Stormy Daniels has never shied away from speaking frankly about what she says transpired between her and former President Donald Trump, but how well do you really know her?

That’s the question that the new Peacock documentary “Stormy,” now streaming, aims to answer. The film takes a closer look at Daniels’ personal life and how it’s been transformed since Michael Cohen admitted coordinating a payment to Daniels and another woman, Karen McDougal, just before the 2016 election to keep quiet about their affairs with Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges for the hush-money payment, which led to Trump’s indictment on 34 counts of falsifying business records in 2023.

Director Sarah Gibson and producer Erin Lee Carr, previously behind the film “Britney vs Spears,” say they teamed up again for “Stormy” because they wanted to offer viewers a broader look at Daniels. They describe how the men in Daniels’ life have failed her — along with the justice system — and go into how she’s coped with online threats and attacks, multiple lawsuits, the breakup of her family and the media attention that has often reduced her to a singular description.

“Porn star Stormy Daniels — you never saw her name without ‘porn star,’” Carr says. “She was a porn star director. She was incredibly talented and is talented.”

Gibson and Carr began their project a year before Trump’s indictment in the hush-money payment was handed up by a Manhattan grand jury. They persuaded Daniels not only to speak to them but also to give them editorial control, thanks in part to Judd Apatow, whom Daniels had worked with previously, making cameos in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.” Apatow is an executive producer on “Stormy” (Sara Bernstein and Meredith Kaulfers from Imagine Documentaries are also EPs). Initially, the film was supposed to document how Daniels was reinventing herself, but Trump’s indictment changed everything. Gibson says they tried at first to make the documentary with private funding because no one would touch it until Peacock came along.

“Everyone was afraid of Trump and getting sued,” Gibson says. “Even when we started trying to get this made [and] out in the world, before the indictment happened, this project was scary for people who didn’t want to be engaged in years-long litigation.”

The release of the documentary comes at a notable time. Trump’s hush-money trial was originally scheduled to begin on March 25. However, on Friday, a judge agreed to a 30-day postponement after the former president’s lawyers said they needed more time to review new evidence from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

As much as the documentary is about Daniels and the Trump indictment, it’s also about the litigation she’s faced involving her former lawyer Michael Avenatti, who was convicted of stealing book proceeds from Daniels, and a defamation lawsuit against Trump that she says Avenatti filed on her behalf without her permission, which she lost. The suit was appealed, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Trump’s favor, and Daniels now owes the former president more than $600,000 in legal fees.

“We used to say this is the tale of the two Michaels,” Gibson says of Avenatti and Cohen. “Michael Cohen started out as a foe and is now a friend ... (whereas Avenatti) wouldn’t let us record the phone call in prison.”

Gibson and Carr spoke over Zoom about what it was like to document Daniels’ life, how the Fox News-related movie “Bombshell” was an inspiration and what they want audiences to take away from the film. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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