E Jean Carroll on Writing and Resilience

E Jean Carroll was once described by one of her editors as being “institutionally incapable of being uninteresting” - and Carroll is exactly that. Elizabeth “E” Jean Carroll is a journalist, author, and advice columnist. Her “Ask E Jean” column was one of the longest-running advice columns in American publishing, featured in Elle magazine from 1993 to 2019. In addition to Elle magazine, she has written for New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Esquire, and Outside Magazine. Carroll is also the author of six books, including her 2019 book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, in which Carroll accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid-90s. As a result, Carroll faced Trump in court and has since won multiple civil cases against him. In this conversation Carroll reflects on her career of honest and bold writing, and her own resilience. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:38Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. When you consider the life and work of my guest today, you would be forgiven for thinking it was all a work of fiction. E. Jean Carroll has lived a life of drama and intrigue that any actor would aspire to play on television. Known for writing one of the longest-running advice columns in American publishing, Carroll advised readers of Elle magazine from 1993 to 2019 in her Ask E. Jean column. During that time, she wrote several books, including 2004's Mr. Right: Right Now, How a Smart Woman Can Land Her Dream Man in Six Weeks.

• 2:22Alec Baldwin?

  After ending her advice column in 2019, Carroll's work as an author changed dramatically.

• 2:29Alec Baldwin?

  In her fifth book titled, What Do We Need Men For?, A Modest Proposal, Carroll accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid 1990s. A follow-up was released in 2025 entitled, Not My Type: One Woman Versus A President. Carol's decision to come forward with her story culminated with her winning multiple civil cases against Donald Trump and being awarded $83.3 million in damages. Apart from her victories in court, Carol's writing career includes work published in New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Esquire, and Outside Magazine.

• 3:11Alec Baldwin?

  With such an illustrious writing career, I was curious if E. Jean started out as an avid reader.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Well, I never picked up a book when I was young. My whole thing was to be outside and play. My parents could not force me to pick up a book, could not force me. My mother would yell when I came home from the first grade because my grades were so bad. Words didn't interest me. You know, caterpillars interested me, sheep interested me, right? Grass.

• 3:42Alec Baldwin?

  You grew up where?

• 3:44Speaker 04

  I grew up, oh, it was a 19th century Queen Anne red brick schoolhouse in the middle of the sticks, behind the sticks in the hills of Indiana.

• 4:00Alec Baldwin?

  Wow.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Oh, it was exquisite. My parents, my young parents, were full of beans. And they bought this shambling old schoolhouse and remodeled it and we moved in. And across the street was the old church and across the street from that was the graveyard. That was my childhood. Oh, Alex, it was bucolic. And so my mother would open the front door and I would run out and that would be, that would be it for the day. I would be outside, Alex, so you didn't have to look. I mean, just picture this. You open your front door and you tell the kid to go outside, you'll see him at dinnertime. That's how safe, that's how far back in the country we're and how safe we were.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  And I only had my dog for my companion. That was, then I'd come back for lunch and I'd leave again by myself.

• 4:52Alec Baldwin?

  And when does this take hold of you, this idea? You were writing when you were very young, I understand?

• 5:00Speaker 04

  Well, at the age of 12, my father came home. He handed my mother something. My mother began screaming and ran out the door, ran up and down the street. Now we had moved into the colossal Fort Wayne, Indiana. And so we had neighbors. So she ran up and down the street yelling with excitement, so thrilled what her husband had given her. I thought, what the hell is going on? What had happened is, he, in Time Magazine, he had had a letter published to the editor. And I thought, oh, this is exciting. This is what happens when you get published in a magazine. So I thought, this is good.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  So I sent off my first pitch at the age of 12 to the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

• 5:46Alec Baldwin?

  What was the pitch?

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Oh, a story idea about a little girl who cut out all the clothes in the Sears and Roebuck catalog, and everything she cut out became real. And she got to wear the clothes.

• 5:59Alec Baldwin?

