It's snowing in the San Fernando Valley, as Maitland Ward draws on her cigarette while other people file into a nondescript storefront behind her.
Actually, it's not snowing in the Valley.
This is one of my best roles. And I’m not talking since I started porn. I’m talking ever. I get to be deliciously twisted.
Kayden Kross is watching the scene she's directing, "Higher Power," from a monitor set up right next to a massive snow machine.
The contraption looks like a huge electric-powered trashcan with a hose held up on a rig. Crewmembers keep feeding a powder resembling "snow" into the trashcan and the hose sends it up into the chilly (but not snowy) California fall evening.
"Cut," calls Kross. "I can't see Maitland's face on camera. Now there's too much snow on her. Can we aim the machine behind her?"
As the crew adjusts the fake-weather device, Ward puts out the prop cigarette and walks towards Kross.
"How was I?" she asks the director.
"That was great," Kross replies with obvious sincerity. "That was amazing."
Ward smiles. "I had to start doing porn to get a director to treat me this nice!" she jokes.
By this point, most adult industry-watchers — and not a few civilians— are familiar with the headline-grabbing Ward. She's the stunning redhead with the height and poise of a fashion model who started off as a teen actress (in 1990s hit family comedy "Boy Meets World," part of ABC's fabled TGIF lineup), had a big role in cult comedy "White Chicks," then became a popular cosplayer and influencer and, in her early 40s, decided to embark on a full-fledged porn career.
And this change in direction proved momentous for her: a few months into her porn life, Ward had hit the top of the Pornhub ranking of most sought-after stars, was offered a rare exclusive contract by a major, critically acclaimed studio (Kross' Deeper, one of the Vixen Media Group brands), and was getting the full attention of the mainstream press. Everyone was titillated by the story of the "super hot mainstream TV and movie star who now does porn.”
"Check this out," Ward tells me, showing me her phone. "This gossip website publishes an article about me pretty much every day where they describe what I'm wearing. It's crazy."
The website in question employs people to detail the budding porn star's outfits for daily content under headlines such as "Maitland Ward Shows Off Cleavage in an Open Robe on Instagram" or "‘Boy Meets World’ Star Maitland Ward Slays in All-Red Outfit at the Christmas Tree Lot."
Ward has become so popular, she has her own dedicated clickbait journalists.
It's no surprise then, that Kross, the most celebrated porn star/auteur of the moment, locked Ward into an exclusive contract with Deeper and tailored several upcoming projects — including this "Higher Power" Christmas vignette being shot under the fake snow outside a Valley studio — around the character of "Mistress Maitland."
"Maitland is a mysterious stranger who walks into a 12-step group for sex addicts around the holidays," explains Kross. "I wrote this monologue specifically for her. I've been dreaming for a long time of having someone who could deliver this kind of dialogue."
The monologue in question is a tour de force, because the script for “Higher Power” is very unusual for an adult scene: there are 16 minutes of dialogue before the first sexual advance. And most of those words are Ward at her most bewitching and intense, dominating and seducing everyone at the 12-step meeting with a bravura performance.
"This is one of my best roles," says Ward. "And I'm not talking since I started porn. I'm talking ever. I get to be deliciously twisted."
The target of Mistress Maitland this time around is played by Pressure, a male talent newcomer whose tough, tattooed, perfectly chiseled physique is encased in a very proper grey suit for this meeting. We see Pressure's character squirming with complicated emotions towards this demonic temptress who appears to have materialized just to torture him.
There's another, more convoluted explanation of why Mistress Maitland is at the meeting, fleshed out in a very brief intro and an outro. It involves sex, lies and videotapes. "It could very well be VHS tapes," says Kross about a mysterious box that acts as a punchline. "We never specify what year it is."
As for the Deeper production crew, led by industry veteran and impeccable raconteur Marc Kramer, they arrived in the morning to a warehouse-style bare set and proceeded to recreate the kind of borrowed space with the folding chairs that hosts people in recovery around the world.
