By the time Kayden Kross was an exotic dancer at age 18 in a hometown Sacramento club called Risky Business (now a Deja Vu), she had already stripped away her conservative Christian upbringing. It started off as a onetime gig while she finished college, because — rebellious teenage brainiac that she was — Kross had been taking courses since she was 16. Philosophy classes were a favorite of hers, and their elegant logic presented an opportunity to dismantle the insufferable private school indoctrination she had endured in her youth.
As we bantered in her dining room about what had led Kross to adult entertainment, she was all smiles and sunshine-blonde brightness, getting her caffeine fix from a mug that read: “But first, Kafka.” An illustration of coffee beans and a single brown beetle paid homage to “The Metamorphosis,” one of the most famous short stories from German-Jewish Czech writer Franz Kafka, in which a man wakes up one day to discover he has transformed into a large insect for no reason.
His surreal writing, which frequently explored themes of alienation and absurdity, putting protagonists in unusual circumstances or pitting them against oppressive societal forces, led to the term “Kafkaesque” as a means of describing such scenarios. It made sense that Kross would be drawn to him, since she herself had felt isolated growing up, pressured by draconian religious education.
Perhaps, in the years to come, as the Vixen Media Group frontwoman evolves with as much distinction as the Deeper.com site she birthed, itself a phoenix risen from the transmuted ashes of its spiritual predecessor TrenchcoatX, we’ll refer to movies that take profound creative risks, that draw upon literary references and encourage performers to explore their every surreal desire as “Krossesque.”
And yet, for all the darkly radiant burn of her films, Kross was very much the picture of suburban heaven during the interview; an adorable pup panted in her lap, daylight bathed the tastefully decorated rooms of her spacious home and peals of laughter came from children playing in the backyard. She dwelled in one of the idyllic residences comprising the gated ranch-style community filled with the neighing of gentle horses, the clucking of rambunctious chickens and the rumbling of pickup trucks.
She apologized for the roosters and hens that were strutting about. They had apparently wriggled free of their enclosures, as desirous for liberty as Kross herself once was. While she spoke, luminous ripples dappled her sculpted cheekbones, reflected from the pool outside where a magnificent slide carved into stone promised summertime fun.
Ironically, Kross had achieved the very family-friendly paradise that all those finger-wagging preachers from her childhood had busily shepherded their congregation towards. Here she was, at ease in her yoga pants, as we discussed how she was part of the Girl Scouts-like “Missionettes,” long before she was filming a very different kind of missionary.
“I always felt very guilty, because from a super young age, the whole God thing just didn’t sit well with me at all,” Kross said. “I hated church. I hated all of it. It was like a punishment for something you know should not be punishment, this very masochistic servitude. It just felt like a very disgusting thing to me always. Even at a young age, I remember sitting through these things — and it felt gross. I can’t think of a better word for it. It felt dirty.”
If only those zealots knew then, that she would one day become an award-winning adult star and director, with an actual Last Supper-themed orgy as a career highlight (“After Dark: Part 5,” for those curious).
“It was always a feeling that I didn’t articulate, combined with this deep sense of guilt — because you’re told that those feelings are a straight ticket to hell,” she shared. “And, of course, everyone in my life around me supported that message, so there was no one to talk to about it. I would hear the parables, the stories and it’s such a terrible thing to put a human through. But then, it’s held up as ‘look how exalted and morally pure this outcome is.’ And it’s like, ‘no, that’s terrible!’”
Fortunately, once she began attending public school, the dogmatic lessons were replaced by a more secular education. And soon enough, she was well on her way to basking in those much-beloved heretical philosophy courses at the local junior college.
“In fact, philosophy was one of my first ‘majors,’” Kross mused. “I just really loved those classes, because they gave me the words to articulate what I was feeling. From there, it was very easy to make the leap to, ‘OK, now I’m pretty truly an atheist over here.’ I think you should really be taking control of your own fate and making self-directed decisions. So, long story short, by the time I was dancing, I was pretty secure in how I felt about things. I could pretty reasonably justify it.”