  So she wanted to go shopping. She didn't go to the catalog to order things. She just materialized them from the images in the catalog?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  That's exactly.

• 6:08Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Oh, they turned it down.

• 6:09Alec Baldwin?

  They turned it down.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  So, but I saw the light. I saw that writing something and having it published caused a great to-do. And it looked like it was a lot of fun. I mean, when you see your own mother tearing out into the street to show the neighbors yelling and laughing about this great thing that had happened. And what it was, it was something that was published in a magazine. It really lit up my brain.

• 6:36Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you're writing and you first get to New York, you come to New York when?

• 6:42Speaker 04

  1981.

• 6:43Alec Baldwin?

  Eighty-one.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  I came here to... Take Fran Lebowitz camping for Outside Magazine. Can you imagine taking Fran Lebowitz camping?

• 6:54Alec Baldwin?

  No, I can't. I can't.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Putting her into a tent?

• 6:57Alec Baldwin?

  No. When I saw that in the documentary, my god, I almost gagged. I thought, that's brilliant.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Oh, god.

• 7:05Alec Baldwin?

  Fran Lebowitz camping.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Jesus, I know. So I just took a look around New York and I said, Jesus. And never went back to, well, I went back to Montana to pack up, and said goodbye to the old husband, and then came to New York.

• 7:19Alec Baldwin?

  Where in Montana were you?

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Oh, Ennis, fly fishing capital of the world.

• 7:24Alec Baldwin?

  That's where he wanted to live, you were into fly fishing?

• 7:27Speaker 04

  He thought he was on his stemming way, so he was in. The fly fishing was unbelievable, I admit, but, you know, I rode my horse, Miss Hot, and he fly fished, and was a firefighter during, you know, the fire season. So, and then we wanted to be writers. And we were practicing being, trying to get into magazines. That was a big thing, to get into magazines.

• 7:48Alec Baldwin?

  Did you? Back in the Montana days, were you published?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Uh, we both got, yeah. He became editor in chief of Outdoor Life, and I took Fran Lebowitz camping. You know what it's like, arriving in New York when you're, you know, ready to go, and you're running up and down the boulevards at 2:00 in the morning, and it's fabulous. You're meeting friends, and you're staying up. Remember the Brazzary where we would go? And have coffee at the end of the night?

• 8:14Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, Odion, yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh.

• 8:16Alec Baldwin?

  Cafe Central.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 8:18Alec Baldwin?

  All those places, all the late night joints. That's all dead now, by the way, everybody's in bed.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  You know, I don't understand it. It's sort of dull.

• 8:27Alec Baldwin?

  It's changed, it's changed a lot. Everybody's in bed, they're up early, they go jogging.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Well, you're in bed.

• 8:32Alec Baldwin?

  I'm in bed, yeah, I'm in bed.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Hey, can I ask you something?

• 8:36Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  When do you do all your reading?

• 8:39Alec Baldwin?

  I would say that I carry reading with me. And when I have interstitial moments during the day, where I'm sitting there, driving in a car, you know, I want to read The New Yorker, I want to read more of some book, I do that. I find that reading at night, when I go to sleep,

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:56Alec Baldwin?

  is advisable in order to get off the tablet. What's the greatest place on earth to read? What's your favorite place to read?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  In the kitchen, standing up when I'm eating lunch.

• 9:10Alec Baldwin?

  My answer is on an airplane.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:12Alec Baldwin?

  Airplane to the bed. That's what airplanes were built for.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Well, the airplane is great because nobody can get to you. You're in that seat.

• 9:19Alec Baldwin?

  You're in that bubble.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 9:21Alec Baldwin?

  You put on, you put that hell, those headphones on, put on a little Chopin nocturne and start reading.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Oh, it's heaven.

• 9:28Alec Baldwin?

  Now, I want to get into your, more about your writing, which is that, where's a place you were writing with, whether you were on the staff or not? Who were you on the staff with for the longest?

