At the beginning of their collaboration, Meeropol remembers E. Jean telling her that one of the things that most hurt her was that Trump had reduced her entire life to three minutes in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. So Meeropol made sure the film is more expansive. It's a recounting of her singular life and career. Her trailblazing work. And of course, her ultimate triumph.

Below, Meeropol tells Marie Claire how she convinced E. Jean to agree to a documentary, the challenge of getting the project off the ground, and how she nailed its tone.

Marie Claire: Let’s start with the obvious: How did this story end up on your radar and why did you decide to make a documentary about it?

Ivy Meeropol: I read the excerpt in New York Magazine from [E. Jean’s book,] What Do We Need Men For? And somehow, I didn't really know who E. Jean was, but I was really struck by how she told that story. It wasn't just about the assault in Bergdorf Goodman. It was about her voice and her writing. I just found it so galvanizing. She has the most distinct voice, and she's hilarious and a vivid storyteller. I was horrified and kind of entertained at the same time. I felt like, God, I really needed that, and who is this person? So that was the hook.

It took a little while to persuade her to even speak with me. A mutual friend actually said to her, “Ivy Meeropol is trying to get to you. You should consider her. You should look at her work.” So E. Jean watched the film I made about Roy Cohn, because that had really just come out the same year. And then she watched my first film, Heir to an Execution, which is so personal [about the execution of my grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg]. So it's almost like she got to know me a little bit through that, and then she decided she would speak with me. After that, in true E. Jean fashion, she jumped into it.

MC: You mention the style of her writing, which is so funny and so enraging. Early in the film, there is that moment where E. Jean remembers telling her friend what happened. She says she thought her friend would laugh. You see it almost dawning on her how other people are going to see this story.

IM: Yes, and that's such an important point, because you almost can't say you're laughing without having people say, "Oh, well then you must've been having a good time." It’s a dangerous thing to admit that you were laughing and only to admit it, but to say, "This is totally normal. This is how a lot of women cope."

MC: Totally, but also I think there’s now a pressure on women to tell the worst stories in the worst possible way to make it clear how bad things have gotten. It's almost like we lose a certain kind of right of authorship because the only thing that breaks through is total despair and heartbreak. You obviously decided that you wanted to keep humor in this story, and E. Jean made that same decision. How much did you grapple with the tone of the film?

IM: You're putting your finger on what made the edit and the actual construction of this film so challenging. It was like, Okay, how are we laughing now and then we're crying here or horrified here or enraged? But we had to do that because that's the truth. She's just a brilliant writer. When I started to spend time with her, we were just laughing all the time. She makes me laugh. I sometimes make her laugh. I felt like we needed to see the whole picture.

And why not? I mean, it's not like we've stopped laughing because we've had horror in our lives. That's E. Jean's bigger message in a lot of ways too. She's like, "I'm never supposed to have had fun again?" There isn't one right way to be a victim.

MC: At the same time, the film really makes clear that E. Jean had to put a lot of thought into how she presented herself. She has a hairdresser. She needs to wear the right clothes. Why did you want to include those scenes of her preparing for the trial?

IM: We're not supposed to care about our looks, but everyone cares. And not only that, it was essential for her. The team had to make sure that the jury saw who she was because they were getting all this input from Trump saying, "She's not my type, and she's older." And how do we imagine that she was attractive to him? So she kept showing pictures of her looking incredibly gorgeous. Her clothes became armor.

I could never have predicted, of course, what exactly she would say about it or that it would be so powerful to hear her say, "I had to look fuckable." It's just so E. Jean. When the film screens, you can hear the gasps in the audience. There's uneasy laughter; sometimes cheering. It's real, and it's powerful.

MC: You could have made the film only focused on the trial, but you really told this full story of E. Jean's life and career. I grew up reading her writing, but I had no idea she had a talk show. I didn't know she was on Oprah. How did you decide how to frame her in the documentary and how much to include of her life before the trial?

IM: I really wanted to show that she was ahead of her time and that she really was a self-made woman. She had all these very traditional female roles: cheerleader, sorority sister, beauty queen. She married young, moved to Montana. But the minute she had an opportunity, she was working. She had this dream. She leaves her marriage. She goes to New York. She becomes one of the first female editors at these male-dominated magazines and a gonzo journalist.

I wanted to show that she was someone who was pushing the boundaries for women in that time period and still was subject to this incredible degree of sexism. To me, she was representative. Through her whole experience, we're able to understand this trajectory of feminism. How far we've come, but also where it stops and where it's almost worse than ever, from the exploitation of women and children's bodies to rape culture becoming normalized.

MC: In a way, this story is ongoing. You couldn't have anticipated that the Department of Justice would be opening an investigation into E. Jean. How did you respond to that news?

IM: When I first heard it, I was shocked. I mean, I shouldn't be, but I was. I was worried. I was worried about her. But I do feel like it's even more important that we're releasing this, because he's calling her a liar again—again. This film is the antidote to those accusations. I would like to find one person who comes out of watching this film and doesn't believe her. We use the actual depositions; he's under oath, and she is honest. So yes, I am glad the film is here to meet this moment.

MC: It's expensive to make and release a documentary. We know that so many companies are afraid of running afoul of this administration. Did you find that people were afraid of the story that you were telling?

IM: Well, those dynamics definitely affected how long it took to come together. Look, I had really hoped that I would be able to go to a streamer and get a budget and really just focus on the creative and the hard work of making a film like this. That didn't happen. I don't know if it was fear at that point, because I don't know if he'd fully established himself as this vengeful, erratic, dangerous person. But I do think there was a feeling that people were kind of burnt out on Trump and burnt out on MeToo. I heard a lot, "Its moment is over. It had its moment." But to me this wasn't even a MeToo story. This was a singular story about E. Jean. There was hesitation. I was confronted with it over and over while we were making the film, as we tried to find people who would support us. And when we were locking the picture, there were people who wanted their names off for various reasons—personal, political, a partner or a husband or a wife telling them, "I don't like this. I'm nervous about it."

It had an effect on those of us who stayed put. But it also made us feel even more like, "This is even more important." It just becomes more and more important.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.