Parky At the Pictures (24/7/2026)

(Review of Ask E. Jean)

ASK E. JEAN.

Documentarist Ivy Meeropol is best known for two films about her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. She examined the impact on the family of their capital conviction of spying for the Soviet Union in Heir to an Execution (2004), while Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019) focussed on the man who had prosecuted them. The latter also examined Cohn's influence on Donald Trump and his name crops up frequently in Ask E. Jean, a profile of pioneering columnist, editor, and agony aunt, E. Jean Carroll.

After a blizzard of clips that establish Carroll as a force of nature, she takes us through her efforts to become a magazine writer while married to a husband who saw himself as Ernest Hemingway. Ironically, a quiz she had written about Papa and F. Scott Fitzgerald was published in Esquire and Carroll embarked upon a gonzo phase that saw her go camping with author Fran Lebowitz, move in with all of her ex-boyfriends, and meet radical lesbian pornographers. Breaking off an interview, she asks Meeropol if her viewers will know what a magazine is, as the world has gone digital.

As the first female contributing editor in Playboy history, Carroll was in demand and we see her boarding the Love Train to discuss romantic novels before she recalls hanging out with Hunter S. Thompson while writing his biography. Her livewire style prompted Elle to offer her an advice column in 1993 and she accepted instantly, as she had grown up reading Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren. She flicks through old copies of the magazine and shrugs at the columns she doesn't rate. But she wrote with a candour and a positivity that encouraged women to consider themselves precious and not behoven to any man.

Such was her success that NBC's Roger Ailes gave her the Ask E. Jean TV show (1994-96), in which she oozed chic and charisma, as she draped herself over the set's white sofa while offering callers quippingly empathetic advice. This live, daily show was dubbed `America's Answering Machine' by Entertainment Weekly and Carroll now believes advice outlets are the best way to take the pulse of the nation, as the questions reveal so much about the status and concerns of the help-seekers.

She doesn't look back with pride on all of her contributions, however, and particularly regrets an appearance on Geraldo Rivera's chat show, during which she accused Anita Hill and Paula Jones of being `wimps' for not standing up to Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton, whom they respectively claimed had harassed them. What makes her all the more conflicted is the fact that she had not reported real estate tycoon Donald Trump for raping her in a changing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York, in spite of the urging of her writer friend, Lisa Birnbach.

The women discuss over a meal how Carroll had called Birnbach with what she hoped she would see as a funny story. But she was appalled and told Carroll to report the crime to the police. Instead, Birnbach agreed never to speak of it again, at Carroll's insistence and she tried to get on with her life and career. However, when the #MeToo movement grew up following accusations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Carroll felt she couldn't advise women on similar issues if she had remained silent herself. She compiled `The Most Hideous Men in My Life List' and put Trump on it and news outlets pick up the story. Carroll spoke about the assault on numerous shows and was encouraged to sue, especially after President Trump dismissed her claim as a politically motivated lie. He also glibly added that she was not his type.

Considering that her integrity as an advice columnist rested on her honesty, Carroll decided to sue for defamation. We see a monochrome clip of a 1964 episode of the panel show, To Tell the Truth, on which Carroll had appeared after winning the title of Miss Cheerleader USA. She had based her advice-writing style around encouragement and she felt she owed it to her readers to confront Trump about using his status and power in a bid to dismiss and silence her. After all, she had once said on her TV show, `Always press charges.'

Lawyers Roberta Kaplan and Joshua Matz succeeded in persuading the Department of Justice not to throw out the case on a count of presidential immunity. She scoffs at his attempt to make himself the victim, in embarking upon a lengthy legal battle through various courts. But she refuses to buckle and attributes her confidence to her mother, Betty, a Republican politician who raised her daughter to live on the front foot. Bearing this in mind, the 80 year-old Carroll reasons that she needs to look as she did in 1996 during the trial to assuage any jury doubts about how `fuckable' she was/is and hires her old TV make-up artist, Lisa Corelli, to recreate her style.

She brings a civil suit for defamation and battery and we see clips of the questions she was asked during a pre-trial deposition, which she claims would have stopped a racehorse. She recalls in voiceover how she had bumped into Trump in the revolving door of the store and he had asked her to help him choose a gift `for a girl'. He had asked her age (56 at the time) and he had hit upon lingerie as the perfect present after rejecting handbags and hats.

