When Queenie Sateen reached adulthood, she moved to New York City to attend the Parsons School of Design, while making music and stripping in her free time. She had difficulty focusing on school and felt like what she really wanted to do was sing and create music full-time, so she dropped out of the art school after a year.
After a few years of writing music and performing around the city, she met fellow musician Ruby and created a band called Sateen. They got married, became “club kids” in the New York gay nightlife scene, put on shows to showcase the music they produced and even toured a couple of times.
Now, I feel like I am in my sponge era. I am sponging up knowledge and experience, sharpening my tools to create something that really inspires me.
“Right before COVID, I started dancing in strip clubs around New York again,” Sateen says. “After COVID, Ruby and I created an OnlyFans, which began my foray into the adult industry. Last spring, she and I split, amicably, and I decided to enter the world of adult film. So I packed all of my Vivienne Westwood corsets and moved to LA.”
Now on her own, Sateen thought it would be good for her to do something to redefine herself as an individual.
“I needed to do something to shake my life up,” she explains. “Entering porn felt right. I had no idea at the time how much I would actually enjoy it. It has turned out to be something I really love.”
She was already “Queenie Sateen” before joining the industry, having taken the name of her band Sateen and created “Queenie” from a shortened version of her club scene name, and she decided to carry it over into her new career.
“Even though I’ve entered a new industry, I see porn as an extension of my art,” she reflects. “I consider myself an artist first and foremost and porn is an exciting new medium for me. Also it felt silly creating an entirely new name and starting from scratch when I already had a perfectly good one!”
Although she has been in the industry for less than a year, Sateen has had a prolific start, performing in upwards of 60 scenes since August 2022, many of which have yet to be released.
“I feel like I’ve learned so many things,” she says. “I have the privilege of being paired with so many incredible seasoned vets of this industry and credit all of them for every single thing I have learned. People do not realize that on-camera sex is not the same as regular sex. It’s a performance, like the ballet. It is all choreography.”
She has also transformed on a personal level, as this is the first time she has been single in her adult life. Because her parents passed away when she was 16, Sateen notes, she always sought a sense of family in her partnerships.
“Learning to be alone, live alone and moving to an entirely new place has made me feel like a grown-ass woman,” she explains. “To me, that is very exciting and rewarding. For the first time in my life, I feel like I am truly taking care of my body and mind. I have my gym routine, I barely go out or drink and on my days off I like to get my home in order. I love fresh flowers, clean laundry, organizing the archives — aka my closet — hanging with my dog and being in the sun. That may sound boring to some, but I am taking great pleasure in these simple things.”
After leaving her previous agency and self-booking for about a month, she set out to become a Spiegler Girl. She had heard about Mark Spiegler from the movie “Pleasure,” and after chatting with him at a party she was drawn to his energy.
“He is a straight shooter, no BS, but also warm,” she says. “Not to mention that he is an icon. I really wanted to be represented by him and become a Spiegler Girl. It’s all really new, to be honest, and I can’t say yet how it’s affected my career because of that. However, what I can say is that I am excited to have an agent again. I am honored to be joining the ranks of the Spiegler Girls. He’s churned out many a star.”
While embracing her independence and drawing upon her agency for shoots, Sateen still leans on her social support network back in New York. She considers this strong, tightly knit group of friends, with whom she used to go clubbing and host parties, her queer family, and has remained close with them for years.
“They keep me grounded, even if I am on the complete opposite side of the country,” she emphasizes. “We FaceTime frequently. My ex-romantic partner and still partner in music, Ruby, is also a huge support to me. I have also met some wonderful, special people while in the industry. There are so many cool, intelligent bad bitches that have shown me the ropes in many regards.”
She cites one particular "bad bitch" moment as a touchstone: watching the famous interview with Cher, in which the icon recalls her mother urging her to settle down and marry a rich man, to which Cher replied, “Mom, I am a rich man.”
