Melania, the new documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, is set for release on Friday. And a new report indicates that things were a bit stormy on the set of the film- and people who worked on it are rooting for the documentary’s failure.
According to a Rolling Stone report published Tuesday, there was chaos on the set of the film, which was directed by Rush Hour filmmaker and #MeToo exile-until-recently Brett Ratner. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to the film, the bulk of which the First Lady herself “pocketed.”
Per Rolling Stone, the film’s production schedule was “chaotic.”
Crew members say the worst part of working on Amazon’s new Melania Trump documentary wasn’t promoting the administration — it was working with accused sex pest Brett Ratner. More:https://t.co/zHpTyyIBlPhttps://t.co/zHpTyyIBlP
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) January 27, 2026
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“It was a chaotic process that involved hiring and coordinating three separate production crews working in Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City,” the report said, adding that each portion retained a different “heavyweight” cinematographer.
“People were worked really hard. Really long hours, highly disorganized, very chaotic,” one person who worked on the set told Rolling Stone.
“It wasn’t easy money,” another told the magazine. “It was very difficult because of the chaos that was around everything. … Usually [for a documentary] it’s like, ‘Oh, follow the subject.’ Well, it’s Melania Trump. With the first lady and Secret Service, you can’t just do things you usually do.”
The magazine also quoted one person involved with the film as stating, “some two-thirds of the crew members who worked on the film in New York had requested not to have their names formally credited on the documentary.” Some crew members did describe the First Lady as “totally nice,” while noting that she was “the opposite of Brett Ratner.”
“I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the propaganda element of this,” one member of the production team told the magazine. “But Brett Ratner was the worst part of working on this project.”
Rolling Stone noted that while Ratner is currently living in a villa at Mar-a-Lago, he did not donate to Trump in any of his campaigns and has a history of giving to Democrats.
The magazine also reported that those invited to this Thursday’s premiere received notes that stated, “if you are a government employee or a government official, by accepting this invitation you are confirming that you have received approval from your ethics officer or legal department to attend this event and accept any provided items.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
