Mia Khalifa sounds happy. The 26-year-old is currently in Copenhagen, in the midst of an exciting wedding weekend alongside her fiancé Robert Sandberg—a chef at the Michelin-starred Danish restaurant Kong Hans Kælder. Her pending nuptials notwithstanding, the social-media sensation—16.8 million Instagram followers and rising—is also basking in the glow of her recent sit-down interview with life coach Megan Abbott, which has generated over 1.1 million YouTube views (and tons of clickbait headlines) since its Aug. 4 debut.
In it, Khalifa was candid about both her experience in the adult industry—which lasted just three months and twelve scenes, earning her a grand total of $12,000 despite her status as the No. 1 star on Pornhub—as well as why she chose to leave at the height of her fame, and the stigma that’s followed her since.
For the uninitiated, and those in denial about their level of familiarity with her work, Khalifa made waves after appearing in an adult scene dressed in hijab. She was then roundly criticized by the Lebanese and Middle Eastern media, and received a ton of death threats online (including from ISIS). The volume around her got so high that she walked.
She also discussed the ugly discrimination she faced as a Lebanese immigrant who came to America in 2001, and how her own insecurities led her to the world of porn. The interview has divided those in the adult industry, with some actresses supporting Khalifa for exposing just how poorly they’re paid and others branding her “ungrateful” for the level of celebrity she attained during her short time in porn.
But Khalifa is adamant that she’s just telling her story—and finally taking control of it.
I’m curious why you decided now was the time to sit down and do this interview, and why you chose Megan Abbott.
She’s a very good friend of mine and I’ve always had trouble speaking about this—it’s always scared me and intimidated me. I think the catalyst was that terrible radio interview that I had with some D-list station in Tampa where I had that outburst after they introduced me as a porn star. Megan’s a career coach, so she guides you through your goals and how to accomplish them, and we got down to the real reason for my outburst: I’m ashamed of my past. And the shame, in turn, becomes anger, and makes me lash out and react the way I did. So the only way to fix that is to take control of my own narrative, put it out there, and let my story be heard.
So are you still ashamed of your past in porn or has this experience of speaking out about it helped you come to terms with it?
No, of course I’m still ashamed of it. It’s hard not to be when one decision you made when you were 21 years old entitles the whole world to see you naked, so of course I’m still ashamed of it, and of course I would go back and change things if I could. I think this is more about acceptance—no, that isn’t the right word. You’re the writer—help me find the right word.
It seems…therapeutic, maybe? Cathartic?
You know, it was like a therapy session talking to her—and yes, definitely cathartic.
As far as the shame element goes, is it more about the societal stigma attached to those who’ve acted in adult films? Society of course is grossly hypocritical when it comes to the adult industry, with virtually everyone watching porn and many passing judgment on those who provide it.
Absolutely. Even though everyone consumes it, people are still ashamed of that fact because it’s stigmatized, so their immediate reaction is going to be scrutiny instead of sympathy. But it completely baffles me. I have no idea.
There’s been a lot of focus on the $12,000 number—the money you said you made while acting in the adult industry—but you told your life story here. Do you feel that monetary focus is strange?
My takeaway from that is, if that’s their reaction to that number—I’m having my accountant put together the actual number, because $12K was before taxes. So, it’s definitely even less than that. And it was for 12 scenes, so $1,000 a scene.
That really does seem low for the then-No. 1 performer on Pornhub and various other sites.
Yeah. It’s not like football where your stock makes your value go up, and if you’re a free agent you’re up for a contract increase!
I wanted to go back to the beginning, because I was fascinated by your whole story—not just the latter parts of it. You spoke very candidly about moving to America as a young kid, and to Washington, D.C., in 2001. And then 9/11 happens and you were subjected to horrible comments from schoolkids, who branded you “the terrorist.”
Oh yeah. But every brown kid at my school was. Kids are fucking brutal. That was the nickname for anyone at my school who was Indian, Middle Eastern, Pakistani—it doesn’t matter.
