Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin E Jean Carroll on Writing and Resilience About this episode 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.
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1:38 Alec 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.
2:22 Alec Baldwin? After ending her advice column in 2019, Carroll's work as an author changed dramatically.
2:29 Alec 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.
3:11 Alec Baldwin? With such an illustrious writing career, I was curious if E. Jean started out as an avid reader.
3:19 Speaker 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.
3:42 Alec Baldwin? You grew up where?
3:44 Speaker 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.
4:00 Alec Baldwin? Wow.
4:01 Speaker 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.
4:44 Speaker 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.
4:52 Alec Baldwin? And when does this take hold of you, this idea? You were writing when you were very young, I understand?
5:00 Speaker 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.
5:42 Speaker 04 So I sent off my first pitch at the age of 12 to the Sears and Roebuck catalog.
5:46 Alec Baldwin? What was the pitch?
5:47 Speaker 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.
5:59 Alec 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?
6:07 Speaker 04 That's exactly.
6:08 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, I love that.
6:08 Speaker 04 Oh, they turned it down.
6:09 Alec Baldwin? They turned it down.
6:10 Speaker 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.
6:36 Alec Baldwin? Now, when you're writing and you first get to New York, you come to New York when?
6:42 Speaker 04 1981.
6:43 Alec Baldwin? Eighty-one.
6:44 Speaker 04 I came here to... Take Fran Lebowitz camping for Outside Magazine. Can you imagine taking Fran Lebowitz camping?
6:54 Alec Baldwin? No, I can't. I can't.
6:56 Speaker 04 Putting her into a tent?
6:57 Alec Baldwin? No. When I saw that in the documentary, my god, I almost gagged. I thought, that's brilliant.
7:04 Speaker 04 Oh, god.
7:05 Alec Baldwin? Fran Lebowitz camping.
7:06 Speaker 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.
7:19 Alec Baldwin? Where in Montana were you?
7:20 Speaker 04 Oh, Ennis, fly fishing capital of the world.
7:24 Alec Baldwin? That's where he wanted to live, you were into fly fishing?
7:27 Speaker 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.
7:48 Alec Baldwin? Did you? Back in the Montana days, were you published?
7:51 Speaker 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?
8:14 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, Odion, yeah.
8:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, oh.
8:16 Alec Baldwin? Cafe Central.
8:18 Speaker 04 Oh.
8:18 Alec Baldwin? All those places, all the late night joints. That's all dead now, by the way, everybody's in bed.
8:23 Speaker 04 You know, I don't understand it. It's sort of dull.
8:27 Alec Baldwin? It's changed, it's changed a lot. Everybody's in bed, they're up early, they go jogging.
8:31 Speaker 04 Well, you're in bed.
8:32 Alec Baldwin? I'm in bed, yeah, I'm in bed.
8:34 Speaker 04 Hey, can I ask you something?
8:36 Alec Baldwin? Sure.
8:36 Speaker 04 When do you do all your reading?
8:39 Alec 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,
8:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:56 Alec 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?
9:04 Speaker 04 In the kitchen, standing up when I'm eating lunch.
9:10 Alec Baldwin? My answer is on an airplane.
9:11 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
9:12 Alec Baldwin? Airplane to the bed. That's what airplanes were built for.
9:15 Speaker 04 Well, the airplane is great because nobody can get to you. You're in that seat.
9:19 Alec Baldwin? You're in that bubble.
9:20 Speaker 04 Oh.
9:21 Alec Baldwin? You put on, you put that hell, those headphones on, put on a little Chopin nocturne and start reading.
9:26 Speaker 04 Oh, it's heaven.
9:28 Alec 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?
9:39 Speaker 04 Well, I was at Saturday Night Live for a, for a half year. That was a good staff.
9:44 Alec Baldwin? Right.
9:45 Speaker 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.
10:20 Alec Baldwin? Right.
10:20 Speaker 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.
10:33 Alec Baldwin? You were there just for half a year.
10:36 Alec Baldwin? I didn't, I didn't know that was possible.
10:38 Speaker 04 Who knew?
10:39 Alec Baldwin? Right.
10:39 Speaker 04 But Larry David lasted a half year.
10:41 Alec Baldwin? I didn't know that. Wow. You're a good company.
10:44 Speaker 04 I am.
10:45 Alec Baldwin? But in terms of magazines, you weren't on the staff of any magazines?
10:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, Esquire.