In 2005 at the age of 20, Kross met John Stevens from Matrix Models, who entered the stripclub and asked if she wanted to be in Penthouse. When she considered taking the leap, Kross was less concerned with the morality of doing so than the fact it would be a far more public form of sex work. “Dancing is private in the sense that when I stop, it stops,” she said. “And I was, at that point, a senior in college.” Nonetheless, she ended up going for it, solo modeling for the famed brand as well as for Hustler, who soon approached her with a boy/girl contract. That, she recalls was “a much bigger step than I was prepared for.”
At first, she decided to give it a shot. When she walked on set for her debut Hustler scene, starring Jean Val Jean and another contract girl, it was at the studio of Laurent Sky (who would eventually go on to become a noteworthy director for Vixen Media Group). Feeling overwhelmed at the time by her own anxiety, Kross ended up backing out of the Hustler shoot.
“I was feeling scared,” she remembered. “I’m like, ‘What if I do it wrong?’ Jean Val Jean and this girl, they basically cut in the middle of a scene — and they come out, and they’re like sweating and huffing. And there had been all this noise in the background. And there was this neon light coming down. And it was just so much. And I remember looking at that and thinking, ‘Fuck, I am not doing this — no.’ And I just walked off the set.”
In retrospect, that experience, she explained, is not rare. “Now that I’m a director, it’s common for people to do that when their first scene is coming up, there’s a 50% dropout rate. You like the idea, and then you’re faced with reality. You’re like, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’”
Hustler, however, was not giving up on Kross. They invited her to sign for them at an industry tradeshow in Las Vegas and promised “you’ll see it differently.”
“And I don’t think they thought I would see it the way that I saw it, but it’s true: I saw it differently,” she recalled. “And what I saw was a massive opportunity. Because I was watching what was successful, and it was a very low bar. I remember walking through that convention, and the biggest things happening were shoddily done. It really was shoddy. And I remember it being like, ‘So, if this is what I’m going to do, it’s a long-term haul. It’s not worth it to do it for six months or a year or even four years — because it’s always with you. You’re carrying that scarlet letter forever. But if this is the place I choose to go, there will always be money. There’s more opportunity than any one person can take advantage of. There will always be resources.”
SERIAL CONTRACT STAR
Her sense of optimism restored, Kross ended up signing with Vivid later that year, since she preferred their visual style. She wanted to make sure that industry players took her seriously, and enthusiastically declared her commitment to staying in the game to anyone in earshot.
“I remember what was funny was I kept telling everybody, ‘I am here,” she recollected. “I’m here to stay.’ And I told that to Vivid’s founder, Steve Hirsch, I told that to their production manager Shailar and I told that to this person and that person and everyone I came across. I’m like, ‘Give me everything, I’m here to say. Build me a brand.’ No one believed me.”
Nearly a full year after that first walkout, Kross was finally on set for what would become her first-ever boy/girl scene. And her co-star was the very man who would one day become her beloved, long-term romantic partner, Manuel Ferrara.
“I came to the set — and I was very scared,” she said. “I was very worried that I would have the same freakout that I had before, even if I was much more certain about my interest in being in the business. It was like a stage fright thing. But he showed up and he was so nice. Now that I know him so well, I know the kind of cloak he put on that day. The charming Manuel cloak.”
She was rather smitten by him, describing him as a “sexy French man” with an “NSYNC hair sweep” that he had at the time. While she did get through the scene and take the plunge, it was not her finest performance.
“I was terrible. I was so scared and stiff and nervous. I’m already a shy, introverted kind of person — and now, there are cameras and lights. Manuel always looks back now, and he’s always like, ‘That was a terrible day.’ But my God, that was my first time! He loves to tell people how bad I was, haha.” Apparently, she was so inexperienced, Ferrara put her on his “no list,” though she did not know it then.
She eventually switched gears to work for Adam & Eve, as Vivid eased away from its contract star approach to the business. “They took me a lot more seriously,” she said. “I was like, ‘I want to do something. I want a name. I want a brand. I’m here.’ And they really started working to build me up.”
When she signed with Adam & Eve, they told her Ferrara would be her co-star in her debut scene for the brand, but when they approached him, he told them, “No.”
The studio did not share this with Kross, so she still had no idea that Ferrara had her on a “no list,” especially since he rarely shot for them in general. It was not until Kross signed with Digital Playground in 2010 after two years of performing for Adam & Eve, that she would finally get a chance to be with Ferrara.
