Melania Trump isn't telling the whole truth
episodePreviously titled “Melania Trump just made a lot of money (and a documentary)” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What are the initial impressions of Melania Trump's documentary?
Okay, so what word would each of you use to describe the Melania documentary as a whole?
I would say airless.
That's very nice. That's a good description.
Like it is a movie that does not have any hint of like kind of fresh air moving through it in the way you might associate with spontaneity or something that is like a kind of bit of unscripted action.
Mine was high heels forward. One of the very first shots is of her heels forward. And you're constantly conscious of the stilettos. And she's walking down hallways and she's getting into helicopters. And it's like that teaser trailer for Devil Wears Prada 2. where it's just high heels walking and then finally a scene.
It is an incredibly manicured production that gives you very little that looks like an authentic beat of people not being intensely aware that the cameras are there and what they're there for. So it's not like Madonna Truth or Dare in your book?
Not that one? Not that one. All right, everybody. On Tuesday morning, I did my civic duty as a cultural critic and saw a 10 a.m. screening of the documentary Everyone Has an Opinion on Melania. Regardless of how you feel about Melania Trump, the fact that a sitting first lady was paid $40 million by Amazon for a self-produced documentary about her own life That is something worth examination. The film follows First Lady Melania Trump's experience of the 20 days leading up to her husband's second presidential inauguration. As it all unfolded, so did my perspective. And I kept asking myself, How is Melania any different from the dozens of self-produced celebrity documentaries that have gotten popular over the past 15 years?
How does the film's production style affect its authenticity?
Like, was Melania's film really a total switch up from, you know, Taylor Swift's Miss Americana, Katy Perry's Part of Me, or Beyonce's Life is But a Dream? To be honest, I'm not so sure. So I needed some big brains to tease this out. With me, are NPR arts critic Bob Mondello and New York Magazine film critic Alison Wilmore. Bob, Alison, are your brains ready to discuss this? Are you ready to dissect this?
I'm not sure they'll ever be for me.
Yeah, I'll never be ready. Okay, well, we should just jump right in then. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
I will say that the word that came up for me when watching the Melania doc was shiny. Like her hair was very shiny. Everything had the sheen of like Lisa Vanderpump's house. Everything feels very glossy and soft focused in a way that's very flattering. And that is the overall impression that I got from this entire affair. Which, you know, is not exactly the thing I think that comes to mind when people think about documentary and kind of this unvarnished, you know, perspective on someone's life or a certain event. Yes. Yeah. Alison, you chose the word airless. What scene really captures why that word fits for you?
There is this scene early on where Melania Trump is shown watching footage of the Los Angeles fires. The fires are just like devastated the city, you know, right in January around this time. And the way this is shown is first the camera carefully pans over an array of newspapers so you can see the front pages. They're like artfully laid out, you know. And then you see her posed on a kind of sofa watching the news. And this is true for every scene in the movie. She is entirely made up, right? Like fully full face of makeup. Yeah.
It reminded me of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Glam has arrived before the cameras did in every sense.
Exactly. She does not appear on camera at all without the full face of makeup and the hair. So she's sitting on this sofa watching the news and it's very clearly arranged. But also at a certain point... Brett Renner's camera zooms in very close to her eyes, and it's like he's trying really hard to find emotion there, while she says some kind of platitudes about all the destruction, to be horrified at the loss, with no emotion in the voiceover.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What are the initial impressions of Melania Trump's documentary?
0:00–2:14
2
How does the film's production style affect its authenticity?
2:14–6:45
3
What themes emerge from Melania Trump's portrayal in the documentary?
6:45–11:30
4
What is the significance of Amazon's financial backing for the film?
11:30–21:27