“Blood! We’re ready for the blood!” proclaims twice-crowned XBIZ Director of the Year Bree Mills.
It’s getting dark outside the vast Valley home, lavishly decorated in an eclectic, well-traveled style with traditional Mexican folk art accents. In the living room, expertly lit by the usual Gamma Films crew, the petite Casey Calvert, wearing tight workout clothes, has just stage-punched Derrick Pierce, who is playing her personal trainer.
The physically formidable Pierce, an imposing six feet of professionally sculpted muscle — he was, in fact, a personal trainer before porn, and has continued an exercise regimen of MMA fighting and Crossfit for years — is helping director Mills choreograph the climactic fight scene in “The Starlet: A Casey Calvert Story,” the latest installment of Gamma’s talent collaboration Pure Taboo series.
In January, at the 2019 XBIZ convention in West Hollywood during her Visionary Keynote, Mills officially announced the launch of the AdultTime service (unofficially nicknamed by almost everyone “the Netflix of porn”), with the controversy-embracing, high-production-value Pure Taboo episodes as one of the main draws for potential subscribers.
The makeup artist rushes in with a dropper bottle full of freshly-mixed stage blood, and she carefully applies just a few drops under one of Pierce’s nostrils. “Not too much,” says Mills — she wants just enough so that the camera will pick up that Calvert’s character, an insufferable, bratty Hollywood starlet named Emma, has hurt her suffering personal trainer Michael, which, for the purposes of this scenario, happens to be her stuntman ex-boyfriend who’s now in a relationship with her professional rival. Soap opera stuff, with a kinky twist.
The story’s “taboo” (for the series concept mandates one) is one of shifting power dynamics and a twisted exploration of the idea of consent. These are topics relevant to Calvert’s interests as a performer and content creator, and she and Mills spent several months developing the script from one of the actress’ original ideas.
“Pure Taboo has been shooting projects in collaboration with our actors since shortly after launching our studio,” says Mills, “in large part because we work so closely with our casts already when it comes to storytelling. When one of our actors has a story they want to tell, we want to support them and their creativity. The results have been very moving and inspiring, as each individual actor brings something unique to their project.”
“The Starlet: A Casey Calvert Story” is the latest in an ongoing, model-scripted sub-series within Pure Taboo that also includes “Nymphomaniac: An Emily Willis Story,” “The Gold Star” (written by Whitney Wright), “The Nerd’s Revenge” (written by Kristen Scott) and “The Weight of Infidelity, a collaboration between Mills and Angela White exploring several taboos related to body image, sexuality and kink.
Calvert, an obviously smart, eloquent talent who could soon be in the league of current industry multi-hyphenates like Kayden Kross, seemed like a perfect fit for Pure Taboo’s performer-scripted project.
“Over the last year,” Mills explains, “Casey has become a Gamma Films regular and is incredibly versatile, creative and intelligent as a writer and performer. We’ve been talking about a collab for months now and she ended up bringing me multiple stories. We agreed on this one and put the wheels into motion to bring it to life.”
The road to “The Starlet” included some false starts that were a little, well, too taboo even for a series with “taboo” in their name. “I had been thinking about it for a good six months,” says Calvert during a break on set. “I kept writing down ideas as they came to me, even when I was driving. I pitched all of them to Bree. The very first idea I sent was too edgy, though,” she laughs.
“Casey originally sent me three high level concepts which we reviewed together,” adds Mills, “based on what was possible to achieve within a production day and within Pure Taboo’s boundaries — yes, we actually have very strict boundaries! As is often the case with these treatments by talent, the original ideas were a bit too taboo for me to be able to shoot ... I had to reel them in a little.”
Mills and Calvert finally settled on “The Starlet” because they felt it was “a very interesting take on male and female power dynamics that both Casey and I thought would be fun to explore.”
In “The Starlet,” Calvert as Emma portrays a starlet who became famous from a TV show. “She’s a trainwreck!” laughs Calvert. “She parties to manage her pain. She doesn’t care about her finances. The specific taboo I wanted to explore was the idea of cutting someone down. Emma is obnoxious, snooty, she sits on her high horse. The guy, her ex, is now in a relationship with another rival starlet. So she provokes him.”
