I spent an afternoon circling a room with wooden bookcases—just after I stepped over a vine of naked, sleeping bodies exhausted from their orgy, and just before I had a group sex encounter of my own—telling people why I hate Jesus. Well, why I hate colonialism and oppression, or those who use a pedestal of morality as a form of separation and control. Anger was a virtue before the crusaders told us it was not. And if this morality on high commanded us to not be angry when wronged, then we’d have to take whatever was hurled at us. As I paced my words with my lines, there was a sense of spiraling. What began as a measured answer to a question from my friend and sometimes lover, and also someone who would soon become a Judas of sorts to me, started to become more introspective and personal and emotionally wrought. Docility was a virtue to a world taught to love thy neighbor, but what did it mean to be slapped by that neighbor and to refuse to turn the other cheek?
What did it mean to us as individuals and as an industry demonized by our neighbors to fight back?
My character in this second season of the award-winning series Muse, by the pen and eye of Vixen Media Group director Kayden Kross, is a college professor notorious for her many-limbed body of work in the world of sex. She goes from being a hunter to prey but then also a hunter again—all in the blink of an eye. Much like how our world now elevates and cancels within seconds of information appearing on our feeds, she is lauded, judged, and then cast out, her image shattered by a battering ram of clickbait headlines. She is betrayed by a student who accuses her of sexual misconduct in her classroom because he’s obsessed with her and she won’t be to him what his psychosis desires; by her friend who chooses to legally represent this student knowing it could bring her ruin; by the media and the world who make snap judgments in sound bites and without all the information, especially against women who have challenged the societal norms of so-called morality; and most intimately by her lover, a man who will give her everything but valuing love.
She is not perfect—far from it—and that’s what I love about playing her. She’s real. Even if you don’t identify with being a sex worker, or a professor, or even a woman who is thrust into a spotlight not of her choosing, you know her because you are her. Some part of her, anyway. And that’s something that serves as a bridge to connect people who might have preconceived notions about what our industry is about to the people who live and breathe in it.
Maitland Ward in Muse 2
Vixen Media GroupThose moments of strength, also marked by flaws and vulnerabilities, are important. If our neighbors—the ones who mindlessly slap us and demand no response—can feel something human and tangible and relatable, it stays with them. Because everyone’s been wronged by friends and lovers, and even a world that makes the rules of what is good and what is bad starkly, in a flash. Whether we realize it or not, we are all living in a time that is constantly teetering on a razor’s edge.
When Kayden came to me with the script, I was so excited. Last season we set out to prove that porn could be art, and this year we wanted to prove there was no difference between the quality content you see on Netflix and the sensual adult films you see on Deeper.com. The stories were real and robust and commented on the world we live in as human beings, and also the more finite world of a woman who is accomplished and well-read and respected but torn down because she is a sex worker. As an actress, I’ve never gotten the opportunity to play a character with so many real and conflicting pieces before. It’s so rare that a sex worker is seen as someone of intelligence and accomplishment. This character doesn’t have to fall into the all-too-familiar mainstream categories assigned to women—the virtuous one or the whore.
“If you’re angry, then you won’t be likable,” I was told once, just after my soap opera character was raped. “Crying is better than yelling. You want the audience to feel sorry for you.” But the character I played had just been raped in an alleyway. Why couldn’t I be mad about it? Why were my tears of more value than my anger? It was a message that told me that weakness was my power, as was suffering, and if you lash out and stand up then you won’t be loved. So, when Kayden showed me the three-page monologue where I was spiraling that would see me raw and real, and all the pages that followed, I felt a rush of liberation. Finally, I could play someone strong who gets angry, but who is also broken and sad, and who, not in spite of but because of all of these things, is deserving of love. As that young actress who was told not to be angry, it felt good to finally grit my teeth.
Muse 2 is arguably the biggest production in porn history. Aside from the massive script—which had me saying roughly 750 lines—the cast, crew and the filming schedule were that of a mainstream feature film with Hollywood-level production. We had a set director and built-from-scratch sets, plus a whole art department and more production assistants than I had ever seen. There was a walkie-talkie system in place just to coordinate the crew as there were dozens of bodies working on this at any given time. We even incorporated mainstream actors into the script to play my students and various other roles. When I was first in the industry, I was told mainstream talent wouldn’t do porn productions at all, even in non-sex roles, because of the taboo, but here they were really showing up and excited to be there. “This is my big break!” one of the actors said. “For me, too,” I replied.
For the last scene of the lengthy production, which was my first gangbang—and also the grand finale of that spiraling journey I started in that room full of bookcases and bodies—Kayden and I held the clapperboard together and called for action. She gave me a dirty hug after it was all over—as I was covered in four men’s semen—and we took in the moment of all we had accomplished. And all of it came because we did get angry at what society was throwing at both of us. But we didn’t just get angry, we got motivated, and we made something that had meaning.
We slapped back.
Fans returned in droves to watch the season premiere, and although sex is what drives adult film productions, the fans were mostly commenting on the twists and turns of the story, how much they loved the characters, and making guesses as to what will happen next. It feels monumental to really do something that has accomplished fully marrying the worlds of porn and mainstream. Finding virtue in the whore and power in something that was broken--something Hollywood has never had the guts to do for women. To be everything would give a girl too much power.
Just as the finale was airing, Vixen Media Group put up a billboard for Muse 2 right in the heart of Hollywood, just steps away from where the Oscars take place. My image and the names “Maitland Ward” and “Kayden Kross” up there in bright lights for everyone to see.
“Oh wow, is that you in that movie up there?” a guy walking his dog asked as he passed me while I was taking some photos under it.
I smiled and told him that it was.
And I never had to answer the question: Is it porn or mainstream? Because he never asked it.
Maitland Ward is an adult film actress with Deeper.com, part of Vixen Media Group, and model.
