Maitland Ward: How Porn Saved Me From Hollywood
SECOND ACT
OPINION
Maitland Ward
The former “Boy Meets World” star writes about how the world of adult film gave her the opportunities and freedom to be herself that Hollywood wouldn’t.
Maitland Ward
Published Jul. 25, 2020
“Excuse me, are you…” a voice in a restaurant catches me just as salmon flakes off my fork. I look up. My silverware is settling onto my plate as a man with shaky hands gives me the back of a menu to sign. He’s smiling as he tells me he loves my work. Really smiling. Really really loves my work. Did I mention he was smiling? But he’s also wearing a Frozen the musical T-shirt. He hands me a pen and I loop his name onto the paper. As I finish, he asks me what I’m working on next. My jaw slacks in the expectant pause. It’s moments like this that I have to take a quick scan of the evidence before me and assess: Does he know me from Disney or from porn?
A decade prior the answer would be clear. A dad and his boy would approach. The kid skipping up to see the redhead from Boy Meets World. We’d chat about episodes or story points, and how a penguin really is a fish (if you watch the show, you know). The kid would pose for a selfie as the dad would look on. Well today, more than ever, the dads are looking on. And the kids that watched me in their family rooms on Friday nights are all grown up. They’re in their twenties and thirties, and are part of the porn generation, where internet access to viewing sex has always been easily accessible and readily attained. They’re parents themselves now, too. And while their kids may binge me on Disney+, the grown-ups are viewing me in a whole new way.
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TRAILBLAZER
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It was a big deal when I starred in my first hardcore adult feature. The college roommate of Eric and Jack, who used to dance around washing dishes in her purple underwear, was now taking them off. And she was doing a whole lot more than that. The day Drive, the film I made with Kayden Kross for Deeper.com, was announced, the site’s traffic skyrocketed. Subscriptions for the site and Vixen Media Group went wild. The headlines were international and viral. I trended No. 1 on Google all day, topping Bernie Sanders’ heart attack (the joke was that I gave it to him). I guess you’d have to expect news of a TV teen crush becoming a full-fledged porn star to have legs, but I don’t think anyone expected they’d have such long-running ones. Celebs, especially ones from children’s TV of yesteryear, are always trying to grab their 15 minutes from TMZ. If this had been my intention, I would’ve followed the formula: make a bad sex tape, cry that it was a mistake to make said bad sex tape, then start a YouTube channel where you gain followers and sponsors by constantly wailing in your shame about your really bad sex tape.
Yawn.
This was not me. It would never be me. I am not ashamed.
Many expected my rise in the adult world, including many in the adult world itself, to be a flash in the pan. It was a stunt. I wasn’t serious. No one from mainstream ever is—like mainstream is a place you go and can never look back. But that’s what makes this story different: my genuine love for adult performance and for colorful cinema. My story is a journey rather than a cautionary tale. And I was ready to prove the naysayers wrong.
My story is a journey rather than a cautionary tale. And I was ready to prove the naysayers wrong.
Shortly after the massive success of Drive, I signed an exclusive contract, partnering with Kayden and Vixen Media Group, to be the face of Deeper. To marry art house with taboo. I was fortunate enough to find someone in Kayden who not only has the talent and vision, but also the belief that we can do both. Not long after that, I won six awards at XBIZ and AVN—not only for the acting, but also the sex. I can’t say there’s ever been a prouder moment for me than when I was recognized for both.
I like that people ask me questions about what I do now. Whether it be total strangers or shell-shocked friends, it usually starts out in a whisper, like if the words are at full volume one of us might die. People are curious and a little afraid. Their vision of a porn set is some version of Ron Jeremy behind the camera, cigarette hanging from his lip, as a drug-infused orgy plays out before his lens. He’s always sweaty and it’s eternally 1975. But then they see me. A typical comment is, “Wow, you’re so normal”—as if porn, or the desire to perform sexually, is not. They wouldn’t feel comfortable coming up and asking a performer they saw on the internet in a double penetration gang bang these questions, but they feel safe with me. They know me. I was in their living room every week. And that means something. I’m happy to be that bridge; to normalize something that is absolutely normal.