The whole scenario takes place in Emma’s house, through a series of personal training sessions spread over several days. Eventually, a bet is made between the antagonists that will complicate their sense of desire and willingness in a dance of physical and psychological dominance. There’s also, by the way, a fair amount of sparring and wrestling.
“I wanted to switch it up a little bit,” says Calvert. “I noticed that a lot of Pure Taboo stories have a mean man and a good woman. In this case, she pushes him over the edge and he…” Calvert struggles to find the appropriate word for the complex power dynamic she has created between her characters. “He takesit. I make a bet, and I lose. But do I really want it? You think at first that she won, even if he took it. But then he still has one final blow, the last thing he says (I won’t spoil it) and that ruins her.”
Calvert sees “The Starlet” as a way to expand her acting range, something she’s actively pursuing through classes. “I wanted to play a different kind of character,” she explains. “I’m still seen by many directors as the innocent, the sweet one, the schoolgirl. Here, Bree lets me be something I don’t really get to play.”
For Mills, the story of “The Starlet” deconstructs traditional male and female power dynamics and shows how each character pushes the other to their limits. “Both the female and the male take turns being the villain,” she says, “which I love.”
For the character of Michael, the personal trainer who’s just trying to do his job under duress, there was only really one choice. “I love working with Derrick,” says Calvert. “We’ve worked together a whole bunch.”
“Derrick was Casey’s choice for this episode,” says Mills. “She wrote it specifically with him in mind. Not only is he a strong performer, but he is a versatile actor and great for the stuntman role. If anyone can do a good stage fight in this business, it’s Derrick Pierce!”
Pierce, an instantly recognizable male porn powerhouse who was born to play Lex Luthor (which he does, of course, in a number of parodies), is an industry veteran with over 15 years in the business and over 600 adult credits on IMDB alone. He’s also a Bree Mills/Gamma Films/AdultTime stalwart.
“Every time they are doing a new flagship site,” Pierce admits, “I’m their guinea pig. I guess they know by now I can handle edgy content!”
Pierce remembers his initial shock at encountering Bree Mills’ scripts and concepts, like the Pretty Dirty series. “First time Bree sent me a script that was racy like that I asked her ‘what’s wrong with you?’ but then she said, ‘No, no — we can shoot it like this’ and I was amazed. I looked at [Mills’ producing partner] Craven [Moorehead] and he laughed and said, ‘Bree is one twisted bitch’. People like Tommy Pistol, Charles Dera, myself, we are all willing to go to the edge for her.”
The man with the best-known bald dome in porn also appreciates Mills’ signature #PowerOfActing philosophy.
“I have to embrace the acting,” says Pierce, who has had formal training at Hollywood’s prestigious Brian Reise Acting Studios and has done mainstream work outside the industry. “I like the activity of acting. I enjoy myself so much more when there is a good script, good characters and it’s not just bullshit. My job is to help the director — see what they want to see. My audience is the director.”
In Mills, both Calvert and Pierce have found a like-minded collaborator. “Part of the way in which I want to keep elevating the quality and creativity in our industry,” says Mills “is to keep involving the voices and ideas of our talented performer community.”
On set, Calvert can be seen paying attention to everything, which makes sense because she has big plans for 2019, including a desire to get behind the camera as a director very soon. She’s also getting ready for a new content venture. “I’m hoping to have my custom video site up with fetish-based videos, solos, jerkoff instructions, even ultra-specific customs like me destroying a train set.”
One of Calvert’s unusual customs, in fact, has become famous beyond the porn world through its memorable appearance on Jon Ronson’s 2018 “Butterfly Effect” podcast: the story about the man who paid to have his rare stamp collection destroyed by a beautiful woman who humiliated his hobby. “Yes, that might have been me,” Calvert sort-of admits with her best Mona Lisa smile.
Expect to see that perceptive smile quite a bit, as 2019 may very well be the year Casey Calvert reaches the next level of her already remarkable career.