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Well, I was at Saturday Night Live for a, for a half year. That was a good staff.

• 9:44Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Until Senator, the future Senator, came up behind. He didn't realize I was there, Senator Franklin, and he picked up the sketch that I had actors read through and Alan Franklin said, "What the fuck is this? Why did, why was it red?" He didn't realize I was, I was there. And you, Ally, who I believe has made more appearances on Saturday Night Live than anybody in the history, 17 times. So you know what a killing line that would be to hear as a writer.

• 10:20Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  I knew I was doomed, but nothing I wrote at that show, they thought was funny. Not a single word. I couldn't, nothing. Dead silence read through. Can you ima- Dead silence.

• 10:33Alec Baldwin?

  You were there just for half a year.

• 10:36Alec Baldwin?

  I didn't, I didn't know that was possible.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Who knew?

• 10:39Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  But Larry David lasted a half year.

• 10:41Alec Baldwin?

  I didn't know that. Wow. You're a good company.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  I am.

• 10:45Alec Baldwin?

  But in terms of magazines, you weren't on the staff of any magazines?

• 10:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, Esquire.

• 10:51Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Outside, Elle. There were some other magazines too, but yeah, yes.

• 10:55Alec Baldwin?

  So why did you decide you wanted to do the TV show?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  Well, who wouldn't want to do a TV show?

• 11:01Alec Baldwin?

  But who told you, or where did the impetus come, either from yourself or from someone else in your life, to step in front of the camera and you believed you were camera-ready, so to speak?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  That was Roger Ailes' decision. Somebody showed him the column, the Ask Eugene column, and Roger just decided, well, what did he have to lose? I mean, nobody was watching this new network he started, which eventually became MSNBC, and he had nothing to lose. So he just put me on TV to do live...

• 11:30Alec Baldwin?

  You mean Fox?

• 11:31Speaker 04

  No, this is the new NBC channel that Roger Ailes himself created out of nothing. And he just gave me a live hour every day on TV. It was, you know, it was fun.

• 11:42Alec Baldwin?

  And when you were doing that show, and you're creating that show, and you're producing that show, who helped you get that thing rolling?

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Alec. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, you know?

• 11:53Alec Baldwin?

  You covered it brilliantly.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  I just climbed on the sofa and started jumping up and down because that's, it was just to bring an advice column alive. Because as you know, an advice column has got the hatred and the passion and the love and the jealousy. It's got everything.

• 12:12Alec Baldwin?

  Very volcanic, yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  No, everybody's... So I thought, if we could just bring that to TV, and I tried. You know, maybe in another couple of years I would have calmed down and would have had a really good show.

• 12:27Alec Baldwin?

  But did someone discuss with you, did you tell them what kind of show you wanted to do? Or did they tell you what they expected from you?

• 12:34Speaker 04

  No, Roger just said, hey, Eugene, go do your show. Here's an hour. And so really, my thing was to bring the advice column alive. Everybody there was a news producer, so we sort of stumbled around. I didn't even know what a producer was. I had no idea. So they, of course, they would get the guests, and there was an entire staff, you know, who begged people to come on the show.

• 12:58Alec Baldwin?

  Booking is, yeah, you live and die by booking.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. It was a free-for-all, Alec, a free-for-all on that network, until it became MSNBC. So that's how Roger did it. And then Roger left and created the Fox News juggernaut.

• 13:17Alec Baldwin?

  Now, I want to read you a quote. Bill Tonelli, Esquire and Rolling Stone editor, said in a 1999 interview that you are, quote, "institutionally incapable of being uninteresting." Is the E. Jean Carroll show on TV you in real life? Or did you create the E. Jean Carroll that stepped in front of the camera? Or was that just you?

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Before I started talking to you today,

• 13:43Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  I was another E. Jean. This is the E. Jean that I'm talking to Alec Baldwin with. As you know, there's an Alec Baldwin that is the Barbara Stanwyck of his generation, who does comedy and tragedy. That's you.