10:51 Alec Baldwin? Right.
10:51 Speaker 04 Outside, Elle. There were some other magazines too, but yeah, yes.
10:55 Alec Baldwin? So why did you decide you wanted to do the TV show?
10:58 Speaker 04 Well, who wouldn't want to do a TV show?
11:01 Alec 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?
11:11 Speaker 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...
11:30 Alec Baldwin? You mean Fox?
11:31 Speaker 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.
11:42 Alec 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?
11:49 Speaker 04 Alec. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, you know?
11:53 Alec Baldwin? You covered it brilliantly.
11:55 Speaker 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.
12:12 Alec Baldwin? Very volcanic, yeah.
12:14 Speaker 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.
12:27 Alec 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?
12:34 Speaker 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.
12:58 Alec Baldwin? Booking is, yeah, you live and die by booking.
13:00 Speaker 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.
13:17 Alec 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?
13:40 Speaker 04 Before I started talking to you today,
13:43 Alec Baldwin? Right.
13:44 Speaker 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.
13:57 Alec Baldwin? I love that. I'm the Barbara Stanwyck of my generation.
14:01 Speaker 04 Barbara Stanwyck. Nobody played comedy and tragedy like you.
14:05 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, all of it, yeah. She was great. So there's the private you in the public you.
14:09 Speaker 04 Yes, there we go.
14:11 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, it's a character you play.
14:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, that came up during the trial.
14:14 Alec Baldwin? Tell me, how? How?
14:16 Speaker 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
14:39 Alec Baldwin? Wear a shroud.
14:40 Speaker 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.
15:12 Alec 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?
15:43 Speaker 04 My mother was a Republican politician, but luckily.
15:47 Alec Baldwin? Does she stick by you?
15:48 Speaker 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.
16:30 Alec 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?
16:45 Speaker 04 Oh, it was Meghan Tuohy and Jody Catner coming out in the New York Times with the Harvey Weinstein story.
16:52 Alec Baldwin? Really?
16:52 Speaker 04 Do you remember how that rocked the country?
16:55 Alec Baldwin? Sure, yeah.
16:55 Speaker 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.
17:20 Alec Baldwin? Wow.
17:21 Speaker 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"?
17:57 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, I would love to have seen that.
18:01 Alec Baldwin? I'll see Brad cuddle with Harvey for a little while.
18:04 Speaker 04 Oh, man. So they showed me what to do. So I did it.
18:08 Alec 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.
18:13 Speaker 04 Me either.
18:14 Alec 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.
18:35 Speaker 04 That's exactly right. And if you didn't, you would not get the promotion.
18:39 Alec Baldwin? Right. That's what she said. That's how you got ahead.
18:42 Speaker 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.
18:54 Alec Baldwin? Not on my show, believe me.
18:56 Speaker 04 Oh, not in your life either, believe you that.
19:05 Alec 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.
19:19 Speaker 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.
19:37 Alec Baldwin? At the bottom of the ladder.
19:38 Speaker 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?
20:21 Alec 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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22:58 Alec 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.
23:31 Speaker 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.
24:01 Alec Baldwin? Well, now, before you press charges, before you bring a case against him, you write the book.
24:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:07 Alec Baldwin? But do the imprint balk at that idea of writing that material about him? Were they concerned about that at all legally?
24:14 Speaker 04 We had that thing, every word was gone through by one of the great attorneys in the country.
24:20 Alec Baldwin? So they backed you, that imprint?
24:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, and also New York Magazine backed it. That thing was fact-checked up and down when I came out with the story.
24:29 Alec Baldwin? It's remarkable.
24:30 Speaker 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.
25:11 Alec Baldwin? Really? Didn't believe you?
25:13 Speaker 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.
25:35 Alec 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.
25:43 Speaker 04 I'm like, hey, do you remember back in the day when nobody was better looking than you? Nobody.
25:50 Alec Baldwin? I find that, I had a good month. I had a great, I had one month in the early 90s.
25:54 Speaker 04 You had decades. You had decades.
25:56 Alec Baldwin? In the early 90s, I was good. It was a good time.
25:58 Speaker 04 Oh, it was devastating.
26:02 Alec Baldwin? I got all these questions. None of them have anything to do with my sex life.
26:06 Speaker 04 I mean devastating. Devastating.
26:09 Alec 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?
26:23 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Lisa Bernbach.
26:25 Alec Baldwin? Lisa Bernbach.