In the deposition footage, Carroll recalls the banter between them when he asked her to put on a bodysuit. She had joked that he should put it on and felt she could coax him into putting it on over his pants when they went into the changing room. However, Trump had slammed the door and pushed her against the wall, banging her head. She describes what happened next and reveals that it had been over very quickly. So shocked by what was happening to her, Carroll had laughed, in an effort to return to the previous sense of repartee. But the moment she could get her knee up to push him away, she did so and left.

While discussing the encounter, Birnbach points out that Carroll was more famous than Trump at the time, as he was a man `with a bad combover' who was known for `losing upwards'. However, her decision to go public cost her the Elle column after 27 years (because the magazine didn't have the pages to accommodate her) and she tells Meeropol that firing a woman for standing up to a powerful man was `not a good look'. She has since contacted many of the other women who have come forward to accuse Trump and she claims to feel like a coward in their presence, as they had much more to lose than she did.

Finding people to come forward to corroborate in court proved tricky. Birnbach agreed after Carroll dedicated her book to her, while fellow NBC host Carol Martin agreed to appear at the second trial because Carroll had told her the next day and she had warned her to keep quiet because Trump's lawyers would destroy her.

Carroll recalls her social life around the time she was writing for Saturday Night Live and remembers meeting TV anchor John Johnson at Elaine's. We cut to Trump looking at a photo of himself meeting Carroll and Johnson in a receiving line, as he backs up the assertion that she was not his type. He mistakes Carroll for his wife, Marla Maples, and claims the image is blurry when he has the error pointed out. It isn't. When pressed about dating in the deposition taping, Carroll reveals the music stopped after she was raped and that she hasn't had sex since.

The jury took little time in finding for Carroll and Trump was ordered to pay $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming her. He gave a furious interview on CNN, in which he called Carroll `a whack job' and denied all of her allegations. As abusive messages on social media poured in, Carroll decided to sue again for the CNN remarks and his postings on Truth Social. On camera unde oath, she admits to feeling guilty about the episode because she believes it to have been her own fault. In a clip from her TV show, Carroll struggles when meeting a woman who had felt the same way after she had been raped and it seems clear that she was reliving the hideous experience (as she claimed she often did so, even at her mother's deathbed). In retrospect, she wishes she had consulted a therapist, but she was born in 1943 into the generation that bounced back and didn't complain and she is only realising that she has suffered as a result of what Trump did to her.

Carroll notes that Trump didn't attend the sexual assault trial, but turned up when he stood to lose money. She got the shakes when she first saw him in court, but Kaplan took her hand in the witness box and she regained her composure and saw the ex-president as a nobody. He ended up being $83.3 million poorer as a result of the hearing, which left Carroll contemplating splashing out on a toaster. She received grateful mail and used invitations to speaking events to appeal for women to fight on because there's still a long way to go.

Closing captions reveal that Trump continued to appeal the verdicts and refused to pay a cent. Carroll has promised to invest the remainder (when it comes) in a foundation for women rights. This will be enhance her legacy, which stands on her courage to take on a bully and expose him for what he is. Outrageously, he was elected a second time and is currently making a horlicks of things, while also trying to claw back the $5 million within days of paying it while seeking a way to take the case back to the Supreme Court. Some piece of work.

This isn't a perfect documentary, but it gets the job done with precision and panache. Carroll comes across ebulliently, but intelligently, as she discusses both her career and her crusade. Editors Leah Goudsmit and Ferne Pearlstein piece together clips from diverse sources in a propulsive manner that doesn't always leave room to pin events down to times and places. Nevertheless, Meeropol manages to capture Carroll's personality, but also the vulnerability that she had to keep under control while righting her wrong.

She also makes it clear that Trump isn't alone when it comes to toxic masculinity and the clips from the TV show (ironically commissioned by the man at the centre of Jay Roach's Bombshell, 2019) are deftly used to highlight the value of Ask E. Jean in holding up a mirror to America. It would be nice to return to the golden autumn of magazine publishing with Carroll, as she is right to lament its eclipse by online media. Something along the lines of Andrew Rossi's Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011) or Marshall Curry's The New Yorker At 100 (2025) would be wonderful. Meeropol might also take a tilt at another bigoted, bullying blowhard in Senator Joseph McCarthy? In the meantime, there is much to ponder here. And celebrate, as the right person prevailed.