• 13:57Alec Baldwin?

  I love that. I'm the Barbara Stanwyck of my generation.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Barbara Stanwyck. Nobody played comedy and tragedy like you.

• 14:05Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, all of it, yeah. She was great. So there's the private you in the public you.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Yes, there we go.

• 14:11Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, it's a character you play.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, that came up during the trial.

• 14:14Alec Baldwin?

  Tell me, how? How?

• 14:16Speaker 04

  Oh, the defense of the president tried to take every time I made a joke or went to a party or said something funny in a call. This woman couldn't have suffered from the attack. Look how, look how merry and jolly she is. That was her case. In other words, if you're a woman and, and you have been attacked, you have to

• 14:39Alec Baldwin?

  Wear a shroud.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Forever. Cover yourself and sit in a cave and never smile again. Never have a career again. Don't have any friends. God knows, you should never go to a party again. They pulled out every single party I'd been to, which was like five, you know, since the attack. No, it was, they thought that, that it was 1600s. It was the 1600s. You know, weren't allowed to smile. A woman's life was to be over.

• 15:12Alec Baldwin?

  Well, now that you bring this up, let me just ask you this. This is what's important to me. You have friends, like when I live in New York, my friends are these Rockefeller Republicans, which is less regulation on my businesses and lower taxes. And they don't give a shit about anything else. They don't care about same-sex marriage, abortion. The socialists just don't play to them. Now, when you went through this whole thing, where many years pass between the event in the late 90s and you're writing your book and then going to court. Did you have friends of yours that were Republicans who were really, really disappointed or angry with you?

• 15:43Speaker 04

  My mother was a Republican politician, but luckily.

• 15:47Alec Baldwin?

  Does she stick by you?

• 15:48Speaker 04

  You know what, Alec, I never told her. She was on her deathbed. We were all around her when Trump was running for president. And all those women came forward. Remember, all those women came forward after the access to Hollywood ticket? And so, I never told my mother, because I thought it would kill her. So, she was the really... Remember, I'm from Indiana. I have a lot of friends who are Republicans. But nobody said anything, because they hated Donald Trump for doing it. Just hated it. They just heard it, and they hated him. So, no. I got slimed by everybody else in the country, but not by my Republican friends, no.

• 16:30Alec Baldwin?

  So, a lot of years go by, and the event happens. And then you write the book. Was there some pivotal moment when you knew you had to step up and do what you wanted to do? Because it was almost 20 years later. What was it that made you move forward?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Oh, it was Meghan Tuohy and Jody Catner coming out in the New York Times with the Harvey Weinstein story.

• 16:52Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 16:52Speaker 04

  Do you remember how that rocked the country?

• 16:55Alec Baldwin?

  Sure, yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  And women stood up. Probably half the women you knew had a story. And they suddenly started telling those stories. And I thought, oh, Jesus. Women are talking because I'm a silent generation woman. I was born during the Second World War. So, the last thing we would ever do was talk about it. Our whole thing was chin up and smile.

• 17:20Alec Baldwin?

  Wow.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  That was it. We expected a man to be a little grabby, and to be a little pushy, and to be a honey, honey, honey, and to back you up against the wall. That's what it was like going to work. Oh, come on, Alec. And then Jody Catner and Meghan Tuohy hit the front page of the New York Times. And women, well-known women, Gwyneth Paltrow. You know, they were coming forward with stories about Harvey Weinstein. Brad Pitt stepped up. Remember when they told the story where he had called Harvey and said, "If you dare go near Gwyneth one more time, I will kill you"?

• 17:57Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, I would love to have seen that.

• 18:01Alec Baldwin?

  I'll see Brad cuddle with Harvey for a little while.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Oh, man. So they showed me what to do. So I did it.

• 18:08Alec Baldwin?

  I'm going to say this. Sheila Nevin is on the show. I don't respect anybody in this business more than Sheila Nevin.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Me either.

• 18:14Alec Baldwin?

