Whore. Horseface. Con job. As a prime target of former President Donald Trump and his MAGA minions, Stormy Daniels has heard it all, but as she explained in Stormy, Sarah Gibson’s documentary about her world premiering at South by Southwest, the only label that truly upsets her is “liar.”
It’s been impossible to escape Trump news since he announced his presidential run in 2015, and the drama that surrounds this man is seemingly endless. Stormy Daniels was caught up in it long before that, meeting the reality TV star around 2006 during his Apprentice days while she was on an upswing in the adult film industry, winning awards and making moves behind the camera as writer and director. Their fateful hotel room meeting, predicated on a potential Celebrity Apprentice appearance, became more consequential than either of them could possibly anticipate. It led to his then-attorney Michael Cohen paying her to stay silent about their relationship, and became a part of just one of dozens of felonies the former president has been charged with.
Stormy executive producer Judd Apatow, who worked with Daniels on a few of his megapopular comedy films (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), explained at Friday’s screening that this was “complicated to get right,” but ultimately they were trying to “make a movie about a person.” Producer Erin Lee Carr has tackled the stories of scandals and famous women before, directing Britney vs. Spears and gymnastics abuse doc At the Heart of Gold – which were both produced by Stormy director Sarah Gibson. The team clearly have the utmost respect for the subject and did their best to tell her story.
Thankfully, little screen time is given to the former president who’s been oversaturating our airwaves for the last decade. Instead, the camera is trained on Daniels, taking us through her tumultuous life as she deals with the everyday struggles of motherhood as a working woman with the added complication of extensive legal battles with the most powerful man in the world. Timeline-wise, the film focuses most on key years 2018 and 2023: the year The Wall Street Journal broke the story about the “hush money” paid to Daniels, and the year of Trump’s indictment for his involvement. Following the 2018 story, Trump and Daniels became embroiled in courtroom battles, each alleging the other was lying.
As you might expect, this has all taken a toll on Daniels, whose life before meeting Trump was interesting enough. Her detractors take to Twitter to call her every name in the book, but there are also death threats. She’s been on the receiving end of abuse before though, too – growing up in poverty in Baton Rouge gave her the motivation to get out, the documentary details, and that motivation is never more clear than at one moment during a hometown visit. Stopping the car in front of the house where she’d been abused at age 9, she explains that the perpetrator is long dead, before terror flashes in her eyes and she says, “It’s not safe here.”
Daniels is fiercely protective of her daughter, who is never named in the film and whose face is always obscured. There are so many heartbreaking moments that display a mother’s anguish at the difficult choices she has to make to that end: She wants to be near, but her presence threatens her daughter’s safety. There are disputes with former husband Glen Crain, who also gets a chance to tell his side of the story, explaining how Daniels has formed spiritual and mental calluses, but he hasn’t. Their marriage is upended and undone by all this, and Daniels wonders if it is even worth it, or if standing up for herself was all for nothing.
After five years of being tormented, Daniels firmly announces that she is still here and “out of fucks.” Her soul may be tired, but she must go on. She’s a mother, after all, besides being a strong, smart, industrious, and funny woman. There’s so much more to her story, and after just a glimpse of life behind the scenes for this complicated human who’s been labeled all kinds of things, you’re left with the sense that she may be out of fucks, but she has a lot left to give.
Stormy
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This article appears in SXSW 2024 Festival Guide, Part II and March 8 • 2024.