“So, I’m coming to Digital Playground, and they’re like, ‘Your first scene has to be Manuel,’” she said, laughing. “For the longest time, he was the guy who did the first scene for studios, because he brought out the best performances. He could carry a scene if you don’t know what you’re doing. He can make it good.”
The director was Robbie D., who was very invested in getting him to perform with her, and also happened to be friends with Ferrara. So when Ferrara declined to co-star with Kross, she recalled, “He kind of understands that Manuel has an ego. And so, Robbie appealed to his ego. He told Manuel, ‘She begged for you. She requested you.’ And Manuel’s like, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ And Robbie’s like, ‘No, man, you’re the only person she’ll work with.’ I had no idea any of this was happening. And so, Manuel agrees to the scene. Meanwhile, as far as I’m concerned, they just booked us together — and that was it.”
She was very confident on camera at that point, fortunately, having gotten all of her kinks out, and she remembers that they ended up having a “fireworks scene.” The movie was called “The Smiths” and from then on, Kross was off the “no list” and very much on the “hell yes” list. They had an undeniable connection henceforth, even if their relationships with significant others at the time prevented them from pursuing anything more seriously.
Digital Playground, like Adam & Eve, took the perennially contracted star’s career to an even higher level than before. She remembers they gave her a role as large as Jesse Jane in their movie “Body Heat,” for which Kross won XBIZ Best Actress in 2011.
“We’re all firefighters and I was holding a flame out for Manuel,” she said. “He exploded. I remember they took that scene from ‘Hurt Locker,’ where he exploded. And then, of course, we all had an orgy.”
In real-life, they were very much holding a flame for one another, and soon enough, they found themselves single. While she was promoting a project for Digital Playground in France, she remembers how Ferrara sent her a direct message on social media and asked, “Where are you right now?” She told him she was in France and he wanted to know when she would be landing back in L.A., asking if she wanted to come over when she did.
“I had barely got in a taxi at the airport, and I just went to his house and kind of never left,” she remembered. “And so, that’s how that happened. I think we kind of both knew that once something happened, that’s it. And he even expressed that to me in so many words a few times kind of prior to that. It couldn’t just be casual; it wouldn’t just be casual.”
Kross stayed with Digital Playground until her budding relationship with Ferrara hit a point where something had to give, around 2013. While she transitioned to doing girl/girl-only for a while with them, she recalled, “I just hit this point where they were paying me a very inflated rate to do girl/girl, it didn’t make sense for them.”
She also felt so emotionally wrapped up in him, that even girl/girl was proving tough, as her desire to be with others reached an all-time low.
“It had never happened to me before Manuel, that I was just not sexually interested in other people,” she said. “I remember being thrown off because I had always really enjoyed performing. It never got old to me. I know people get burned out; I never got burned out on performing. To this day, I’ve never been burned out on performing. I have this very rosy-eyed recollection of all of it. But yeah, during that time, I just lost interest. I started kind of acting up on set and having complaints about everyone they wanted to book me with.”
There were also changes going on with Digital Playground being purchased by MindGeek. All five of the contract girls who were there on the day of the sale were gone within a year. Kross reflected, “It was a lot of change. It was kind of a boutique studio, and then it wasn’t. Everyone had their own reason for leaving. But that was primarily mine.”
Ferrara and her hit a spot where they decided not to push their luck with the chemistry, and so she stopped performing. “I have not touched another penis since, I guess, the end of 2012,” Kross said. “Very weird. I think about this sometimes. But yeah, that was just sort of what happened.”
And with the success Ferrara had, there was not a lot of financial pressure for Kross to work. She focused on helping him with the backend of his business. “He knows I feel this way; I can say this on the record: He’s incredibly disorganized,” she explained, smiling wryly. “He’s painfully disorganized. So when I ended up doing all this backend stuff, we had a really nice thing going there.”
Kross also did a lot of writing, penning columns for sites like Salon and Nylon, during a period of her career she described as low-key. Then, one day Ferrara came home and asked her to direct his next movie for Evil Angel, with whom he was contracted.
That film, “Misha Cross Wide Open,” became an award-winning hit that topped bestseller lists on Adult Empire. It was so well-received, that Kross said, “It sparked something in me.” Her favorite part about helming the movie was writing the script and seeing her vision come to life. “This is really special. This is really cool. And I got a bug for it.”