26:26 Speaker 04 Who you know quite well.
26:26 Alec Baldwin? Who I know, yes.
26:27 Speaker 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.
26:35 Alec Baldwin? Right.
26:35 Speaker 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.
27:17 Alec Baldwin? You're kidding me.
27:18 Speaker 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.
27:41 Alec Baldwin? That's interesting. I never thought of that.
27:43 Speaker 04 And neither is their Facebook feed and neither is their TikTok.
27:46 Alec 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?
28:01 Speaker 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?
28:31 Alec Baldwin? Yes.
28:31 Speaker 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.
28:45 Alec 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?
29:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
29:09 Alec Baldwin? He's kind of a fop.
29:10 Speaker 04 Boy, is that a perfect word. He actually made a joke about himself.
29:15 Alec Baldwin? Right.
29:15 Speaker 04 He was easy and up for anything, up for a lark and, you know.
29:20 Alec Baldwin? Playful.
29:21 Speaker 04 Exactly. Come help me buy a present.
29:24 Alec Baldwin? Right.
29:24 Speaker 04 What am I?
29:25 Alec Baldwin? Innocent.
29:25 Speaker 04 I'm a news vice columnist. That's my duty.
29:28 Alec Baldwin? Right.
29:28 Speaker 04 To help people buy a present. So I was thrilled. Also, he was very pretty at that time.
29:35 Alec Baldwin? Aha, interesting.
29:37 Speaker 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.
30:00 Alec Baldwin? You're there to buy a bag, he's there to buy the store.
30:03 Speaker 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.
30:15 Alec Baldwin? Unsubstantial, yeah.
30:17 Speaker 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.
30:40 Alec 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?
31:18 Speaker 04 No. Alec Bergdorf stepped up and gave Robbie Kaplan the floor plans of the sixth. No, they were extremely
31:29 Alec Baldwin? Cooperative.
31:30 Speaker 04 And good people.
31:31 Alec Baldwin? Right, great.
31:32 Speaker 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.
31:57 Alec Baldwin? Right.
31:58 Speaker 04 I mean.
31:59 Alec Baldwin? Unspeakable.
32:00 Speaker 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.
32:12 Alec 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.
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35:19 Alec 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.
35:50 Speaker 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.
36:08 Alec Baldwin? "The end of the world, let's party."
36:10 Speaker 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
36:26 Alec Baldwin? Interesting.
36:27 Speaker 04 younger selves had it all.
36:28 Alec Baldwin? Isn't that amazing?
36:30 Speaker 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.
36:39 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, I need some advice. Not from my children, although they keep giving it to me.
36:43 Speaker 04 Can I ask one question, Alec?
36:45 Alec Baldwin? Yes, please.
36:46 Speaker 04 The family you've created, is it like your family that you had when you were growing up on Long Island?
36:52 Alec Baldwin? Well, not really, because my dad had a job where he was not home until the very end of the day.
36:58 Speaker 04 Oh, okay.
36:59 Alec 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.
37:44 Alec 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.
37:49 Speaker 04 Oh, and you'd see?
37:51 Alec 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.
38:13 Speaker 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?
38:29 Alec 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.
38:45 Speaker 04 Well, it paid off.
38:46 Alec 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.
39:09 Speaker 04 Alec, thank you.
39:11 Alec Baldwin? My pleasure.
39:11 Speaker 04 May I tell you something?
39:12 Alec Baldwin? Yes.
39:13 Speaker 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?
39:24 Alec Baldwin? Yeah.
39:24 Speaker 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?
39:44 Alec 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.
39:51 Speaker 04 Oh, do, can you imagine?
39:53 Alec Baldwin? There'll be so many.
39:54 Speaker 04 Those are Wrangler wool shirts.
39:56 Alec Baldwin? I love it.
39:56 Speaker 04 Alec, before we go.
39:58 Alec Baldwin? Yes.
39:59 Speaker 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.
40:17 Alec 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.
40:27 Speaker 04 Alec, that is a breakthrough. May I talk to you later in a couple of months about this?
40:32 Alec Baldwin? Yeah. We'll have dinner with Robbie.
40:35 Speaker 04 Perfect.
40:36 Alec Baldwin? I love it.
40:37 Speaker 04 I love it, too.
40:38 Alec 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.
40:45 Speaker 04 I loved every minute of it. Every fucking minute. I loved it. Thank you very much.
40:54 Alec 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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