Judd was awesome, but I owe my movie education to Shauna. She let me tag along to all her sets, films such as Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Pineapple Express. She would ask if I wanted to stop by when I wasn’t working, and I probably spent a total of forty days sitting in a chair with her behind the monitor, soaking everything up like a sponge. She’ll never understand what a gift that was to me as a director. During Pineapple Express, I learned the right camera angles to convincingly shoot a fight scene. When Jonah Hill’s character flashes back to his childhood obsession with drawing dick pics in Superbad, I noted all the camera tricks they did to make it so the child actors and the dick pics were never in the same room at once! It sounds funny, but it was all this old-school trick-of-the-eye stuff that I just loved. All these things helped me grow as a filmmaker.
Shauna never asked for anything in return, except to tell me that her boyfriend Ed was a huge fan. “Do you have any new movies with you?” she would ask. Or “Can you sign this?” It got to a point that I would just show up with DVDs and glossies presigned to Ed and hope they hadn’t broken up.
They kept me around in their little family. In Pineapple Express, I played Jessica, the wife of the drug dealer played by Danny McBride. It was one the first movies he did. In the film, he references his wife who is in jail, so before production even started we had to take a ton of photos together so they could be framed about his house in the scene. Danny and I went to Echo Park in L.A. with a photographer, and I basically spent a day making out with him. They even put a bridal gown on me to fake our wedding photo. But what Danny and I loved was physical comedy. I got on his back and did a piggyback ride, then he said, “Okay, your turn.” I did it! And we shared ice cream in this very sloppy gross way and I loved every minute of it.
Later, I was about to shoot a DVD extra for the film, so I was in the makeup trailer reveling in the fact that some chick was curling my hair for me. James Franco was in the next chair, dressed like his complete pothead character but completely engrossed in his schoolbooks for his classes at UCLA. Shauna came running in, excited to see me. “Oh, my God, yes, you’re here,” she said. “Ed is stopping by for lunch.”
“I’m excited to finally meet him,” I said.
“No, he is going to freak out,” Shauna said. “Can you come say hi and take a picture? You can say no.”
“Bitch, please,” I said. “Yes, I can come by to take a picture with this Ed I feel like I know but have never met.”
“Okay, we’ll surprise him.”
About an hour later, Shauna comes over to get me.
“Ed’s here,” she says.
“Oh, great,” I said. I followed her around the corner and—hold up!—how is it that more than two years have gone by and no one tells me that Shauna’s Ed is Ed freaking Norton?
“Hi there,” I said.
Ed was so incredibly shy and said in the nicest, most genuine voice, “It is so nice to meet you.” He was so nice that I thought he was acting.
“Okay,” I said to Shauna. “Is your Ed here, or did you just get Ed Norton to prank me?”
“No, no, this is my Ed,” she said, giving him a hug. He is indeed. They got married and have two kids, and now that quintessential California chick lives in New York.
When I was in the news a lot this year, Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow came forward as sort of character witnesses for me in the media. “I’ve known Stormy Daniels a long time, and I’ll be honest, she may have mentioned some of this stuff around ten years ago,” Seth recounted to Ellen DeGeneres on her show in April. “At the time, when you asked a porn star who they’ve been sleeping with and the answer was Donald Trump, it was like the least surprising thing that she could have said.”
But I am getting ahead of myself.
THREE
Okay, so did you just skip to this chapter? Quick recap for those just joining us: my life is a lot more interesting than an encounter with Donald Trump. But I get it. Still, of all the people who I had sex with, why couldn’t the world obsess over one of the hot ones?
So, let’s go back to July 13, 2006.
It was really hot for Lake Tahoe, even for July. I was sitting in the back of a golf cart at the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course, seeking shade and relief from the prattling of Jessica Drake. She and I were still contract stars for Wicked Pictures. As you know, we had history. For those of you just joining us, she slept with my boyfriend Brad behind my back, and I wanted to murder her. Little things.
Wicked had recently had a PR guy come in who was talking big about getting into some things that normally weren’t available to an adult company. One of those opportunities was sponsoring a hole at the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe. It’s like Vegas in the Sierras, and the American Century is the casino town’s biggest event of the summer. It has a bachelor party weekend feel, except there’s no sucker getting married. Wicked’s founder, Steve Orenstein, brought me, Jessica, and another contract girl—a brunette, to keep us blondes from throttling each other. Steve was sitting in the front of the golf cart, which showed what an important trip this was for Wicked. I can count on one hand how many work events he went to.
Our job for the day was simple: Celebrities would come through, and we’d say hello and offer them water or a snack. They could take a photo if they wanted. The brunette was in the process of separating from her husband and fighting with her then boyfriend, so we had lots to talk about to pass the time. Meanwhile, Jessica went method, standing around wearing a golf glove as if she spent every weekend on the links. She was all over everyone coming through like some kind of golf geisha.
She really turned on the act when Donald Trump came through. She did everything but pull out a lace handkerchief from her bra and drop it, like, “Oh!” The rest of us got out of the cart to join them, and we rolled our eyes at Jessica so hard you’d think we were having a collective seizure. Trump was wearing a yellow polo that clung to his stomach where it tucked into his khakis. He had a red cap, a Trump crest as a placeholder for the MAGA slogan not one of us could see coming.
Back then, Trump was just a charismatic businessman and Apprentice reality star. Playing the part, he came over to shake our hands. “I’m Donald Trump,” he said, acting like he was hosting the event. “Thank you for coming today.”
Steve introduced himself as the owner of Wicked. “These are my girls,” he said, introducing Jessica and the brunette as contract stars. “And this is Stormy Daniels, contract star and contract director.”
Trump cocked his head to look at me. “Oh,” he said. “You direct? That’s very interesting.” I noticed he was looking at my face and not my breasts.
“I enjoy it,” I said, before Jessica cut in.
“Do you want me to escort you to your next hole, Mr. Trump?” Jessica said, already taking his arm to drag him off. He took a look back at me, and I could tell he was curious.
When the tournament was done for the day, Wicked had a booth set up in a gifting suite. It was a similar thing to the course, with celebrities coming through getting free stuff. The funny thing about becoming rich and famous is that that’s when people start giving you everything for free. We were giving out Wicked-branded bags with DVDs, alongside all the other sponsors handing out sunglasses and golf clubs. So, we were popular. There were lots of people there, but I was most excited to see Anthony Anderson and especially Kevin Nealon. My dream job was to be a writer for Saturday Night Live, and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were my best friends in my head.