At the time, she was having conversations with another performer, Stoya, who had also left Digital Playground for her own reasons during the ownership transfer. They excitedly discussed what was possible with adult filmmaking, believing there was a space for unique content that had a lot of thought put into it, beyond typical gonzo fare.
“We definitely both knew that we didn’t want to be out of adult, but we didn’t want to be in it with the companies that were around,” she reflected. “There was just sort of this understanding that we would still want to be involved if there was a studio like what we imagined — a well-run studio. I don’t want to use the word ‘ethically’ well-run, since I don’t like that word. But we were not the most organized. We were clusterfucks, even if we had this idea of how content should be made.”
Those wistful conversations would lead to the creation of TrenchcoatX, a pet project that so potently displayed the directorial prowess and imagination of Kross, her life would be forever changed.
SACROSANCT SMUT
Kross remembers the day fondly, when Stoya sat with her at the office in her house, spitballing ideas. They were discussing the old trenchcoats people would wear to coin-operated adult movie booths, dabbling on GoDaddy as they sought out an ideal domain name.
“I don’t even remember who floated the name,” she said. “One would float one, and the other would be like, ‘Yes’ or ‘no.’ And it would be available or not, but we were loving it. And it was very electric: TrenchcoatX. Yes! Of course, it was available because it was unique. And so, we bought it for like $12.99 — whatever you buy a domain for. We didn’t have that much of a plan; we just had an idea of what we wanted it to be.”
The site formally launched in 2015 with content Stoya and Kross had already created on their own, or content they licensed from people who were indie creators from around the world. “It was just curated,” Kross explained. “We called it ‘curated smut.’ We didn’t necessarily have the budget yet to go and make the content. We had no real formal distribution plan. It was just sort of a tinkering hobby that kept growing.”
However, creative differences, not to mention differences in time zones after Stoya moved to New York, eventually led them to part ways. Stoya fulfilled her own artistic vision through a site called ZeroSpaces.com, while Kross now had free reign to make TrenchcoatX. com into her image and likeness.
“So, if you look at Zero Spaces and you look at what TrenchcoatX became, they’re not the same,” Kross pointed out. “Hers is far more niche and specific to this kind of shared belief system. Mine floated more down the middle stream.”
And for the first-ever scene fully produced under the brand’s umbrella, Kross upended the notion of cuckold empowerment through “Sacrosanct,” starring Katrina Jade and then partner Nigel Dictator, whose real-life sexual dynamic was brought to cinematic life with a darkly surreal Dictator enthroned powerfully, while Jade was unwrapped and plowed by Charles Dera and Tommy Gunn.
That scene would go on to win in an XBIZ Awards category thoroughly dominated by the ascendant Tushy, Blacked and Vixen maestro Greg Lansky: Best Vignette Sex Scene. In fact, that scene caught the attention of yours truly so much in 2017, that it led to the first of several lengthy interviews with Kross. With so much fanfare and continued award wins, Lansky was compelled to take notice ... and to hire Kross.
Looking back fondly on that fateful scene, she reminisced, “And the rest is, I don’t want to say ‘history.’ But during that time, I had been hired to do things by other companies here and there. Like, in a directing capacity. And every time I had pitched that ‘Sacrosanct’ concept, people were like, ‘No, no, no.’ So when I made it and it ended up being so beautiful, I remember the first time I saw the ad, I almost cried. I was like, ‘If I could make this all the time, I would.’ And so, I just kept going.”
One of the main reasons she was excited to work with Lansky, beyond the boon to her budget, was his brilliant marketing skills.
“I was a content creator; I was never, like, this ad man,” she said. “But I was running the ‘ad man’ part of my company and I was really bad at it. I had no insights on members or what they wanted or anything. It was a really weird time for me. And when I had been having conversations about what was possible with TrenchcoatX with Stoya, around then, Greg Lansky had launched Blacked with Mike Moz, who was with him from the very beginning. Moz has been my best friend since 2009; he had lived with me in my loft, that’s how close we were. And Moz was with Lansky since the days of ‘Reality Kings Greg.’”
And before Moz unleashed that first product, which would send shockwaves through the slowing studio biz with a marketing blitz that brought back the big-budget flair of a bygone era with a vengeance, he had signaled to Kross that a grand project was imminent.
