We convene via Zoom. Lou Lou sits outdoors in her garden, the sun makes her purple nails glisten. She has a big smile and an infectious laugh. My first impression is somebody who seems quite content with their life. As the interview progresses I get to know her not only hilariously blunt character but her undeniable good nature and admirable strength as a human being.
Tell me a little bit about you.
I’m 34, I’m a Libra! I had a very normal upbringing, my parents were and still are in a very loving relationship. I went to private school, and then went to college, got my diploma in drama and a HND in Equine Management, studied that for about 4 years and then never went near a bloody horse again! And then I had my child when I was 21, and then 10 months later I started doing modelling and that’s how I got into it.
What type of porn did you do?
The high end stuff- Brazzers, Digital Playground, Harmony. I started doing the modelling, then i went onto Babestation for a while, and then you just get naughtier and naughtier. By the time I was working for the big companies I was about 23.
Did you enjoy it?
Yeah! It’s not what people think it is, there’s plenty of acting, getting dressed up, doing hair and makeup, you spend more time in hair and makeup that you spend doing anything else. Then there’s the plot lines involving crazy action like running around with guns and jumping over rooftops. I really enjoyed doing that.
Did you ever tell your friends and family?
My friends knew. I didn’t tell my family for about 8 years because they’re very prim and proper. But they found out because one of my exes sent them some very graphic photos of me. Once they realised though that I was doing big name stuff not backstreet alley stuff for £50 they were kind of okay with it. I would say ‘I’ve done Playboy’ and they’d be like ‘Oh! Playboy! Okay, well that’s not that bad.’
After porn I was a stripper for a while. I didn’t like it. The thing about porn is that everyone is there to work. Whereas in most forms of sex work, like stripping, you’re dealing with a client directly who wants you to stay longer and longer. When you go in for a porn shoot, you know that everybody there has the same intention to get it done as quickly as possible and go home at 4pm. And there’s no uncertainty about the amount of money you might be getting, how a client is going to treat you etc. Porn is a completely different world. Stripping you’re probably scared you’re going to die at the end of the night. With porn, you’re just tired. Porn is very safe compared to stripping.
So well! You’re so looked after, the sort of way in which you imagine Hollywood actresses are looked after. You get a lot of say. The quality that they do your hair and makeup is amazing also- you feel so sad when it comes to the pop shot, you’re like ‘My eye makeup looks so pretty, please don’t cum on it! So you’re there trying to push your boobs out so they do it there instead of your face or your hair! But yeah, they accommodate whatever you need or want- like when you see people saying it’s belittling or demeaning, I have never felt that in my whole life. You walk out thinking, ‘I just smashed that’ and when you see yourself in the final product, you’re glowing- it feels so good to look at yourself and just think I. Look. Great.
Talk me through a typical shoot.
So when you’re doing Brazzers and those top companies, they know who you are. The team of scriptwriters write a load of scripts and then they choose who they think would be best out of us all for each video. They call you up, ask if they can book you, and you ask who it’s with and what you’ll be doing. Then they send over a proper call sheet and a script. Obviously if you have words you need to learn the lines beforehand. And then a couple of days before the shoot you go to Dean Street to get all your certs done. Your results come back within 24 hours. So once you’ve got those you can start working. The night before is literal prep- the sort of prep you would do before fucking someone for the first time, shaving, tanning, hair extensions, lashes. Then in the morning, you get picked up or you make your own way there, and they ask what you want for breakfast, again it’s very movie star-esque, if I want blueberry waffles for breakfast, they will find me blueberry waffles.
When you arrive you honestly spend hours and hours and hours doing hair and makeup. They then dress us, like we stand there and they literally put the clothes on us. Then we do a glam shoot, they take pictures of us which they use for the trailers, posters- the publicity stuff. Then we start filming the storyline acting bits, and in between takes there’s a huge buffet lunch. And then you’re like ‘Oh shit I have to have sex, and now I have a food baby!’ And then after lunch, we get down to the sex. They start again with stills- so it’s just pictures of us having sex at different parts of the story. Then we do the sex action, and we’d normally start that at about 4pm, and we’d be done by 4:40. So it’s very quick, that’s normally involving four different positions and then the pop shot. So it’s only 40 minutes of the whole day that you’re having sex.
How often would you do shoots?
I would do 4 days a week, or sometimes I could do every day of the week- there was a point where I did have work coming out of my ears. I could pick and choose what I wanted to do and who with.
Do you remember your first shoot?
I started doing girl on girl shoots first and then they ask you to do boy-girl which you can then negotiate for more money. My first one was for Playboy, it was a very soft girl on girl shoot. Then they asked me if I would be happy to rim this girl, and you know, it was my first shoot so I was like ‘Ergh, I’m not doing that.’ And then they asked me if I was okay with her rimming me, and I was like ‘Oh yeah that’s fine!’. That was my first ever paycheque and it had the Playboy bunny logo on it. So you can imagine me going into the bank. It was this young lad who served me and he have me a look and I was like ‘yeah boy!’
Did shoots change as you progressed?
One of the companies I work for- the owner had more money than sense. So there was no budget, and we were contract girls, so I’d be paid £3000 a month minimum, even if we didn’t do any work. And the movies were so easy, they sometimes took about 30 minutes. it was very laid back. And then that went tits up of course and the company fell through. And then the smaller companies just started to realise that they could pay European girls a lot less. In their heads, they thought why would they hire me, if they could get a Russian girl who has just turned 18 and will do it for £150. And there are some agencies in Europe where as soon as the girls turn 18 they’re sent over. And they turn up to set, they can’t speak a word of English, so to me this is trafficking. These girls weren’t happy to be there. You didn’t have this back in the day.