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A lot of people tell me they’ve been masturbating to me for more than 20 years. Think about that. That’s no easy task—being fap material for someone for nearly three decades. It’s so rare, I don’t think Guinness World Records has a category for it. But my fans can now buy my Fleshlight! How many of you can say your childhood crush’s vagina is in your nightstand drawer?
Porn sets are run much like mainstream. The same lights. The same cameras. Just different actions. People will ask me if I fear that the adult industry has ruined me for mainstream. It’s quite the opposite. Mainstream ruined me for mainstream. It became limiting and I was bored. This pigeonhole they put me in grew smaller and smaller. I was light. I was funny. That’s all I was allowed to be. When I hit my thirties, I was told I couldn’t be sexy. A publicist said to me, in a way that seemed polite to him, that if they wanted sexy they’d get someone who was 25. I’m glad I didn’t listen.
Now, I’m playing roles that I want to play. I can be dark and twisted and sexual. I’m afforded the freedom to find my voice, and that isn’t something mainstream often allows you to do. I have porn to thank for that. I have Kayden and Deeper. I have my fans. Now, it’s time for the walls to come down. It’s time for porn to be mainstream and mainstream to accept porn.
As for the guy in the restaurant—the one in the Disney shirt with the smile—I have my answer for him. It doesn’t matter where he knows me from. I’m proud of what I do and who I am becoming. I’m always unapologetically just me.
I smile as I hand him back the autograph and say, “I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.”
He gives me a smile back and says, “Well, I really hope it’s anal.”
Maitland Ward’s Journey From ‘Boy Meets World’ to Porn’s A-List
DIFFERENT STROKES
Handout
The former soap opera star and “Boy Meets World” actress opens up to Marlow Stern about her decision to walk away from playing “Disney moms” and enter the world of porn.
Marlow Stern
Senior Entertainment Editor
Updated Dec. 16, 2019
“Everything bad happened to me,” discloses Maitland Ward. “I had diabetes, I was in a coma, my mother had an affair with my boyfriend, I was raped, I was almost set on fire in a gas leak…”
The journeywoman actress—who, with her fiery mane and piercing blue eyes, resembles a more statuesque Amy Adams—is describing her roller-coaster ride of a tenure on The Bold and the Beautiful. She landed the role of Jessica Forrester, whom she calls an “innocent little flower,” at the age of 16, wading its comically treacherous soap-opera waters for two years before her big break: being cast as Rachel McGuire, a college student from Texas artfully dodging the romantic overtures of Eric (Will Freidle) and Jack (Matthew Lawrence), on the sitcom Boy Meets World.
Now, nearly 20 years after her two-season arc on the celebrated teen comedy, Ward has decided to pursue a decidedly more risqué career: porn star. “I thought I’d be more nervous, but I wasn’t,” she offers. “It’s been way easier and I’ve enjoyed it so much more than I’d expected. And I’m good at it. It feels natural to me. If you talked to my younger, more virginal soap-opera self, I never would have seen this coming out of me.”
Ward, who is now 42, recently collected two nominations at the AVN Awards, otherwise known as the Oscars of Porn, for Best Three-Way Sex Scene and Best Supporting Actress. They came thanks to her turn in Drive, an ambitious erotic thriller directed by Kayden Kross that clocks in at three hours and 29 minutes—just one minute shy of Scorsese’s The Irishman. She’s also been anointed the face of Deeper, a high-end XXX brand helmed by porn auteur Greg Lansky, placing her firmly on porn’s A-list.
And she’s only been at it five months.
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“It’s insane! At my age, to come in and become a porn star?” she says. “I don’t have a label either. I’m just this grown woman who loves sex. One thing I really like is to surprise people, to shock them, and to get them stirred up. I’m going to keep doing that.