“He kept saying, ‘We’re doing something big. Pay attention,’” she said. “He knew it was big, and he had been around a long time. He was like, ‘Watch what we’re doing.’ And sure enough, they launched Blacked — and suddenly, everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god, Greg Lansky!’ Because everyone up until then had been in this race to the bottom with budgets because of piracy and the economic downturn following the housing crash."
This cost-saving cycle resulted in performer rates being negotiated downwards and overall, the mood was less than enthusiastic. Once Blacked launched, however, defying frugal logic with its glitzy visuals, finely tailored wardrobes and fancy sets, everything changed. Yacht parties, helicopters, champagne bottles, Vixen Angel ceremonies … the works, would ensue in the coming years.
“Then, it was successful headline after successful headline after successful headline,” Kross said. “Suddenly, Blacked was everywhere. Suddenly, there’s Tushy. And I kept telling Stoya, ‘There’s money in this if we do it right.’ We were watching Greg Lansky, and we were like, ‘If he can do it, there’s a base who will pay.’”
She saw that because the studios had been cutting back, the quality of adult scenes was going down, which gave consumers even less incentive to spend money on paysites when so much freely available content was there for the taking on tubes.
“And that’s the reason I pushed forward with TrenchcoatX, even after Stoya and I separated,” she said. “There was an audience. There were people with wallets who would open up those wallets for the right content.”
At one point, Kross pondered if the much-hyped success swirling about Lansky and his creative works was legit, or just a marketing trick. Others had voiced their doubts, either out of envy or a grizzled veteran’s “seen it all before” experience.
But when she talked to Moz, asking, “Is this real? Is this a legitimate success, or are you puffing? Is it a fake it until you make it, or is this right?” she remembers he told her, “You don’t understand how real this is. You don’t understand the numbers we’re raking in. You can’t fathom how much money this company is making right now.”
Given her history with Moz, she said, “‘OK, I’m trusting you. If there’s money to be made, I’m going to push forward with TrenchcoatX.’ And I don’t think I would have pushed forward if I didn’t have Moz there. There were a lot of rumors that it was all fake, but having a legitimate in and knowing that it was truly a successful company was what kept me going. Because, TrenchcoatX didn’t make any money for the first year and a half at least. I wasn’t making money. I was reinvesting every dollar that came in.
“I was essentially working for free at TrenchcoatX,” she continued. “But my productions got better. It was like baptism by fire, a school of hard knocks. And any time I failed, it was my pocketbook. So I was very motivated with every shoot to take as much [money] as I could and apply it to the next one."
She now enjoyed wielding a far greater degree of artistic control, because she no longer had to be the PA, or worried about buying water bottles, cleaning up the spills and taking care of bookkeeping.
“In my TrenchcoatX productions, the directing was like the last thing I did — and by the time I got to set I’d be so damn tired, that the cast was getting puffs of smoke in terms of the energy that I had left,” she said.
Nonetheless, all the extra wind beneath her wings presented a unique learning curve of its own with how to delegate and where to devote her energy.
“Every single day, I feel like I am just constantly in film school,” she shared. “And it’s wonderful, because even now, they’re expanding — and I’m a part of that. And it’s so interesting just to see the way things are delegated — and the more you delegate, your productions get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, it’s so funny because it feels like it has happened so fast. And I come on the set, and I’m like, ‘Holy fuck, I can’t believe that I’m here. Look where I was two years ago or three years ago or four years ago.’ Like, I didn’t even know what these terms were back then, camera talk and equipment and which lens to use. Now, it’s all acronyms with the shots that I want. And I’m speaking the same language.”
What really rocketed Kross to the major leagues, from part-time Vixen Media Group director to a force-to-be-reckoned-with, was her Tushy feature “Abigail.” The grueling 13-day shoot (unheard-of in 2018 when it was made, as most features were lucky to get three days) produced such a stunning Abigail Mac showcase, it swept the 2019 XBIZ Awards, propelling Kross to Feature Director of the Year (before her consecutive Director of the Year wins in 2020 and 2021 for her diverse body of work).
“Greg Lansky wanted something that came out with a massive boom and believed I could pull it off ... I did not share his confidence” she confessed. “Luckily, he had a better sense of these things than I did. I wrote the script and we pulled the preproduction together in three weeks, and then I remember waking up on the first shoot day of that project and it felt like there was a rock in my stomach. I was so scared I was in over my head, and at the time I hadn’t actually made all that many projects, and definitely never something bigger than a featurette with ‘Trashy Love Story’ (which was made in two days on a budget of about 12K).
