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. Egene 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, Carol advised readers of L magazine from nineteen ninety three
to twenty nineteen in her Asked Egene column. During that time, she wrote several books, including two thousand and four's Mister Wright, Right Now, How a Smart Woman Can Land Her Dream Man. In six weeks after ending her advice column in twenty nineteen, Carrol's work as an author changed dramatically. In her fifth book, titled What do We Need Men For a Modest Proposal, Carol accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in the mid nineteen nineties. A follow up was released in twenty
twenty five, 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 eighty three point three million dollars 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. With such an illustrious writing career, I was curious if Egene started out as an avid reader.
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 in me. Sheep interested me, right, Grass I grew up. It was a nineteenth century Queen Anne red brick schoolhouse in the middle of the sticks, behind the sticks in the hills of Indiana.
Wow.
Oh, it was exquisite. And 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, Alec, it was boot Collic 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, Alexai, you didn't have to look. I mean,
just picture this. You open your front door and to tell the kid to go outside. You'll see him at dinner time. That's how safe, That's how far back in the country were and how safe we were. And I only had my dog for my companion. That then I'd come back for lunch, and then I leave again by myself.
And when does this take hold of you? This idea you were writing when you were very young, I understand.
Well, at the age of twelve, 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 the sighting. This is what happens when you get published in a magazine. So I thought this is good. So I sent off my first pitch at the age of twelve to the series and Roebuck Catalog.
What was the pitch?
Oh, a story idea about a little girl who cut out all the clothes in the series and Roebuck Catalog, and everything she cut out became real and she got to wear the clothes, 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 captin.
That's exactly I love that. Oh, they turned it down.
They turned it down.
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 happened and what it was. It was something that was published in a magazine. It really lit up my brain.
Now, when you're riding and you first get to New York. To come to New York, when.
Nineteen eighty one, eighty one, I came here to take fran Lubowitz camping, for Outside Magazine. Can you imagine taking fran Lubowitz camping?
No, I can't.
I can't putting her into a tent.
No. When I saw that in the documentary, Mike God, I almost gagged. I thought, that's brilliant.
Oh God, Jesus, I know. So I just took a look around New York and said Jesus, and never went back to Well. I went back to Montana to pack up and say goodbye to the old husband, and then came to New York.
We're in Montana, were you?
Oh? Ennis, fly fishing capital of the world.
That's where he wanted to deliver. You were into fly fishing.
He thought he was on his timingway, 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 the fire season. So and then we wanted to be writers. And when we were practicing being trying to get into magazines. That was a big thing, to get into magazines.
Did you back in the Montana days were you published?
We both got He became editor in chief of Outdoor Life, and I took Friendly Woods 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 two in the morning, and it's fact aous. You're meeting friends and you're staying up. Remember the brasserie where we would go and have coffee at the end of the night.
I mean, yeah, Cafe Central, all those places, all the late night joints. That's all dead now. By the way, every he's in bed, you.
Know, I don't understand it, Dull.
It's changed. Its changed a lot. Everybody's in bed, they're up early, they go jogging.
Well, you're in bedd okay? Can I ask you so sure? When do you do all your reading?
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 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?
In the kitchen standing up when I'm eating lunch.
My answer is on an airplane. Oh, airplane to the bet, that's what airplanes were built for.
Well, the airplane is great because nobody can get to your next seat.
Bubble. Oh you put on that, you put that, hell those headphones on and on a little shell pan nocturn.
And start reading It's heaven.
Now I want to get into your more about your writing, which is that where's the place you were writing with, whether you were on the staff or not. Who were you on the staff with for the longest.
Well, it's it Saturday Night Live for a half year. That was a good staff until Senator the future Senator came up behind. He didn't realize how I was there, Senator Franklin, and he picked up the sketch that I had actress read through, and al frank said, what the fuck is this? Why was it read? He didn't realize I was there, and you Ali, who I believe has made more appearances on Saturday Night Live than anybody in the history seventeen times. So you know what a killing
line that would be to hear As a writer. 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 that read through? Can you imagine.
Dead, painful silent? You were there just for half a year. I did not even know that was possible.
Who knew, right? But Larry David lasted a half year.
I didn't know that. Wow, you're a good company, I am. But in terms of magazines, you warned us on the staff of any magazines.
Yeah, Esquire right outside l There were some other magazines too, but yeah, yeah.
So why did you decide you want to do the TV show?
Well, who wouldn't want to do a TV show?
But who told you? Well? Where did the 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.
That was Roger Ailes's decision. Somebody showed him the column, the ascgene column, and Rogers 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 I mean Fox.
No, this is the new NBC channel that Roger Ailes himself created out as nothing, and he just gave me a live hour every day on TV. It was you know, it was fun.
Then 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? Elke?
I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.
You know, you covered it brilliantly.
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 passion and the love and the jealousy, has got everything. And I thought, yeah, no, everybody's there. So I thought, I, well, you 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.