  Who single-handedly crafts HBO documentaries and is the godmother of so many documentaries. And she talks to me about a guy, his hand's on her leg, he's on her knee, his hand's going up her dress, whatever. And I stop and I go, what did you do? She goes, I slept with him. I go, are you kidding me? She goes, no. Back then, that's what you did if you wanted to get ahead. And I thought, God.

• 18:35Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. And if you didn't, you would not get the promotion.

• 18:39Alec Baldwin?

  Right. That's what she said. That's how you got ahead.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  This is why women have never gained equality because of the sexual violence. This is why women have always, always a little lower than men, always a little.

• 18:54Alec Baldwin?

  Not on my show, believe me.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  Oh, not in your life either, believe you that.

• 19:05Alec Baldwin?

  Journalist and author E. Jean Carroll. If you're interested in the origins of the Me Too movement and Hollywood's reckoning with sex and power, check out my conversation with New York Times writers Megan Chewie and Jodi Kantor.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  It's really important to remember that there are two categories of women, essentially, that Weinstein allegedly harasses and assaults. One of them actresses. The second assistants, women who want to be producers, right? Women who are 23 years old and they're so excited because they're on their.

• 19:37Alec Baldwin?

  At the bottom of the ladder.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  Very first day at a company like Miramax or the Weinstein Company. This is going to be their big shot. It's so exciting. There's so much potential here. And then boom, Harvey Weinstein walks into the room and everything changes. And so this is all about the actresses and the assistants, both, they're coming into this with dreams, with ideas, with ambitions, with hopes. And he turns those hopes and ambitions against the women. And that has to do also with the power of the movies, the power of this work. You know, what is your ticket into this world? And how can that, you know, is your desire for entry into this world a kind of vulnerability that can then be turned against you?

• 20:21Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Megan Chewie and Jody Cantor, go to here'sthething.org. After the break, E. Jean Carroll talks about publishing her explosive 2019 book, and who stood by her while so much of the general public did not believe her accusations.

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• 22:58Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In the late 1990s, E. Jean Carroll bumped into Donald Trump outside of Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. What started as an impromptu shopping trip turned into a harrowing account of sexual assault in a department store dressing room. I wanted to know how E. Jean coped with such a traumatic event and what it's like constantly seeing her attacker, who was also the President of the United States, on television and in media.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  You know, seeing him so much, so saturated and everything. Either I got the fuck over it and moved on and was able to take him, or my life really would have been over. I was so immersed in it that I became accustomed to it. And then I didn't even see it. That's what happens. It becomes not a horrible. It becomes something that I lived with. You either learn to bat it away, or your life is over.

• 24:01Alec Baldwin?

  Well, now, before you press charges, before you bring a case against him, you write the book.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:07Alec Baldwin?

  But do the imprint balk at that idea of writing that material about him? Were they concerned about that at all legally?

• 24:14Speaker 04

  We had that thing, every word was gone through by one of the great attorneys in the country.

• 24:20Alec Baldwin?

  So they backed you, that imprint?

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also New York Magazine backed it. That thing was fact-checked up and down when I came out with the story.

• 24:29Alec Baldwin?

  It's remarkable.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  It was in the book, but New York Magazine excerpted it. That was the thing that hit the White House. And they saw that picture of me on the cover, Alec, without makeup. Without makeup. And that's when he said, you know, when you're 75, you don't go on the cover of a magazine without makeup. Right? The feeling was she's, when a woman tells the truth, she doesn't stand there in a gob of makeup. So they put it on the cover. And there I am, an elderly woman. And the story came out. And because I looked so old and because I looked my age, most people didn't believe me.

• 25:11Alec Baldwin?

  Really? Didn't believe you?

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Didn't believe it. You don't see an old lady when she comes forward and talks about what happens being attacked by a man. She's not believed, Alex, unless she looks fuckable. She's got to look desirable in some way. And they couldn't picture the snazzy young Donald Trump attacking this elderly crone.