“They still haven’t told me what the ‘Abigail’ budget landed at and I hope they never do,” Kross said, chuckling. “I was over the moon with the finished product ... and dead. Yet Lansky called me up the day after we wrapped and he said it was time for Tori Black’s project, ‘After Dark.’ It was made without a finished script. There was no time for anything, but I had a lot of office support on both of these projects and that was the reason we got it done.
“I always look back on those two movies as sister projects because they shared all of the same resources and were made on top of each other as I learned. It was definitely a baptism by fire sort of thing,” she said.
In retrospect, Kross marvels that Lansky had such confidence in her. It was a tremendous compliment she noted, even if it was superbly overwhelming to go back-to-back with such mammoth projects. Once they were done, she remembered driving up to Santa Barbara and renting a hotel, then just sitting there, staring at a wall for three days.
“I was like, ‘I need to get away,’” she said. “And I just sat down. I couldn’t do anything. I felt so tired. But yeah, it’s this weird whirlwind. And I know it’s been a few years now, but it all feels like a whirlwind.”
“After Dark” notched wins right alongside “Abigail” that year, winning Vignette Release of the Year and cementing — beyond a shadow of any lingering doubt — that Kross had arrived.
In truth, however, she was just getting started. It was time to go … Deeper.
INTO THE DEPTHS
What may seem like a smooth progression from her wins in January 2019 to the launch of Deeper.com in April months later, was actually the result of a tough fight behind the scenes. Moz, despite his long-time friendship with Kross, wanted to ensure that the next spoke in the VMG wheel was a sturdy one.
“Conversations started very early once I started directing for Greg,” Kross said, “laying the groundwork for what was to come. He wanted me in a director’s contract and said, ‘I don’t want you to do TrenchcoatX. Just work for me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not letting TrenchcoatX go.’ And he was like, ‘I want you under our umbrella, and I want you to bring TrenchcoatX in.’ And then luckily, another company was interested in me and trying to buy me, to bring me, with TrenchcoatX, under their umbrella.”
She declined to name the interested party, but suffice to say, it created a bidding war, especially in light of her success months prior during awards season. Since Kross had worked hard for TrenchcoatX, she knew that letting it go would only cause her to have less bargaining power. And so, as the conversation got bigger and bigger, the powers that be at VMG came to the table and talked about giving Kross her own brand.
During those discussions, she thought about the competing aesthetics of “Sun- Lit” (also an award-winning series) and “Sacrosanct,” wondering which would best serve the venture.
“There were all these conversations, and ‘Sacrosanct’ just kept floating to the top,” she said. “And that aesthetic, that ideal, was just something that no one else was doing. It was being done in a very interesting way. I was good at it. And I remember Alexandra — she runs all the marketing for all the brands — she was on the phone, and she was like, ‘There’s just something deeper about the content.’ And right when she said it, everyone on the call was like, ‘Deeper.’ And that was how Deeper came to be.”
The road from Deeper’s genesis to its first big feature, “Drive” and the eventual signing of mainstream crossover sensation Maitland Ward to the brand, had one more big hurdle to overcome: Kross had to prove her fledgling site was viable. With “Abigail” and “After Dark,” which had been produced under VMG’s established Tushy and Vixen brands, respectively, Kross had approximately 25 people at her disposal who could execute her vision and have various tasks delegated to them. She would say, “Here’s the script, let’s make it,” and the rest would roll with the backing of well-oiled machinery.
“With ‘Drive,’ it was the opposite,” she revealed. “I wanted to make ‘Drive,’ and they said, ‘It’s too early. It’s too soon. Your brand is not mature enough to support a feature.’ And I pushed and I pushed, and since Deeper started out as, ‘If you want me, you have to do this for me,’ I didn’t have — until very recently — any of the support that the other brands had. I didn’t have the budgets, I didn’t have the people, I didn’t have the office at my disposal.
