The PORN STAR and the PRESIDENT

She’s been called the most famous woman on the planet, but adult entertainer Stormy Daniels says she refuses to be defined by her liaison with Donald Trump. Olivia Nuzzi reports

- Olivia Nuzzi

Stormy Daniels lights a cigarette and takes a sip of Coca-Cola. The former porn star turned director is sitting on the back patio of her house in the US countryside. It's early April and Daniels has again made headlines after Donald Trump was indicted by a jury for allegedly giving her hush money during the 2016 US presidential election. Daniels had hoped Trump's indictment would bring with it a kind of catharsis. But when the news broke, "I was just numb," she says. "It doesn't feel like I thought it would; it just doesn't feel like anything. It doesn't feel like a victory... It was like having sex for hours and not having an orgasm."

It was the Friday after the March 30 indictment announcement and I had travelled from Washington to meet Daniels. She had received death threats and was worried for her safety. She wasn't responding to texts, so I decided to just show up, aware that in this part of America you can shoot people who do that and get away with it. At the end of her driveway I find Barrett Blade, whom she married in 2022, checking the mail. Daniels was not doing well and would not be entertaining visitors, he said. Who could blame her?

A little later, Daniels surfaced to speak to me. I needed to give her an hour, she said, and to agree not to judge her for her appearance. She'd been crying. On the patio, Daniels told me this had all been much harder and more emotional than she'd expected. "I didn't ask for this but I can't imagine anybody else could have handled it," she said, "because I'm barely handling it."