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?
No, Roger said, hey, Egen, 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.
Booking is yeah, you live and die by booking.
Oh yeah. It was a free for all, 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.
Now I'm want to read you a quote Bill Toanelli, Esquire and Rolling Stone editor said in a nineteen ninety nine interview that you are quote institutionally incapable of being uninteresting? Is the Egen Carroll show on TV you in real life? Well? Did you create the Egen Carrol that stepped in front of the camera or was that just you?
Before I started talking to you today, I was another Egen. This is the Egen that I'm talking to Ali. As you know, there's an Alec Baldwin that is the Barbara Stanwick of his generation does comedy and tragedy. That's you.
I love that. I'm the Barbara Stanwick.
Barbara Stanwyck. Nobody played comedy and.
Tragedy like yeah, all of it. Yeah, she was great. So there's the private you and the public you.
Yes, there we go.
Yeah, it's a character you play.
Yeah, that came up during the trial. Tell me how how 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 col this woman couldn't have suffered from the attack. Look how Look how Mary and johny she is? That was their case. In other words, if you're a woman and and you have been attacked, you have to wear a shroud 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 their no it was they thought that it was sixteen hundreds. It was the sixteen hundreds, you know, weren't allowed to smile. What woman's life was to be over?
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 with 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 social issues don't play to them. Now, when you went through this whole thing, or many years pass between the event and the late nine and you were 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.
My mother was a Republican politician. But you know what, and like, I never told her. She was on her deathbed. We were all around her when Trump was running and all those women came forward. Remember all those women came forward after the access So I went to and so I never told my mother because I thought it would kill her. So she was 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 it. So no, I got slimed by everybody else in the country, but not by my Republican friends. No.
So, well, 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 twenty years later, what was it that made you move forward?
Oh? It was Megan Twoian and Jodi Kantner coming out in the New York Times with the Harvey Weinstein story. Really, do you remember how that rocked the country? Sure, 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 is talk about our whole thing was chin up and smile. Wow,
that was it. We expected a man to be a little gravvy 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, el and Jodie Katner and Megan Toury hit the front page of the New York Times, and women, well known women. When is Paltrow? You know, they were coming forward with stories about Harvey Winston. Brad Pitt stepped up.
Remember when they told the story where he had called Harvey and said, if you dare go near one, that's one more time I will kill you.
Yeah, I would love to have seen that. Oh I don't see Brad, you know, cuddle with Harvey for a little while.
But anyway, oh man, So they showed me what to do, so.
I did it. I'm going to see this. Sheila Nevans is on the show. I don't respect anybody in this business more than Shila Nevans, who single handedly crafts HBO documentaries and is the godmother of so many documentaries. And she talks to me about a guy, his hands on her leg, he's on her knee, his hand's going up her dress whatever. And I stopped 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, that's exactly right. And if you didn't, you would not get the promotion.
Right. That's what she said, That's how you got ahead.
This is why women have never gained a quality because of the sexual violence. This is why women have always always a little lower than men.
Always at right on my show.
Believe me, Oh not in your life. You either believe you that.
Journalist and author Agene Carroll. If you're interested in the origins of the me Too movement on Hollywood's reckoning with sex and power, check out my conversation with New York Times writers Megan Chewey and Jodi Kanter.
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 assistance women who want to be producers, right, women who are twenty three years old, and they are so excited because they're on there.
At the bottom of the ladder, very first.
Day at a company like Mirramax 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 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 movie. Is 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.
To hear more of my conversation with Megan Chewy and Jodi Kanter, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Egene Carol talks about publishing her explosive twenty nineteen book and who stood by her while so much of the general public did not believe her accusations. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In the late nineteen nineties, Egen Carol 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 Egene 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.
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 it becomes not a horrible it becomes something that I lived with. You either learn to bat it away or your life is over.
Well, now, before you press charges, before you bring a case against him, you write the book. Yeah, but do the imprint bulk at that idea of writing that material about him? Were they concerned about that at all?
Legally we had that thing. Every word was gone through by one of the great attorneys in the country.
So they backed you that imprint.
Yeah, and also New York Magazine backed it. That thing was fact checked up and down when I when I came out with the story, it's remarkable it was in the book. But New York Magazine excerpted that was the thing that hit the White House. And they saw that picture of me on the cover and like without makeup, without makeup, and that's when he said, you know, when you're seventy five, 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 look my age, most people didn't believe me.
Really didn't believe.
You 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.
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 be somebody, You got me somebody.
I'm like, hey, do you remember back in the day when nobody was better looking than you? Nobody I found them.
I had a good month. I had a great I had one month in the early ninety decades you had the early nineties. I had that was good. It was a good time.
Oh it was devastating.
I got all these questions, none of them have anything to do with my sex life.
I mean devastating devastating.
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. Oh yeah, Lisa Burnbaugh Lisa who I know?