• 25:35Alec Baldwin?

  I try to tell myself as I get older that you're fuckable to somebody out there. The task is just to find them. Got to be somebody. You got to be somebody.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  I'm like, hey, do you remember back in the day when nobody was better looking than you? Nobody.

• 25:50Alec Baldwin?

  I find that, I had a good month. I had a great, I had one month in the early 90s.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  You had decades. You had decades.

• 25:56Alec Baldwin?

  In the early 90s, I was good. It was a good time.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Oh, it was devastating.

• 26:02Alec Baldwin?

  I got all these questions. None of them have anything to do with my sex life.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  I mean devastating. Devastating.

• 26:09Alec Baldwin?

  Now, let me ask you. Let me ask you this. Without naming any names, of course, there were any friends that you relied on heavily? You must have needed good friends to help get you through the ups and downs of this, correct?

• 26:23Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Lisa Bernbach.

• 26:25Alec Baldwin?

  Lisa Bernbach.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  Who you know quite well.

• 26:26Alec Baldwin?

  Who I know, yes.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  And Carol Martin, another, you know, she worked the glass ceiling in New York. She became the first black woman to anchor a New York news show.

• 26:35Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  And Lisa Bernbach. Yeah, those two steadfast. Everybody at the Atlantic Magazine, Esquire, Elle, all the journalists backed me up to the hill. They understood it. So, yes, my family, absolutely. My dogs, yes. My neighbors, yes. Although oddly, Alex. When the last book came out and it immediately hit the New York Times Bestseller list, I had books and I was handing them out to my neighbors and I handed it to my next door neighbor. And I said, here's my latest book. She said, what? You sued the president? She'd never heard of it.

• 27:17Alec Baldwin?

  You're kidding me.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  No, Ali. Almost nobody in this country really has heard of it. Just a few of us in New York know about it, but most people, one of the reasons why they voted for him, they never heard he was held liable for sexual abuse. Never heard it. Never heard that he had to pay 83.3 million because their Instagram feed is not showing them that fact.

• 27:41Alec Baldwin?

  That's interesting. I never thought of that.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  And neither is their Facebook feed and neither is their TikTok.

• 27:46Alec Baldwin?

  I never thought about how it was not covered widely enough, the story. Now, when you started the process to bring charges against him, did you have earlier lawyers you engaged with, or has Robbie been your lawyer throughout?

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Robbie Kaplan was my lawyer. I hardly ever knew a lawyer. George Conway is the one who suggested, as he said, I think I know someone. That's what he said. And it turns out to be Robbie Kaplan, the woman who opened up the way for gay rights in this country and the woman who at the time was trouncing the Nazis in Charlottesville. And that was a huge case. This white supremacist, the Nazis, remember all of them put together?

• 28:31Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Robbie beat them all. Just fucking beat them all. And as you know, she's this tiny little woman, little blonde woman from, you know, Shaker Heights, Ohio. Just mashed the Nazis. And so she was the one.

• 28:45Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you, I mean, this is a tough question, but when you walk into Bergdorf's with Trump and everything horrible ensues, you're walking in there with somebody that you thought you knew, kind of, that you had an impression of, kind of, and the Trump you eventually meet was one you'd never met before. So the Trump that you're walking in, who was he? You thought he was, what, just charming and silly and fun?

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:09Alec Baldwin?

  He's kind of a fop.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Boy, is that a perfect word. He actually made a joke about himself.

• 29:15Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  He was easy and up for anything, up for a lark and, you know.

• 29:20Alec Baldwin?

  Playful.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Exactly. Come help me buy a present.

• 29:24Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  What am I?

• 29:25Alec Baldwin?

  Innocent.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  I'm a news vice columnist. That's my duty.

• 29:28Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  To help people buy a present. So I was thrilled. Also, he was very pretty at that time.

• 29:35Alec Baldwin?