Ever since, Sateen has counted Cher as one of her favorite women of all time. When she saw her heroine perform in Vegas a couple of years ago, Cher recounted how the director of “The Witches of Eastwick” said she was too ugly and too old for the role.
“She couldn’t have been more stunning and charismatic, and she had to fight for that role,” Sateen says. “She was the underdog over and over again and still prevailed. A timeless, ageless bad bitch.”
Her own dedication to her craft and artistry that extends beyond adult can be seen in her long-running music project with Ruby, Sateen.
“Through our music-making journey, we’ve gone in and out of our cocoon,” she notes. “It’s a nice feeling getting recognized by people out in the world who are our music fans. We built something that’s kind of like a cult thing. If you know, you know.”
Ruby has been focusing on painting and being a “downtown diva” while Sateen digs her roots in deeper in the LA porn scene, but in the near future the pair still plans on dropping some songs they had been working on before Sateen moved.
“I’d love to keep our musical collaborations going because I think Ruby and I were always doing something interesting that was never dictated by what everyone else was doing,” she explains. “I would love to go on tour again. That was the best. I felt so alive going from city to city just singing every night. I would love to relive that magic again.”
For now, much of her time is occupied by shooting her own content a couple of times per month, and studio porn a couple times each week. Her main revenue stream is studio work, but her OnlyFans revenue is a nice bonus, she notes. What she really enjoys about shooting for companies is the sense of structure it provides, as she can get up early, go to work and come home. “In a way it’s still new and glamorous to me,” she says.
Of course, social media marketing is key to driving fan engagement and building a community, so she strives to be fully authentic online. Her approach has not changed much despite the fact that her music fans were primarily female while her adult work has drawn mostly male fans.
“I still post pictures of my outfits even if straight men don’t really care about my vintage Cavalli corset,” she explains. “I think, ‘If you build it, they will cum.’ You shouldn’t have to tailor your content to an audience too much. At the end of the day, people don’t really know what they want. I’m just me. I really do dress like a slut all of the time, but with a twist. Twitter is great promo for OnlyFans, so obviously that’s where my trailers for content, nudes and clips get posted.”
Shooting more and more scenes has taught Sateen how to perform better and even improve her own content. She still remembers Lea Lexus teaching her, on her second-ever shoot, how to open up to the camera.
“Porn sex is not about feeling good,” she says. “It’s about looking good and being able to show penetration. Other than camera awareness and all the technicalities of porn sex, I’ve learned it’s about putting on a good show and having fun. I’m a showgirl, so that is what I aim for. I also know that this is still just the beginning and I have a lot to learn and prove, and that is exciting for me.”
As far as the visual style and vibe she strives to evoke in her work, Sateen says it is an approach best described as “Monica Belluci, but if she was a Dreamlander” — meaning a member of John Waters’ creative troupe — and that her photos reflect this best. One day, she notes, she would love to have the means to express herself more fully in the content she creates.
“I am a huge film buff,” Sateen notes. “When I had cable, I would always have Turner Classic Movies playing. I love classic films and foreign films. Someday, I hope to create highly aesthetic porn, incorporating my passion for fashion, architecture and music. I am always striving to reflect all of these interests of mine, despite the limitations. One day, I would like to have the budget and know-how to direct something really beautiful and weird. I love the erotica films of Tinto Brass, the camp classics of John Waters and the twisted, colorful movies of Pedro Almodovar.”
The more she learns, Sateen says, the longer her bucket list grows — though she is keeping the specifics of that list to herself, as she is superstitious and does not want to jinx reaching her goals. She admits, however, that she has already checked off a great many items prior to her entering the industry.
“I feel like I just want to keep learning and growing in general, as an artist and a performer,” she says. “I really would love to be on set at least four days a week and be super prolific. I also want to release a solo music project and try my hand at directing. Now, I feel like I am in my sponge era. I am sponging up knowledge and experience, sharpening my tools to create something that really inspires me.”
