Stormy Daniels Apparently Denies Denying Trump Affair on Kimmel

By now, we’ve all heard the story: Donald Trump’s attorney allegedly created a shell company years ago in order to pay a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to stay silent about an alleged affair between her and the future president. This is why Jimmy Kimmel Live! booked Daniels on Tuesday night, just hours after the president’s first State of the Union address. But then came a twist: on Tuesday evening, Daniels released a new statement ahead of the broadcast—in which she apparently denied having an affair with Trump in the first place. The statement clearly threw Kimmel for a loop, destroying any hopes of a juicy, detailed interview—and setting the tone for an exceedingly odd segment that prompted far more questions than it answered.

Shortly after Daniels walked out, Kimmel read the statement aloud to her: “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas-owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened,” it read in part. Trump’s attorney has already denied that Trump and Daniels ever had an affair, while a representative for Melania Trump has blasted the “salacious” reporting on the subject. That reporting came primarily from The Wall Street Journal and In Touch, which on January 19 published an old interview with Daniels, conducted in 2011, in which the adult-film actress said she had slept with Trump, providing several colorful details about the alleged incident.

Daniels sat poker-faced as Kimmel read her purported words—and as the host then pointed out that the signature at the bottom of the new statement did not appear to match her previous signatures. Kimmel suggested that, perhaps, this was not Daniels’s signature at all, an idea Daniels did not deny; instead, she said only, “That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?”

That coy reply typified this extremely strange interview, in which Kimmel continually sought answers from Daniels—but received only silence or non sequiturs in response. Daniels spent most of the interview dancing around the host’s questions, responding with carefully worded replies that rang with the sound of an attorney’s pre-approval—neither confirming nor denying the affair, explaining where that pre-interview statement came from. Their exchanges were often baffling, and at times frustrating, as Kimmel’s attempts to separate fact from fiction were thwarted by coy grins and plays for laughs—though Daniels did, at least, seem to confirm that she had in fact signed an N.D.A. of some kind:

“You can’t say whether you have a non-disclosure agreement. But if you didn’t have a non-disclosure agreement, you most certainly could say, ‘I don’t have a non-disclosure agreement.’ Yes?” asked Kimmel.

“You’re so smart, Jimmy,” replied Daniels.

When asked if she had given the 2011 interview, Daniels replied, “Not as it is written.” When asked if the transcript In Touch published was correct, she said she hadn’t seen the transcript itself—so Kimmel went line by line, joking through some of the account’s more colorful allegations. When he presented her with three carrots in various sizes—a clear attempt to get her to comment on Trump’s anatomy—Daniels did not take the bait. To help his guest avoid violating a non-disclosure agreement that may or may not exist, Kimmel then brought out Stormy and Donald puppets, acting out various scenarios and asking her to confirm if anything rang a bell through a game of “Never Have I Ever.” Still, Daniels stood steadfast, confirming only that she may or may not have anything to confirm.

The conclusion of this strange, strained exercise in political theater? As Kimmel put it, “Well, this was an unsuccessful experiment.”

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:Women's March 2018 in Photos: Thousands Descend on D.C. as the Government Shuts DownLaura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com. She was formerly an editorial assistant at Slate and lives in Brooklyn.