  Aha, interesting.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  Very tall, very handsome, very blonde, you know, in the old overcoat. He was quite pretty. It was quite fun. That's the word. Taking Trump through Bergdorf, suggesting gifts. And he's, you know, yammering about how he's thinking of buying Bergdorf's. And this, that, and the other. Right.

• 30:00Alec Baldwin?

  You're there to buy a bag, he's there to buy the store.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  But it's just exactly what happened in the first election. We thought he was a clown, remember? We thought he was light and sort of silly and a hondler and sort of a con man.

• 30:15Alec Baldwin?

  Unsubstantial, yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what the world thought. And then, like me, it turned dark. Boom. He's not that way. He's not that way. It's like funny, funny, funny, laughing, laughing, laughing, playful, fun. Boom. Then he's sending troops into the streets. You know, I wish people had paid attention to what I said. You know, me and, you know, what, two dozen other women.

• 30:40Alec Baldwin?

  Yes. I had a friend of mine told me a story. Someone he told me about was accused of sexually attacking a woman in the dining room of a famous private club. You know, linens and posh and suits and ties. And they're having lunch and the guy puts his hand over the table and you can imagine the rest. So he's doing this in the center dining room of this fabulous Manhattan private club. And she goes and presses charges eventually. And the next thing that happens is, of course, what's the liability of the club? And I was wondering, were there ever any consequences at all for Bergdorf's when this happened?

• 31:18Speaker 04

  No. Alec Bergdorf stepped up and gave Robbie Kaplan the floor plans of the sixth. No, they were extremely

• 31:29Alec Baldwin?

  Cooperative.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  And good people.

• 31:31Alec Baldwin?

  Right, great.

• 31:32Speaker 04

  They were good people. And I know that story that you just said about, I know that identical story from a young, really sharp and beautiful young woman at a club. They were sitting downstairs, Trump is sitting next to her, it's a big business meeting. She had just met him. And again, the hand under the table, right up her leg and going up as far as he could. At 21, she had just met him.

• 31:57Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 31:59Alec Baldwin?

  Unspeakable.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  And of course, she did not officially come forward, like many other women, many, many, many other women, didn't come forward about him.

• 32:12Alec Baldwin?

  Journalist and author E. Jean Carroll. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend. And be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, E. Jean Carroll reflects on her life and tells us what advice she would or wouldn't give to her younger self.

• 33:12Speaker 06

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• 33:57Speaker 06

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• 34:38Speaker 09

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• 35:19Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Elle Magazine first published the Ask E. Jean advice column in 1993. In the column, E. Jean Carroll spoke to readers with her opinions and advice on sex, feminism, and their various life situations. Her column was widely read and acclaimed for being compassionate, fearless, and inspiring. Now, 32 years after Ask E. Jean began, I was curious what advice E. Jean Carroll would give to her younger self.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  To my younger self? I need advice from my younger self. My younger self was great. I loved my younger self. I liked my younger self just to advise me to say, "E. Jean, you're having a great time. Enjoy the end of the world." That's what the younger self was gonna say.

• 36:08Alec Baldwin?

  "The end of the world, let's party."

• 36:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. I have no advice for that young woman. She was full of beans and I really liked her. And I liked you when you were younger, and I like you even better now. So, yeah, none of this writing letters to younger selves, because

• 36:26Alec Baldwin?

  Interesting.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  younger selves had it all.

• 36:28Alec Baldwin?

  Isn't that amazing?

• 36:30Speaker 04

  What advice are we gonna give those fucking younger people? No, we can listen to them. Well, you got seven kids, you can listen to them. Oh, my God.

• 36:39Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, I need some advice. Not from my children, although they keep giving it to me.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Can I ask one question, Alec?

• 36:45Alec Baldwin?

  Yes, please.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  The family you've created, is it like your family that you had when you were growing up on Long Island?

• 36:52Alec Baldwin?

  Well, not really, because my dad had a job where he was not home until the very end of the day.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 36:59Alec Baldwin?

