The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Stormy Daniels is ‘one of the last movie stars of porn’

Her industry has gone online

By
April 20, 2018 at 11:07 a.m. EDT

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Frances Stead Sellers.

In her appearance Tuesday on “The View,” the president’s most prominent legal adversary, Stormy Daniels, talked about her goals — to “really be known as a female director,” producing more mainstream work like music videos and a horror movie.

But as she continues to evolve her career, Daniels, America’s best-known porn actress, still remains something of an anachronism within the porn industry. Having made her name before the Internet’s disruptions, Daniels has weathered the storm and still creates porn films that tell a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

"The View" hosts interviewed Stormy Daniels on April 17 and showed a sketch of the man Daniels said threatened her to stay quiet. (Video: Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

But in the last decade, the porn industry has retreated largely from the studio to the bedroom, where individual sex workers entertain viewers via web­cam.

Such narrative arcs told by Daniels is unusual in contemporary pornography, according to Michael Vegas, who considers Daniels “one of the last movie stars of porn.”

A changing industry

The porn industry, like the news media and entertainment companies, had to reinvent itself in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and the widespread piracy of copyrighted products. Online porn allowed viewers to watch free on laptops and phones wherever and whenever they pleased; and chat rooms allowed them to connect with performers.

Numbers that reflect the plight of traditional studios are hard to come by because few adult companies are publicly traded, according to Lynn Comella, a professor of gender studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and author of “Vibrator Nation.” But the success of the digital business is clear.

The Stormy Daniels story is really about intimidation

“The rise of webcamming has been a game changer,” said Comella, a regular visitor to the porn convention — or AVN Adult Entertainment Expo — held annually in Las Vegas, where, she said, film studios used to be center stage. Now the prime real estate belongs to webcam companies, which offer digital liaisons between paying customers and an array of models varied enough to cater to every taste. On the convention floor this year, “cam girls” swiveled and smirked in front of laptops, adjusting decorative pasties and leather straps for their online audiences.

‘Cam Girls’

Customers pay from $1 to $50 a minute to engage online, according to Jaime Rodriguez, director of product at Flirt4Free, one of the largest and oldest webcam platforms. The highest expenditures are for private interactions with sought-after models. The company also offers users the opportunity to tip anywhere from $1 to $50,000. A few Flirt4Free users, Rodriguez said, regularly spend as much as $100,000 a month. About one-third goes to the company, one-third to the model, and another third to the source of the online traffic, which in Flirt4Free’s case is often dating sites.

Camming puts the unattainable within digital reach.

“Camming sites function like Uber or Lyft,” said Lily Fleur, who helped finance her master’s degree though webcam work. “Anyone with an Internet connection and a webcam can do it,” she said.

Fleur, who described her family members as religious and conservative, said she was able to conceal her identity by keeping her face hidden during her performances.

Daniels’s career

Daniels, recalled her old friend Randy Spears, wanted to make a splash from the moment she got into adult entertainment.

“If she decided to do that business, she was going to be a star in it,” said Spears, who often performed with Daniels after they met on set more than 15 years ago. “Back in the day, it was kind of glamorous,” he said, recalling sitting together at the AVN convention signing autographs for lines of fans.

I was associated with Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal. So I know what Stormy Daniels went through.

Daniels, 39, is also known as something of a loner, who saw how her ability to command an audience could translate into other enterprises. Like politics. In 2009, the Baton Rouge native flirted with the idea of challenging Sen. David Vitter after the Louisiana Republican was caught up in the D.C. Madam scandal.

But Daniels’s entrepreneurial successes are welcomed in an industry where many people describe feeling marginalized, particularly now that camming has decentralized the business. She recently joined a new company owned by adult conglomerate MindGeek.

“Now she is working for the giant, it should allow for her to do bigger, cooler movies,” Vegas said.

Mark Kernes, senior editor for AVN, spotted Daniels at the annual awards ceremony known as the Oscars of Porn shortly after news broke of the $130,000 hush payment she received from Trump’s lawyer. The famously self-possessed actress now had a bodyguard at her side.

“She does what she wants,” said Kernes. “She’s very aware of what she’s doing.”