“It was just me; it was always just me,” she said. “And so, when I wanted to do the feature, they were like, ‘No.’ And I wrote the script, and I’m like, ‘I want to do this feature.’ And they’re like, ‘No.’ And finally, it turned into, ‘OK, you can make it, if you come in at this budget. It’s all you. Sink or swim. It’s you.’ And I just kind of held my breath, and we dove in. And I literally did make that project alone.”
At first, she was going to be given a producer, but that was taken away too, so she rolled with the punches and made maximum use of the human resources she did have access to.
Then, the person originally cast to play the role opposite White, was not working out. Sent back to the drawing board scrambling, Kross now believes that was “the happiest accident of all, because Maitland happened to appear right at that moment.”
“She had done a scene for Blacked,” Kayden said. “No one knew anything about her — and then suddenly, her numbers rolled in. And they were just off the charts. And everyone was like, ‘Who the hell is this person? Why are these numbers like this?’ And it was the very day that I was told if I don’t replace the other lead character, there’s no project. And I remember getting a call — and once again, Moz is like, ‘Hey, you’ve gotta look at this girl.’ And I looked, and I called her agent — and I forwarded the script.”
As Kross tells it, she never saw Ward coming and frequently talks about how serendipitous it was that the first actress in “Drive” didn't work out and "and Maitland crossed my radar at the exact day I had to either replace this performer or shelve the project.”
Within a couple hours of reaching out to Ward, Kross met her at a Starbucks. “And she’s like, ‘I love this script,’” Kross remembered. “‘This is what I’ve always wanted to make: a script like this. Even in mainstream, I’ve wanted a script like this.’ So, she was just fully on board. She was a lot of the reason for the success of ‘Drive,’ at least commercially.”
When Ward read the screenplay, Kross could see immediately how aware she was of what the script was setting out to do. She underscored that Ward was “the most enthusiastic about the words that made it up, of anyone onboard with that project … we bonded immediately over our shared appreciation of writing.”
It bears mentioning that Ward’s writing chops have now graced the pages of this very magazine several times, because she is indeed a wordsmith, much like Kross.
“The way she was able to perform, in turn, allowed me to create ever more ambitious monologues and dramatic scenarios that could easily turn cheesy if handled by a lesser actress,” Kross pointed out. “She was thrilled to finally have something meaty to work with after years as a sitcom actress.”
Ward’s acting for “Drive” led her to win Best Actress at the 2020 XBIZ Awards, and the movie, like “Abigail” before it, went on to win other top categories. Kross views “Drive” as the pivot point.
“Before ‘Drive’ and after ‘Drive’ are two very different stories,” she remarked. Deeper was not only immediately more successful than anticipated according to behind-the-scenes numbers, but it was vaulted “to this whole new stratosphere” in the wake of “Drive.” Now, Kross had access to full office support, with more funding and more people.
“We made a fantastic movie, everyone involved did more than I could have reasonably expected anyone to do to see that project make it across the finish line,” Kross said, offering special thanks to White for going above and beyond. “It was amazing to see people rally behind this story. I don’t think there had ever been a time when I felt so carried by my industry, and I am truly grateful to every single person who had a hand in the making of that one. ‘Drive’ became the project that pushed Deeper to a new level of financial success and allowed us to come into the awards season with a project worthy of critical attention. That’s why ‘Muse’ ended up getting a lot more office support than ‘Drive’ had. And now, I essentially get the same support as any other [VMG] brand.”
As to how Kross landed Ward for an exclusive Deeper.com contract, Kross attributed it largely to how well they connect, personally and professionally.
“We would have been friends in any other setting,” she said. “And I remember that she did a scene for someone else. It was a girl/girl scene. I saw pictures, and they were just doing the normal cheesy porn thing with her — and I got angry. Like, you’re ruining the unicorn. You’re just normalizing and making this very common thing out of this very uncommon person.”
She hopped on the phone with the office and strongly recommended they support a contract with Ward. “She clearly sells,” Kross emphasized to them. “She has this incredible look. We’ve got this kind of edgy brand; she’s an edgy fit. And again, it was sink or swim. It was like, ‘OK, you go negotiate it. You put it on your company. You do it.’”
Just like her big gamble when she pushed for the creation of Deeper, and just like when she proved her ability to create a bestselling feature with “Drive,” Kross once again turned out to be prescient with the signing of Ward. In fact, they recently extended her two-year contract for yet another two years.
