E. Jean Carroll has finally collected settlement money from Donald Trump after various appeals. The 82-year-old writer and one-time Elle Magazine advice columnist defeated Trump in court twice after accusing him of sexual assault in a department store dressing room in the mid-’90s. She was awarded $5 million in damages in 2023 by a jury that found Trump guilty of sexual abuse. The following year, she won another $83 million in a defamation case.
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney said: “Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”
“Ask E. Jean,” Ivy Meeropol’s documentary on Carroll’s remarkable life and courtroom triumphs, launched at Telluride over a year ago, then opened in May at the start of a four-month theatrical run in 100 theaters around the country via service distributor Abramorama. “Ask E. Jean” also partnered with Theorem Media to fill more than 750 watch parties across 47 states in a single-night virtual cinema event. The film’s social media campaign, also produced in partnership with Theorem, reached nearly 3.5 million people, driving organic views more than six times higher than paid, and is currently a Shorty Awards Finalist (Instagram Campaign).
The movie releases digitally on October 15, in time to remind documentary branch Oscar voters to watch it.
The film was hard to finance, and no major distributor would touch it. But it finally got made because Oscar-nominated producer Laura Bickford (“Traffic”) knows her way around independent financing.
Once Carroll agreed in 2019 to participate in a documentary on her life, Meeropol thought she could go directly to HBO, where she had made “Heir to an Execution,” among other films. No go. That reaction was across the board.
E. Jean Carroll, Laura Bickford, and Ivy Meeropol at Middleburg Film Festival 2025.
At this stage, Carroll hadn’t yet gone to trial. Meeropol realized she needed to develop the project and show people what the story was. She landed a development deal with Concordia Studios; they went out with a pitch reel and deck. Luckily, Bickford knew how to raise independent financing for her scripted movies (“Margin Call”) with equity investors and donors. Impact partners came in as well.
Initially, Carroll resisted making the movie, but was impressed by Meeropol’s 2019 HBO film “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn.” “I hated the idea of anybody following me around,” she told me at the Middleburg Film Festival a year ago. “What convinced me was the Roy Cohn film [Meeropol’s ‘Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn’]. That is the man who created Donald Trump, and I was breath-taken by the movie. I thought, ‘Oh, here it all is black and white. This is where Donald Trump came from.’ So, what am I going to say? I can’t say no to Ivy. So, that was it.”
After being a journalist herself, holding her own with the likes of Fran Lebowitz, being interrogated was a strange feeling for Carroll. “I liked it once I was into it,” she said. “It was fun to have it turned around. It was enjoyable. I hate what I look like on screen, of course, but I like the process. It was fascinating.”
Carroll’s other asset is that she’s a style queen, not unlike Diane Keaton, with the belts, hats, and big skirts. (She was once married to New York anchorman John Johnson. “He’s still very supportive,” said Carroll.)
And it helped to have extra support from the film team while she went through this extraordinary courtroom experience in the public eye. “Good, therapeutic, because I don’t like to think about anything,” she said. “I’m not one to dwell. All I do, I take action. I don’t cogitate, I don’t ruminate. I’m always like a shark moving forward, and Ivy’s thumb had to slow me down to think about it, so it helped.”
She also had attorney Roberta Kaplan and her lawyers to help her wade through embarrassing depositions listing her many lovers. “It’s hard to get ahead where you’re constantly overloaded with these advances with these honeys, so difficult, and yet every woman here,” said Carroll (gesturing to me, Meeropol and Bickford), “did it despite the drawback of being loaded with the blaze of their attention and their assessments of our bodies. We’ve all made it through, and now let’s help the next generation.”
There was plenty of archives to work with, as Carroll was a pack rat with a robust archive full of audio tapes of interviews from McCalls, NBC, and others. Luckily, they rescued VHS tapes from a flooded basement in her charming upstate New York cottage. And finally, they were able to use riveting video depositions. In one, she was asked, “If you didn’t want to be dragged through the mud, why would you accuse Donald Trump?”
Carroll answered: “Because he called me a liar.”
While Carroll comes across as strong, put together, and poised, when she reveals the impact that the rape actually had on her personally, it’s devastating. “I never had sex again,” she said. “That is a real loss. My sex life. I loved it, but it shut down. It shut down my ability to ever meet. There’s a minute an attractive man comes along, and I immediately put my eyes down and don’t engage. I can’t flirt. I’ve been given the steps to do it. I’ve been given ways to get over it. I can’t do it, but maybe one day.”
When Carroll published her memoir book “Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President,” in June, 2025, it was an instant New York Times bestseller, debuting at number two on the Bestseller List, she said: “So people are fascinated about the old lady who beat Donald Trump.”
Watch a clip from the film below.
Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
