On Tuesday night, Stormy Daniels cycled through a lifetime’s worth of material at the first stop of her tell-all tour. “An Intimate Evening with Stormy Daniels” quickly revealed itself to be an opportunity for Daniels to set the record straight—or, as she explained during the inaugural performance at Stand Up NY, “I can say whatever the fuck I want and nobody can stop me.”
Attempted (and failed) silencing has been a common theme in Daniels’ life, from the $130,000 payment that was meant to ensure that she never spoke about allegedly having sex with Donald Trump, to the Twitter trolls that have attacked her ever since she came forward with her side of the story. Now, Daniels told the packed Upper West Side venue, she could add comedians to her list of haters.
Apparently, some professional stand-ups were incensed by the idea of Daniels performing in a comedy club and made their anger known on social media. Daniels insisted once again that she isn’t a comedian and isn’t claiming to be one—in fact, she admitted from the very start of the set that she was extremely nervous about the tour. But the opportunity to share stories from her life as a porn performer, director, writer, and stripper was too good to pass up.
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Daniels told the crowd that she had been looking for the right medium for these anecdotes for years, and that she actually started working on her book over 10 years ago (one working title was Why Me?). Originally, the Trump story was only going to be “a page or two.” To that point, she’s amused by people who assume that her entire set will be about Trump. “How do you stretch 60 seconds into 60 minutes?” she quipped.
Daniels, who at one point asked journalists in the audience to raise their hands, was justifiably concerned about coverage, pointing out that the press has misrepresented her in the past. Common errors, she explained, include calling her a “former” porn performer and leaving out her considerable experience as a writer and director. Addressing any press in the audience, she pleaded, “Just do me one favor and make sure that you call me Stormy Daniels.”
As promised, Daniels went on to share some choice, very NSFW anecdotes, from obsessive fans to on-set shenanigans. While the stories were well-delivered and got positive reactions, both the audience and Daniels seemed eager to move on to the Q&A portion of the event, where her quick wit really shined.
The surprisingly rowdy uptown crowd offered up a stack full of salacious questions, with multiple audience members feeling the need to (anonymously) ask Daniels about her bra size. Mostly, people wanted to know about Trump, and Daniels adeptly hedged a number of queries while managing to keep the audience laughing. Asked about her greatest regret, Daniels retorted, “Seriously? Do you not watch the fucking news?” Later, she joked that she might deign to visit Michael Cohen in jail, as long as “pointing and laughing” through the glass isn’t frowned upon in prison.
One audience member wrote up a ridiculous question about pegging Putin, with Daniels replying that she would “leave that to someone with more expertise,” insisting that she doesn’t want to “break up that relationship.” Responding to an equally invasive inquiry, Daniels said that while Trump did not attempt anal sex, “I was definitely fucking an ass.”
“How much do you charge per hour?” one question read. “$130,000, duh,” Daniels retorted without skipping a beat. She was similarly quick to dismiss the notion of ever apologizing to Melania Trump, saying, “I’ll apologize to her when she apologizes to the country.”
Daniels went on to breeze through a number of questions about Michael Avenatti, her recently indicted former attorney. Asked if she was ever attracted to Avenatti, Daniels revealed that she was actually never alone with her ex-lawyer—“not once.” Besides, she quipped, “he thought he was prettier—that’s a huge problem for me.” Responding to a follow-up—who’s a better person, Trump or Avenatti?—Daniels seemed uncharacteristically stumped, conceding, “I don’t know.”
Near the end of the evening, an audience member asked Daniels about Trump’s hypothetical future downfall. Daniels remarked that, as she sees it, Trump could be caught “raping kittens” on camera and still not face a significant reckoning. “Allowing someone to get away with things that are definitely illegal sets a very terrifying precedent,” Daniels continued, explaining to the crowd that she was choosing her words very deliberately. “It’s basically a green light.”
“Do I think he’ll be re-elected? I don’t know,” she concluded. “I hope not.”
No longer laughing, the crowd broke out into thunderous applause.