  And as a result, I would wait up. I had this silly game. My mother was too exhausted and emotionally spent to really, really parent me in a way. So I would literally talk to my mother, and I said the most idiotic things to my mother when I look back. I'd say, "I'm gonna stay up and let Dad in. I'm gonna wait up for Dad. Everyone in my house is asleep. My dad came home, he'd lay on the couch, and he'd say to me," and this is a part of why I wanted to be an actor, "and he'd lay on the couch..." And he'd have the New York Times in his hand with those pithy TV reviews of the movies and reviews. And he'd sit there and go, wow, How Green Was My Valley, that's a great movie. And I'd say, let's watch it. And he'd say, no, no, no, you gotta go to bed, it's 11:30. You gotta go, you gotta go to bed now.

• 37:44Alec Baldwin?

  And I go, come on, let's just watch 10 minutes. And he'd say, okay, 10 minutes. And then he'd pass out and fall asleep.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Oh, and you'd see?

• 37:51Alec Baldwin?

  And I would watch Five Graves to Cairo. I'd watch How Green Was My Valley. I watched Sorry, Wrong Number. I watched Red River. I watched every old movie on TV for years. City for Conquest. I watched all the great old studio movies, gangster movies. And that was the beginning of me wanting to be an actor.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  So that's interesting. Thinking of your career, which is a lot of movies and a lot of hit TV. So it comes from this childhood of watching these great movies and then watching, you know, Dinah Shore and all that?

• 38:29Alec Baldwin?

  Exactly. Mike Douglas, yeah, everything. Merv Griffin. The thing is, when I was young, I watched anything. I watched the news with John Chancellor with my father. I watched everything, everything.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Well, it paid off.

• 38:46Alec Baldwin?

  Now, I want to say to you, thank you. You are, and you've heard this ad infinitum, what a hero you are to women who've suffered through this. Because you hung in there under much stress and abuse and were rewarded. You are a hero, obviously, to people of this movement that crested during your proceedings and Cantor and Tui. And you're a great hero to a lot of women because you fought, you fought for yourself.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Alec, thank you.

• 39:11Alec Baldwin?

  My pleasure.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  May I tell you something?

• 39:12Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  You are the only journalist, the only interviewer, I think of you as a journalist. You are the only person who never said to me, E. Jean, when are you getting your money?

• 39:24Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  You're the only one. Because they don't understand, to me, it was proving he was a liar. That was the thing. That was the thing. I proved it. I proved it. So, we're gonna get the money. But I don't understand why everybody's panties are in such a twist about getting this money. Right?

• 39:44Alec Baldwin?

  Well, we'll know, we'll know, you know how we'll know we'll do, you got the money? We'll do another interview, and there'll be a lot of cashmere blankets on those chairs behind you.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Oh, do, can you imagine?

• 39:53Alec Baldwin?

  There'll be so many.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Those are Wrangler wool shirts.

• 39:56Alec Baldwin?

  I love it.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Alec, before we go.

• 39:58Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  I've got a new project. The end of the world. Sometimes I look at it as a merry event, sometimes I think, oh, no. Sometimes it's global warming, sometimes it's a nuclear threat, sometimes it's the collapse of the government. You know, every day it's a different thing. But I wanna know the fun things you would do at the end of the world.

• 40:17Alec Baldwin?

  Probably sit on the couch and watch reruns of The Dyna Shore Show. That's when I was happiest. My younger self was a far happier than my adult self. Far happier when I was younger.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Alec, that is a breakthrough. May I talk to you later in a couple of months about this?

• 40:32Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. We'll have dinner with Robbie.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 40:36Alec Baldwin?

  I love it.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  I love it, too.

• 40:38Alec Baldwin?

  All right, listen, you taking care of yourself, and I wanna send you my very best and my sincere thanks for doing the show. I appreciate it.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  I loved every minute of it. Every fucking minute. I loved it. Thank you very much.

• 40:54Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to author and journalist E. Jean Carroll. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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• 43:12Speaker 00

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