Kross arrived a little later, carrying Christmas decorations for the set. "Higher Power" was her version of a "holiday release," that staple of adult studio calendars. She's a 100 percent hands-on director, fixing torn costumes or adjusting books so that they look perfect for her cinematographer.
She could have shot "Higher Power" on location, she explains "but I really wanted this wide-angle shot with everyone around the circle." The set was built to her specifications so the cameras could capture every nuance of Mistress Maitland's demolishing monologue.
There's also a smoke machine that creates an indoors haze that, in combination with some eerie musical cues, serves to set up the uncanny atmosphere where Ward's she-devil will unleash her fury.
Dante Colle, Ryan Mclane and Riley Steele are all standing by for their non-sex roles, for which they're cast perfectly. Colle plays the group's facilitator with the expected combination of commonplace self-help and almost pastoral caring. Steele — Kross' "contract sister" from the Digital Playground days — is given the chance to turn her usual "sex doll" persona inwards, much like Marilyn Monroe did in "The Misfits."
After Steele shares her sex addiction story, it's Mclane's turn for his mea culpa, playing a fake-modest publishing hotshot who has been #MeToo-ed by many women in his industry. His is perhaps the trickiest part to pull off, having to sound sincere in his contrition, but setting up the brutal takedown that follows.
The takedown is Ward's monologue. This is where all the years Ward spent on mainstream sets truly pay off. For take after take, over a couple of hours in the afternoon, Ward gives readings of Kross' lines for different camera angles, holding a forbidden cigarette like a laser pointer through the haze. She stops when a trolley track needs to be assembled, and resumes flawlessly from the line she left off at. Her eyes and cadences, matching through the takes but presenting tantalizing variations, are a film editor's wet dream.
And it's Mistress Maitland's show on set. The bewitching eyes of Audrey Noir, who alongside Pierce Paris and Brock Doom play the other group members, follow Ward's monologue in character. Maitland's red hair, pristine white dress shirt and black pencil skirt render her as a timeless fashion plate, or perhaps an Edward Hopper painting enigma.
Colle's group leader informs her she shouldn't smoke. "Well, when you're curbing one vice, you gotta forgive the others, can't fight the battle in all fronts," she says, sucking on the prop cigarette.
She bends over. There's the signature cleavage that launched a thousand clickbait headlines. The camera catches it in all its glory, and Kross nods approvingly behind her monitor.
"That's why we're here, all of us, to… ," Ward says, pausing, giving the definitive reading for that take, "stop fucking so much."
Colle looks at her confused and horrified — he's as clueless and intrigued as Jonathan Harker setting foot in Castle Dracula.
"Would you care to share a little bit about your life with us?" he asks her.
You can swear Ward's pupils go full black, like a Dario Argento demon, except we're on set and there are no special effects IRL in this Porn Valley warehouse. "I fuck," the demon sentences. "I like to fuck. And unlike Mr. #MeToo over there, I really know how to see it through." The perverse Kross one-liners come fast and slithering.
"I like to be hit, just past climax — makes the shudder stronger."
"I like to think that pain is an index for pleasure. Because without pain, we never know we arrived elsewhere."
"I like extremes."
"As for higher power, well — that's all relational too. Because every power is higher, when you have none."
Everyone is silent.
The handsome Pressure, being targeted by those soul-crushing eyes, can't contain his discomfort, fidgeting with his hands, almost hugging himself to make this vision go away. His character doesn't say a word until everyone leaves and Mistress Maitland seizes his dick through his suit pants.
"And, cut," says Kross. "Maitland, that was, so good," she says with a big smile, having a real moment of creative fellowship with her contract actress.
To the side stands one of the metal folding chairs, completely mangled. Ward and Pressure have shot the sex scene out of sequence, before the 12-step meeting that leads into it. They destroyed the chair. As the metal folded like paper under the weight of their pounding, Ward hissed with delight, the Dark Christmas vampire showing her weak man toy that she likes to fuck — and she knows how to see it through.