Yes, And Carol Martin another you know, she broke the glass ceiling of New York. She became the first black woman to anchor a New York news show. And Lisa Burnbaugh. 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 Alick, when the last book came out and it immediately hit the New York Times bestseller lists, 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 suit? The president? She never heard of it. You're kidding me, 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 so. 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 eighty three point three million because their Instagram feed is not showing them that fact.
It's interesting.
I never thought of them, and now there is their Facebook feed, and now is their TikTok.
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?
Robbie Caplan was I hardly 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 Caplan, 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.
Robbie beat them all, just fucking beat them all. And as you know, she's this tiny little woman, long woman from you know, Shaker Heights, Ohio, just mashed the Nazis, and so she was the one.
Now when you I mean, this is a tough question, but when you walk into Bergdorfs 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 never met before. So the Trump that you're walking into, who was he? You thought he was just charming and silly and fun. Yeah, he's kind of a fop boy.
Is that a perfect word? He actually made a joke about himself. He was easy and up for anything, up for a wark, and you know, playful exactly. It Come help me by a present?
What am I?
I'm an advice calmnist. That's my duty to help people buy a present. So I was real. Also he was very pretty at that time, a huh interesting, 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 Burgdors suggesting gifts and he's, you know, yamoring about how he's thinking a buy and Burgdors.
You're there to buy a bag, he's there to buy the store.
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 hoddler and sort of a con mes. 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 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.
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, linen's and posh and suits and ties, and they're having lunch. The guy puts his hand under 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 preses 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 Bergdorfs when this happened.
No, Alec Bergdorf stepped up and gave Robbie kaplan the floor plans of the sixth. No, they were extremely cooperative and good people.
Right, great, 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 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. Right at twenty one. She had
just met him, right, I mean unspeakable. And of course she did not officially come forward like many other women, many, many, many, and other women didn't come forward about him.
Journalist and author Egen Carroll, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow. Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Egene Carroll reflects on her life and tells us what advice she would or wouldn't give to her younger self. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's the thing. El magazine first published the
Ask Egen advice column in nineteen ninety three. In the column, Egen Carol 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, thirty two years after ask Egen began, I was curious what advice Egen Carol would give to her younger self.
To my younger self, I want need advice from my younger self. My younger self was great. I love my younger I write my younger self just to advise me, to say, Egene, you're having a great time. Enjoy the end of the world. That's the thing yourself, it's going to say, of the world, let's party. Yeah, I don't. I have no advice to that young woman. She was full of beans, and I really I liked her, And I liked you when you were younger. I like you
even better now. So yeah, none of those writing letters to younger selves, because interesting, the younger selves had it all. Why so are we going to give those fucking younger people? No, we can listen to them well, you got seven kids. You can listen to them.
Oh my gosh, I need some advice, not from my children, although they keep giving it to me.
Can I ask one question, alec Yes, please. The family you've created, is it like your family that you had when you were growing up on Long Island?
Well not really, because my dad had a job where he was not home until the very end of the day, 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 going to stay up and let dad. 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 the 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, that with those fiffy TV reviews of the movies and reviews, and he 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 said, no, no, no, you gotta go to bed. It's eleven thirty. You gotta go.
You gotta go to bed now. And I go, come on, let's just watch ten minutes and he say, okay, ten minutes and then he'd pass out and fall asleep.
Oh and you see.
And I would watch Five Graves to Cairo. I'd watch How Green was My Valley? I watched Sorry, Wrong Number, I watched a 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 wanted to be an actor.
So that's interesting. Say you have your career, which is a lot of movies and a lot of hit TV. So it comes from this childhood and watching these great movies and then watching you know, Dinah Shore and all that. Because you're exactly Mike Douglas.
Everything you're nerved with it. I watch. The thing is, when I was young, I watched anything. I watched the news with John Chancellor, with my father, I watched everything everything. Now I want to say to you, thank you you are and you've heard this ad infinite And 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 Canter and Twey, and you're a great hero to a lot of women because you fought, You fought for yourself.
Thank you person. Can I tell you something, Yes, you are the only journalist, the only interviewer I think of you as a journalist. You're the only person who never said to me, Egene, when are you getting your money? 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 going to get the money. But I don't understand why everybody's panties are in such a twist about getting this money.
Right. Well, well we'll know, you know, I 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.
Oh dude, can you imagine? These are so many Wrangler wool shirts a before we go. Yes, 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 want to know the fun things you would do at the end of the world.
Probably sit on the couch and watch reruns of The Dinah Shore Show. That's when I was happiest. My younger self was a far happier than my adults, far happier when I was younger.
Ali, that is a breakthrough. May I talk to you later in a couple of months about this.
Yeah, we'll have dinner with Robbie perfect. I love it. I love it too, all right, listen, you take good care of yourself, and I want to send you my very best of my sincere thanks for doing the show. I appreciate it.
I loved every minute, every fucking minute. I love it. Thank you very much.
My thanks to author and journalist Egene Carroll. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that is brought to you by Ihearts Video