Do you have any weird stories to share?
There was one girl, who was new and she was doing anal for a shoot, and she put medical grade numbing cream- the stuff they use with cesareans where they cut you open- she put that up her ass. The next thing you know, the guy couldn’t feel his cock, so he was ‘what the fuck is going on?’ Eventually she revealed that she had used this cream. It was a nightmare.
I once did a Harry Potter parody. So it was Harry ‘Pornter’ and I was playing ‘Whoremine’ Oh god… The director of the company was very enthusiastic and eccentric and he was rehearsing with me and he was like ‘Come on..Whoremine, we need to go and find the…sexy beasts!’ I was just sat there after the shoot like…What the fuck just happened.
Another one was a male costar would often take Rohypnol instead of viagra, and one time he accidentally overdosed on it. And the day before this shoot I had dislocated my shoulder. I still came to the shoot, but my shoulder was in absolute bits and they wanted me against a wall in chains, so I was suspended, but he was supposed to be holding me up, but he basically kept passing out. So that was a nightmare.
Are there any gender double standards in the industry?
Whilst I do say that we were treated like princesses, there are certain double standards. For example if I had overdosed like that guy, I would’ve been fired from the job. Because they could easily get another girl in there in 5 minutes. Whereas the guys are in so much more demand that they manage to get away with more.
Were you ever genuinely really into it during a shoot?
Not necessarily really into it, but when you’re working with someone who you’re really good friends with, you have such a good chemistry that you bounce off each other in a way. It never feels like sex because of the angles you’re in- like it’s not pleasurable because you’re about to dislocate your arm from holding on to the bloody sofa. But you definitely give a better performance when you do have a good connection with your costar. But I’ve never been properly turned on during it, because you’ve got so much that you need to think about- what you’re actually doing, that the camera can see your body and your face- it’s like a big game of Twister. Only afterwards do you even properly think- Oh I just had sex. You don’t have a chance to enjoy it. That’s my perception, other girls are different. Like some girls afterwards are like ‘I can’t wait to go home and have sex with my boyfriend now.’ Like it excited them, whereas I’m like, I want to go home and have a bath and talk to no one- I’ve used my mouth enough today!
Do you ever watch your own porn?
Not to get off on. But I’ll show people it, but more in a funny way, not like a showing off way. If my partner wanted to watch it, that’s fine but I’m just not interested.
When you have normal sex, do you find yourself comparing it to your porn sex?
I’d say I’ve got better at normal sex from learning things in the industry. But in porn I’ve never cum, apart from forced squirting. But in a relationship I cum like crazy because there’s love, there’s romance- you’re wanted. Whereas in porn, you’re both focused on yourself and making sure you look good and you’re doing the right thing. It’s technical.
Why did you quit sex work?
I got into a relationship and it just didn’t seem the right thing to do. I still did Only Fans and Many Vids but no longer thought I should be sleeping with other people.
Has being in the sex industry affected your mental health?
I can see why people in the industry do have mental health issues. They say you have to have bad mental health like a broken family or something to go into the industry in the first place but that definitely wasn’t the case for me. But my mental health did get really bad because you constantly have to look good, you constantly have to take photos, upload stuff, film stuff, pretend that you’re something you’re not and it just gets to you. I once decided to stop and get a ‘normal job’ at one point and I was working from 7 till 7 at a hospital and after tax I got £400. On my break, I got a text that said there was a porn job for me, and so of course I immediately accepted. I have friends who are on minimum £50,000 a month through Only Fans. So that money is so addictive, you can see why people might end up subsidising their mental health for it. I was once ditched at my birthday party because the girls all went off to their escort bookings. One by one, they slipped away. Because the money’s too good.
I’m at a point now where I know I could be earning a lot of money per month, but I don’t want to. I just can’t mentally do it anymore. I’m at a point where I have a roof over my head and my bills are being paid. I’m happy. I find a lot of porn stars are unhappy, and they get a lot of money at the start and think it’s going to be like that forever, so they think they can rent out a penthouse etc. Then the work dies down but they still have to come up with that money every month. So they end up having to do things they don’t want to do. That’s when people start doing things like getting peed on etc.
It seems now that porn actors are getting cast in ‘normal’ films and being recognised as proper actors- is that the case?
I find a lot of actresses that have done it, they’re still cast as ‘sexy girl with huge boobs’, like the dumb blonde sort of archetype. I haven’t seen one film where there’s a porn star cast as just a total boss- something properly empowering.
Would you want to do that?
I would love to. I have kind of tried, but I do have that fear that if I did become something my past in porn would come to common knowledge and that’s obviously not something I would want my grandparents for example to be aware of.
Was it freeing to be in such an open industry?
It was, it really was. Everyone’s used to the nudity etc. It becomes very natural and normal. You walk into the next room butt naked and no one bats an eyelid, you’re stuck in a position and need a clean up and someone will do it. And when everyone in the crew gets on well, you’re all just friends trying to smash the shoot. That’s why when protesters used to stand outside our award nights and stuff it was annoying. I’m not talking about other companies and other countries, but when people who protest about the companies I worked for, they don’t know what they’re talking about. If a member of the crew even looked at me wrong- that’s when there’d trouble! When people say it’s demeaning, I just think- I am a single mum, I have paid single handedly to put my daughter through private education since she started nursery through this job. It’s very empowering and I feel proud to have been a porn star. It’s not in every job that you win awards for your work!
Iso
Iso is a writer and filmmaker based in East London. She is passionate about all things erotic and leads a sexy, shame-free life in hope that she can inspire others to do the same. Originally from a Northern seaside town, she is naturally drawn to the best things in life: candyfloss, trashy karaoke bars and heart-shaped sunglasses.