So you come to this new country from Lebanon and you’re dealing with all this racism. How did that make you feel about America?
It made me grow thick skin. Everybody gets made fun of, and my version of getting made fun of was getting called “fat” and a “terrorist.” I just sort of accepted it as normal, run-of-the-mill, mild bullying. It made me stronger. Their words affected me but not to the point where I was sad or anything, it just made me question my pride in my heritage, and it made me want to suppress it and be a little more American.
That sounds awful. I’m sorry you went through that. So after attending the University of Texas-El Paso, you moved down to Miami and then soon after got your start in adult films. How did that happen?
I was approached at a very vulnerable point in my life. I was handed a business card, thought about it for a few weeks, went in and was showered with compliments—felt validated for a whole twenty minutes—and I went back and shot a scene, and it was terrifying and temporarily validating, but afterwards I felt a little empty. Though I still had that pit in my stomach where I wanted to chase that validation again.
And why was this a particularly “vulnerable point” in your life?
I had never had male attention. I was pretty overweight—I lost about 50 pounds in college—and then after I moved to Miami I got a breast augmentation. So before my self-confidence kicked in, I didn’t know what I looked like and I didn’t know or value my self-worth, and instead I left it up to men to tell me what my self-worth was.
You described how you experienced “blackouts” after shooting adult scenes, and I’m curious what you mean by that.
The “blackout” wasn’t from drinking, using drugs or anything, it was more like, wow, this is so surreal that I can’t even comprehend what was happening. And even now when I look back on it, it’s sort of just a blur in my memory. I can’t even describe in detail what happened each time; I sort of just have a gist of what did in my head. Afterwards, I would say there was a little bit of regret, a little bit of shame—though the shame didn’t fully set in until a couple of months after that. But I think what made me go back and do it again was that the attention I was receiving, I was afraid it would go away if I didn’t do what I was asked to do.
But things really got nuts when you filmed the hijab scene. Did you have any misgivings about filming that scene from a religious standpoint, because it is a pretty incendiary scene.
I’m not going to defend the porn or the video, but I will say that it’s still satire. It’s still parody. It’s still a video to not be taken seriously. Like, it’s a fuckin’ low-budget porno. Get over it! If Saturday Night Live can take it there, why would you hold a porn company to a higher standard? Though it’s not like I didn’t tell them it was a terrible idea. I told them, “You motherfuckers are going to get me killed.” And how did they respond? They laughed.
Things then quickly spiraled out of control. You were dragged in the Lebanese and Middle Eastern media. ISIS threatened your life. And you were doxxed as well, right?
Yeah. The reason that happened is because I had geolocation turned on on Twitter, and even if you just tag “Miami, Florida,” if someone clicks on it—I didn’t know this—they can see a pin of exactly where you had tweeted that, and it was my apartment. Twitter is scary. So, someone screenshotted it and sent me a threat saying, “I know where you live.”
Scary. And getting threatened by ISIS—a literal terrorist organization—is no picnic either.
It was pretty terrifying. I mean, obviously it was some stupid sympathizer who just wanted to scare me. I knew it wasn’t the head of ISIS standing on top of a mountain trying to get some data to tweet at me with a shitty, Photoshopped picture, so yes, it was jarring, but I didn’t take it too-too seriously.
And the hypocrisy in all that is how your porn searches went through the roof in areas like Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of the Middle East after that hijab scene premiered.
You said it right there: hypocrisy. That’s really it.
It sounds like the pay was pretty shit but what was the working environment like in the adult industry?
Yes. It’s definitely not Hot Girls Wanted—absolutely nothing like that. It’s not some dodgy motel room but mansions in South Beach, Miami, that are rented out for the day. These were very professional settings. You have to be tested before every scene. Usually on set it’s talent, a cameraman, and a boom mic operator. It’s not like they show it in the movies or the scary documentaries.
Back to the Megan Abbott interview, I’m curious how you feel about the response to it. I’ve seen some adult actresses say, yeah, we’re definitely not paid enough for our work. And I’ve seen other adult actresses paint you as “ungrateful” for attaining this level of celebrity while only shooting a dozen scenes.
