LOS ANGELES — Wicked Girl jessica drake can act with the best in the business, but she said her most recent turn presented unique challenges.
She played the Evil Queen in “Snow White XXX,” the first movie from Wicked Pictures’ new Fairy Tales imprint helmed by director Axel Braun. And the role was anything but ordinary.
“I’ve done dramatic and I’ve done romantic, but this role was different,” drake said. “When Axel first told me he wanted to do it, I was like, ‘I have no idea how I’m going to get into this character.’”
Drake told XBIZ that she was familiar with the narrative of the classic tale, but Braun wanted her to become “even more evil” in his version.
The movie, which hit the street this week, also marked the first time drake has ever shared the screen with Riley Steele, the Axel Braun Productions contract star who played the title character.
She said that she hardly knew Steele before going to set, but that they made that work in their favor. Before one of the pivotal scenes, drake said she assured Steele that, “‘I’m not a bitch. I’m just being my character. And if I’m too mean to you don’t take it personally.’”
“I think Riley did a great job and that brown hair really suited her,” drake added.
Braun, the 2014 XBIZ Director of the Year who signed a two-year contract with Wicked in November, called the drake-Steele dynamic “very intense.”
“They both embraced their roles completely and they had tremendous chemistry,” Braun told XBIZ. “Jessica, a notoriously sweet girl, unleashed such an incredible amount of evil that the whole crew was totally intimidated.”
He said that both women “stayed in character throughout the shoot, which was really impressive.”
Drake revealed that Braun kept telling her to “raise my eyebrows in a menacing fashion” during the shoot.
“That was his favorite thing to tell me, was the eyebrows,” drake joked. “I’m sure if we wanted to, we could find an entire reel of eyebrow raising.”
Braun opted to follow the original Brothers' Grimm version of the story, “which is very dark, while incorporating elements from the classic iconography.”
“I used a darker, oversaturated color palette, and very dramatic lighting,” he said. “The 'pornification' was the easy part…fairy tales are quite possibly responsible for most people's first sexual fantasies. So all I had to do was tap back into my own memories.”
Even though both drake and Braun have been on hundreds of porn sets, the Wicked star had never been directed by the seasoned shot-caller until “Snow White XXX.”
“I didn’t really know what to expect. I had heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people,” drake said. “I think he did great, especially for his first movie for Wicked. There’s a lot of stress and pressure that comes with that. Sometimes he wasn’t really directing me all that much and was just letting me do my thing. I was kind of worried about that because I prefer when people really push me and tell me what to do and give me concise direction. But I think he finally got to the point where he trusted me with what I was doing.”
She continued, “It was fun to watch him work. He’s really established a rep as the king of parodies. So it was cool to see that in motion and understand how he works a little better.”
She said Braun’s on-set demeanor is “calm and easygoing for the most part.”
“He is specific with what he wants and on point with some of the smaller details. He would walk through a shot while all the cameras were rolling to fix something that was bothering him and I can respect that,” drake added.
Not only did she do a lot of acting in “Snow White XXX,” drake also did lots of fucking in three separate sex scenes with Barrett Blade, Eric Masterson and of course, Steele.
“I enjoyed playing that role. It’s such an iconic, established character that everybody knows. So that was fun to do,” drake said.
She’ll continue her promotion of “Snow White XXX” in two feature dancing appearances at the Stiletto Adult Club (https://www.stilettoadultclubs.com/) locations in Nanuet, N.Y., and Carlstadt, N.J. this weekend. Drake has two shows tonight at Stiletto Nanuet and another two Saturday at Stiletto Carlstadt.
Meanwhile, Braun, who in recent years has specialized in creating award-winning superhero parodies, said the idea to do Wicked Fairy Tales came down to diversifying his repertoire.
“I just wanted to broaden my spectrum, try different ways of storytelling,” he said. “Fairy Tales allow for a different approach, even though I'm still going to shoot superhero parodies. As far as projects in development, I have plenty of them…but I am not really at liberty to divulge them at the moment. Very exciting stuff, I can tell you that much.”