Maitland Ward: How We Made the First Big Porn Movie of the COVID Era

There’s a belief that Hollywood—and more specifically porn—is in the throes of chaos and headed for complete disaster at the moment. COVID has buckled the industry and there is no clear way to any semblance of normalcy. The valley is about to explode. While it’s true that we are living in unprecedented times and constantly surfing the tipping point between apocalypse now, and now you can be seated at your favorite outdoor dining patio, I disagree. It’s not because I have rose-tinted vision or I’m some cheerleading optimist, though I know a trick or two with a pom-pom. I will never cower to dip my brush into the ink of fear. And I don’t have to, because I’ve just seen what can be done in this industry firsthand. In spite of the obstacles and deterrents and naysayers that said we could never accomplish such a thing, we just made a film.

Muse is its name—the film now being developed into a multi-season series by Kayden Kross for Deeper.com and Vixen Media Group. I am its muse. I headline an all-star cast in a type of project that’s never been done in porn before, let alone mainstream, let alone in the age of COVID. It’s Netflix and it’s sex, and you soon realize you could be watching either. My character is illustrious and sharp, and I speak her 600 lines with unapologetic red lips. As an author, sexual filmmaker, and famed professor of sex psychology, she’s a woman trapped in the void of her vast success, and denied love because of its scandal. Only the “good women” can feel something so soft. Just as quarantine hits, she proposes a project to her students with a simple yet controversial question attached. One she’s asking herself.

Can pornography be art?

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That’s the same question Kayden and I were affirmatively answering on a project back in March, when COVID shut everything down. I had been fitted in a latex catsuit when I got the call. Production had been halted. Everything was on hold. We were to go home and stay there. When would it all resume? A shaky soon floated around as the only response. I peeled myself from my costume and it fell to the floor.

That floating soon gained its COVID tan as it sunk into months. We had hoped we’d be back up and running by May, just in time to shoot our big feature. We might have missed out on everything else, but we wouldn’t miss this. It would be the site’s first full-length film since my debut last year under Kayden’s direction in the award-winning Drive. The first as Deeper’s contract star. We had talked about it for months in the before-time, and especially in that stretch of hopeless days. We wanted to make something pristine and raw and unique. A statement piece. We couldn’t cut corners or lessen the value of our work, and we absolutely refused to be an asterisk in some history book. A film graded on a curve. But, May was becoming June, and then all too soon July. The dwindling calendar wasn’t encouraging. How could we accomplish all of what we planned—making this broad, bold hybrid between adult and mainstream— when Warner Bros. wasn’t filming anything and neither was porn?  

But, never underestimate two determined women, hard work, a little luck, and a studio willing to stand behind them. 

Entertainment was allowed back to work somewhere in the middle of July. The heavens opened up and dumped a bucket on the Sahara but wouldn’t promise any more. We feared the window could be short, so we needed to generate. Kayden perfected her script, crafting a piece that’s timely to COVID and to society, and that immeasurably elevates the product of sex and cinema as we know it. We put together a dream cast, with established A-list adult talent like Adriana Chechik, Lena Paul, and Gianna Dior. A private penthouse for filming was secured.

What Vixen did was unprecedented and should be the standard-bearer for not only the porn industry, but how mainstream goes forward with production in the future. And I’m not just saying that because I’m their contract star. At first, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. How would this all work? Would the cast and crew be able to remain safe and healthy for a span of days and weeks? Any trepidation I had quickly left me when I saw the time and effort put in to insure this production would run smoothly and safely. While there was always a risk, it was a fully calculated one.

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We tested every single morning of the project, regardless if you were working that day or not. Everyone was accounted for. Performers were contact-traced by monitoring who they had worked with in a specified timeframe. We had to test early in the morning to make sure the results would come back early the next. If they didn’t, no one was allowed on set. There was a hired EMT there to swab us, plus temperature checks and strict protocol. Masks, disinfecting, and distancing were enforced. Only performers in scenes could take their masks off. While it was sad not to hug everyone I love on the crew, it was still a thrill to give a fist-pump across the stage to a familiar set of eyes. I can’t complain, though. I got to have hardcore sex while everyone else just watched. I had missed random human contact so much I think I mauled my first scene partner. He didn’t seem to mind.

Porn is far more capable of handling this crisis than mainstream. We are an industry already run on testing. We live by it. Every 14 days we draw blood to prove us clear of STDs. While mainstream grapples with how to get production up and running, the paperwork and health checks involved are a norm for us. Granted, COVID testing is far more frequent and vigorous, and requires tireless commitment, but we’ve now proven it’s more than possible.

And it’s not just testing that gives us a runner’s edge over mainstream. While the crew at Deeper is larger than most porn sets, it’s minuscule when stacked up against big-budget movies and TV. We have 10 people to their hundreds. We also know how to work under severe time constraints and how to overcome conditions. If a mainstream set gets rained out one day, they reschedule. If we get rained out, we find a way to shoot in the rain. 

While we weren’t going to cut any value out of the story, there were definitely changes we needed to make to the script because of COVID—mainly body counts in the room and the amount of performers on set at any given time. Some crew members became extras, only recognizable by the backs of their heads.

Porn is constantly underestimated—especially by mainstream, but even by some of its players. There’s a willingness to jump ship in times of crisis, to point fingers and lay blame. Porn is a familiar scapegoat with headlines grabbed easily from its implied demise. How much harder is it for the world to believe porn can be a good place—a place of innovation and creativity, a place to set standards rather than to fall below them, and for that to make news. I’ve made it a point to not reinforce to an already-believing public that porn is this scary, dirty place. That it can’t be trusted. That it can’t get its shit together, because it can. And the image of porn as some dingy corner of the valley is a tired one.

By the last day of filming, we were spent and elated. We had done it. Something that had been such a lofty undertaking just weeks before was now in the books—and without any asterisks. The shoot went so well, the film has now been turned into a series that will span several seasons, while mainstream doesn’t know when any of its shows can film again at all.

So no, I don’t believe in some dire outcome where the industry implodes and all its players go down. That’s too easy. Those eventualities the world expects. And while the ground has shifted, it’s also served to set us apart. It’s allowed us a new path to take our product and see it shine. This is the time we can change the way porn is received and how people watch it. At what other point in history has mainstream been universally silenced and given us real room for voice?

Don’t let that voice be something they’ve already heard before.