Right. Because their entire goal is to become famous but that wasn’t my goal—it was imposed on me, and I tried to get rid of it until my only choice in life was to take control of it and try to change the narrative, because there was no way I was going to lead a normal life and have a normal job. So, them saying I’m ungrateful is out of jealousy to a certain extent. And I would switch positions any fucking day to just never have done this and be rid of it all. But I’m so disconnected from the industry and what people in the industry are doing that this is the first I’m hearing of it.
With that fame came famous men—particularly athletes and musicians—who relentlessly pursued you. A lot of DM-sliding by entitled men who thought they could attract your interest based their level of celebrity.
They probably just thought it was low-hanging fruit, and a girl in the industry would be so happy to get attention from a rich, male athlete. But I’m like, dude, get your catch percentage up and then talk to me!
And one of the most persistent was Drake?
Not the most persistent, but yeah. That happened. It was just once though. That’s it.
As far as leaving the adult industry, what ultimately made you reach that decision? Because I’m sure it wasn’t an easy one to make.
As soon as I gained all that popularity—that was never my intention, so I backed out as soon as I could, even though I had signed a contract with an adult company. But it was never my intention to do anything with this; it was more a dirty little secret that I wanted to have, and something that I wanted to do on my own. As soon as the power of me controlling it was taken away from me, I came to my senses and backed out as fast as I could.
What do you mean by the power of you controlling it getting taken away?
I phrased it poorly. More so it was that the reason I did was for personal reasons, and when it became “Mia Khalifa, the famous porn star,” that was never my intention or goal from this. It wasn’t about the money, goal, infamy or popularity. It was about much more personal reasons—about seeking validation. I think everything that happened with the media kind of sobered me up, and I realized what I was doing and how it would affect my life in the long-term.
This is just you telling your story, and I think there’s been some conflation between you relaying your own experience and you criticizing the adult industry writ large, which I’m not sure you’re doing—or trying to do.
Yeah. Or being “ungrateful” for my fame now. I’m sharing my experience, and if people are perceiving that as me being “ungrateful” then clearly they’re missing the point and it’s going way over their head.
So you were a paralegal right after you quit the adult industry? What was that like?
I did enjoy it. One other thing that I realized that was drastically different than before was the fact that the male attorneys in the office recognized me and knew who I was. One of them even made some remarks toward me and made me uncomfortable. But karma took care of that one for me, because the firm got shut down and they dissolved that branch.
Being recognized has been a professional hurdle for you then post-adult industry.
It’s a little bit of a mixed bag. I would say seventy percent of interactions of people coming up to me, I immediately get defensive and sometimes even rude because they’re men who are coming at me in a very entitled way—asking for a photo, trying to touch me or trying to speak to me in a way that’s disrespectful—so my immediate fight-or-flight response is to just be as much of a cunt as possible. Then there’s the thirty percent that are women and really nice people who come up to me and congratulate me about my sports shows, and that I’ve helped them with their self-confidence and accepting their so-called “flaws” because of how I present myself online, being completely unfiltered.
What are you up to now? You’ve always been big into sports, right?
Oh yeah, since I was a little kid. And thankfully now I’m able to find a way to monetize it and make it a career, and get to work on a lot of really fun projects. For example, I’m involved in this app called URef—I’m a co-founder of it—and it rates Premier League referees. And I co-founded a Tinder plug-in [Disclaimer: The Daily Beast and Tinder are owned by the same parent company, IAC], and we’re about to expand into Bumble as well. What it does is it automatically swipes for you when you’re not even on the app, and you can even have an option to pre-program a message that immediately gets sent to your matches. So you can be spittin’ game when you’re sleeping. But when it comes to a career, yes, I’d love to host a sports show—I love sports—but I don’t want to be put in a box. I have a lot of interests and passions, and I think the luxury of being young and in the position that I am is I don’t need to choose just one path and I can explore several until I find what I truly love, and something that fits perfectly.