After her stint on Boy Meets World, which lasted from 1998 to 2000, bit parts in various projects followed, including the series Boston Public and a supporting role in the cult comedy White Chicks as Brittany Wilson, a very rich, very blonde socialite targeted by kidnappers in the Hamptons. In the mid-aughts she swapped coasts, moving to New York to study theater and screenwriting, and married her husband Terry Baxter, a real-estate investor. She then moved back to L.A. to continue her studies at UCLA whilst weathering the unforgiving transition into thirtysomething Hollywood actress.
In 2013, she gained notice cosplaying at comics’ conventions—including a female Robin getup at the Playboy Mansion that made headlines—and posting racy photos to her social media. “It was cool because on social media I could be my authentic self, and sometimes, in acting, they put you up to be who they want you to be,” she says. “So I could finally have fun, and be crazy, and be sexy, and be out there—to an extent.”
Her publicist at the time was, shall we say, less than thrilled with her foray into semi-nude modeling. “I had a publicist who was like, ‘Stop putting up sexy pictures. They will not hire you for anything if you do that. Once you get past 30, 35, they don’t hire you for doing sexy stuff. You should be auditioning to play Disney moms.’ He thought he was giving me good advice but it just wasn’t my thing,” she recalls. “I was typecast. I was seen as a wholesome comedy star, and I was trying to fight against that. I didn’t want to play a Disney mom.”
I was typecast. I was seen as a wholesome comedy star, and I was trying to fight against that. I didn’t want to play a Disney mom.
Ward maintains that porn happened somewhat “by accident.” Her dedicated army of online fans—she currently has over a million Instagram followers—asked her about selling various adult content, including nude photos, and begged her to set up a premium Snapchat account. She obliged, and later set up a Patreon. It blew up. After one day, she’d amassed 2,500 paying subscribers. “For 2018, I was the No. 1 adult-content creator for Patreon. And it put the power back in my hands. Studios wouldn’t give me that.”
She’s also immensely popular on OnlyFans, a subscription site where stars provide exclusive content to devotees. Ward says she makes five figures a month on OnlyFans, and her biggest month for 2018 was $62,000. “So when people say she had to turn to porn I laugh, because this is a good thing and I’m making more now.”
Then, she “started wanting to explore the more sexual side of me, and take the people who’d been following me along on this sexual journey.” So she began by participating in girl-girl sex scenes on her premium Snapchat, and then eventually transitioned to studio XXX productions. “My husband has been supportive of me, because this is something that’s in me, that I need to do, and that I like to do,” she says. “And it’s just another kind of performance.”
Her experience filming Drive with Kayden Kross really opened her eyes to the differences between the adult world and Hollywood: “I was blown away. I was like, this is nothing anyone in porn has seen before—and by a powerful female director. That’s something a lot of people don’t talk about: how many more female directors there are in porn than in Hollywood, and the women are the ones winning awards.
Ward is showing no signs of slowing down, either. She’s already filmed another glossy porn production with Kross, which she calls “an anti-Hallmark Christmas featurette,” wherein she plays a woman who seduces a man at a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. “I get him to go away from abstinence for the holidays,” she chuckles.
There are also a number of other “insanely-hot scripted films,” including several for Lansky, that are in the pipeline. Most of all, she says she’s grateful for this new stage of her career, and that her fans from the Boy Meets World days have stuck by her through it.
“They say, I’ve been masturbating to you all these years,” she says, adding, “And you know, that’s a feat that I will be proud of."
PORN IS NO DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER FORM OF SEXUAL EXPRESSION IN
TODAY'S INTERNET WORLD, IN FACT THIS PICTURE IS TAME COMPARED TO
WHAT IS ON PAGE 3 IN BRIT TABLOIDS.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2sj66in-Cq/?utm_source=ig_embed
Sex-positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, encouraging sexual pleasure and experimentation." The sex-positive movement also advocates for comprehensive sex education and safe sex as part of its campaign.
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Sexual Revolution - Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust
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Members of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) gather outside California Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg home in Van Nuys Friday, July 17, 2020. The protesters went to the home to encourage Hertzberg to support AB 1436, a bill prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants because of unpaid rent due to the pandemic. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
