Stormy Daniels - Full Disclosure

And he joked in a hypnotized voice, “I’m coming with you.” He is one of the most gifted emcees out there. Give him a mic and he will announce your arrival and pump up the crowd like you invented stripping. The guys are all so different, but they’re brothers now.

At my meet-and-greets after shows, Travis and Brandon stand beside me as the person hands either Chris or Dwayne their cell phone to take a picture. They all hear the stories people confide in me. Men and, especially now, women take those minutes to tell me about their lives and how they identify with me. As I’ve said, they tell me they need me to save the world.

It’s a burden to take in all this energy, but I know it’s what I am supposed to be doing. There were so many times that the universe took care of me—times where I should not have done well, shouldn’t have gotten out of a situation, or shouldn’t have risen above because no one helped me. You’ve seen this time and again in these pages: the universe takes my hand and says, “I got you.” And I think it wants its payback.

I decided I would do one more big media thing, but only because it felt like family to me. Saturday Night Live, my favorite show in the world, asked me to take part in the cold open of the May 5 episode. There was talk of it for a few weeks, and then, just a few days beforehand, I got word that it was a go. They wanted to do a huge cold open, an old-fashioned cavalcade of stars, with all these unexpected stars playing the roles of people caught up in the various scandals of the Trump administration.

They wanted me to be the last and biggest surprise, and kept my appearance so top secret that they didn’t tell any of the cast beforehand. I entered 30 Rock through an underground parking entrance and was so busy pinching myself that I almost ran right into Scarlett Johansson as we both boarded the building’s secret elevator. She was there to play Ivanka Trump, and Jimmy Fallon would be Jared Kushner. Upstairs, I was spirited to my dressing room, right next door to Ben Stiller’s. He was perfectly cast as Michael Cohen, calling everyone on his various burner phones. As word got out that I was there, cast members kept stopping by to take selfies with me. I couldn’t believe these people I admired were losing it that I was there. I only had a few minutes with my favorite, Kate McKinnon, because she had to do heavy-duty makeup to play crypt keeper Rudy Giuliani. But my other absolute favorite, Leslie Jones, was able to talk to me for a while. In the hallway, I hugged Ben Stiller, and we got to talking about how much we preferred directing over acting. Um, hello, I thought in the moment, I am talking to Ben Stiller about directing Tropic Thunder and Zoolander.

Alec Baldwin walked in, and I made a funny face at the absurdity of him dressed as Donald Trump. He’d brought his wife, Hilaria, who at any moment would be giving birth to their baby boy. He was just as charming as you want him to be. But the real surprise was Lorne Michaels. He’d left a note with flowers in my dressing room, but he also stopped by. I don’t get starstruck, but I have known this man all my life through watching SNL, the show he created in 1975. All those nights I stayed up late in Baton Rouge, or, later, watching it Sunday morning after taping it because I had a Saturday night show. I tried not to gush or give off the feel of crazy-stalker fan, but I did tell him this was my dream come true. He invited me to sit with him in his special spot in the bleachers once the cold open was finished.

Once the show started, each reveal got a cheer, and I almost broke character when I got the biggest wave of surprised applause.

As Trump, Alec dismisses Cohen and tries to sweet-talk me. “Oh, come on, we’ll always have Shark Week,” he said. “I solved North and South Korea, why can’t I solve us?”

“Sorry, Donald, it’s too late for that,” I said. “I know you don’t believe in climate change, but… a storm’s a-coming, baby!”

And then we got to say those magic words together: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night !”

I went and sat with Lorne to watch the host, Donald Glover, and for me, the second show was watching Lorne in action. It was amazing to see somebody of his stature still be so involved in every bit of the process, exactly how I try to be as a director.

When the show was over, we all gathered on the stage to say good night to the audience, just as I had seen over and again. The girl from Baton Rouge who wasn’t going to amount to anything was standing up there just like she’d imagined. When I stepped off the stage, I had a realization: that was the best thing that had ever happened to me besides having a child. The only thing that could ever top it would be having another baby—and that was not happening.

“What do I do now?” I said, back in the car with my bodyguards, Travis and Brandon, on our way to the after-party. “Should I, like, buy a puppy or something?”

Then there are moments where I am back down on earth. This was all so hard on my marriage. For months, Glen became more and more critical of me, saying I was being dramatic about needing security. He got a sense of what it’s like when I went home for Mother’s Day weekend. I gave my dragons the day off, and on a whim, Glen and I went to the May 11 Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at the Dos Equis Pavilion, this huge outdoor amphitheater in Dallas. Bad Company was opening for them and were already playing when we got there slightly late. It was an old-fashioned date night, the kind women’s magazines always tell you to have to save your marriage. We were in the third row, Paul Rodgers was singing “Feel Like Making Love,” and Glen hugged me, just like he did when I fell in love with him watching Snow Patrol sing “Chasing Cars” more than ten years before.

Then Bad Company left the stage. And the lights came on, and people saw me. This girl leaned over. “Hey, can I get a picture with you?” she whispered. “I’m a big fan. Do you mind if I just get a quick selfie with you?”

Glen looked away. I smiled. “Sure,” I said. She did, and that’s all anyone else had to hear. They descended on us. “Can I get a picture?” “Can I get a picture?” People began pulling at me, guys putting their arms over me to get me into the frame of their cameras. Glen started to block people, but they were coming from all sides. Someone ripped my shirt trying to grab me, and Glen was done. We fled to the parking lot and sat in the car. No one chased us, it wasn’t some zombie apocalypse thing, but when I was in that space, people wanted a piece of me.

I was used to it and blamed myself for thinking I could just do something like this without Brandon and Travis. But Glen had never seen anything like it. In the car, he admitted it was downright scary, comparing it to Finding Nemo, when the seagulls are all coming for the crab, saying, “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

I was relieved he saw it up close. “That’s what it’s been like,” I told him, not saying what I wanted to say: “I told you I wasn’t exaggerating.”

Still, I didn’t want the night to be a wash. When we heard Lynyrd Skynyrd start up, we sneaked back in, safe again in the dark. We left halfway through “Free Bird,” walking away as they sang about someone who would rather be alone than be chained.

I was in Raleigh on June 7, in the middle of a two-night run at the Men’s Club. My phone was buzzing with messages that morning, but I chose to ignore it because an equestrian center run by a horse friend of mine had opened early just for me. With no cameras, and nobody watching except my kindred-spirit crazy-wonderful horse folk, I got to ride again. It felt amazing to be that free.