Now, Kross characterizes their dynamic as “a really wonderful, passionate and symbiotic relationship.”
With Deeper excelling more and more, Kross went from a head count of around four crew members per shoot when she was running TrenchcoatX, to six after Deeper’s launch and now she regularly sees more than 10 crew members assigned to a given day.
And around the time “Drive” won several XBIZ Awards in 2020, Lansky announced he was selling his stake in Vixen Media Group to focus on new business ventures. This set the stage for Kross to step into the limelight even more as a highly visible beacon of creativity for VMG. She followed up “Drive” with another acclaimed movie, “Muse,” which Kross and Ward pulled off in the midst of a pandemic.
“We didn’t know if we’d be able to safely make something as big as 'Drive,' or whether we’d be locked down again by the time we got to shooting,” Kross recalled. “I’d had a completely different story in mind that was out of the question with the COVID safety protocols, and then I started another one that I just couldn’t get excited about. ‘Muse’ was the result of this sort of pressure cooker situation I felt like I was in, with deadlines approaching and all of the responsibilities of life pulling me in different directions.
“I gave each of the characters one of the roles I felt I was playing at the moment (the mother, the daughter, the wife, the public harlot) and threw at them the same thing that was thrown at me: can pornography be art?” she expressed. “Each of the roles is inspired by relationships that I've had with various men, while the narrative is inspired by the struggles I’ve dealt with and the very muddy question of what kind of content we’re all making in this industry. The ‘Muse’ script was written in four days and shot in 10, and I remember driving home on that last night and just stopping to breathe.”
That swiftly crafted, deeply inspired project would go on to win Feature Movie of the Year, as well as Best Cinematography, Best Feature Sex Scene and another Best Acting laurel for Ward.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
Now, with one of the most prestigious studio brands at her fingertips, the biggest challenge for Kross became … locations. Not to mention, pushing herself higher. And finding new ideas. And nailing her aesthetic. But first, Kafka ... and locations.
“Most of the locations we want, don’t want us,” she said. “And it's also frustrating that the style of the day became this white drywall minimalism that is completely washed of texture. Texture is the only thing I look for in locations. I’ll accept a lot of bad things if it just looks nice on camera. Whether it was too hot or too cold or too far or too whatever doesn’t read for us in the final product. The only thing that reads is how the texture looked. That’s how I keep things fresh. I put that far ahead of everything else and then do my best to hire people who are in it for the final product.”
Still, she manages to make it happen. Thanks to her vivid imagination, even an empty warehouse quickly comes to life in her capable hands, conjuring vibrant scenes like the 2021 XBIZ Best Vignette Sex Scene with Brooklyn Gray and Small Hands. With dreamlike sequences, a fog machine, a quick change of scenery from inside the warehouse to the parking lot outside, not to mention precise directing, Kross knocked out multiple sex scenes and acting scenes in a single day, as yours truly witnessed during a set visit.
Planning is half the battle, of course, as is taking notes when inspiration unexpectedly strikes. “I come to scenes in any number of ways,” Kross noted. “Sometimes I like an image I see on a billboard, in a magazine, on social media or that I just happen to stumble across while I’m out in the world. I’ll snap a picture of it with my phone and then imagine a scenario with characters. I’ll like the look of a certain prop like an old rotary phone and find a reason for it to get there, in the scene. I start a lot of the projects off with quotes from authors I like and then will build something that fulfills my interpretation of that, or I’ll take an element from a short story or film. Very frequently, I’ll like a particular camera movement that adds emotion and then write something that would land with that emotion.
“And if there is something that sparkles, I will use it,” she said. “My scripts often include the shots I have in mind, so my editor tends to know which shot I’d prefer to see, even if there’s a lot of coverage. When directing I’ll frequently yell out ‘that’s the take’ before we cut, so he can hear it in editing. Once there’s a very solid pass, the cut is sent to me, where I leave notes in the timeline and they do another pass with those incorporated. We’ll do that as many times as it takes to get it right, though we’re in a good working rhythm after this amount of time and I feel like we get there more quickly each time.”
In between jotting down an idea and sending raw footage to the editing room, Kross has perfected a very particular visual approach that may vary with each shoot, but ultimately revolves around a high contrast, high texture feel, with an emphasis on flares and reflections, as well as color palettes that are “not too poppy.”
“Tobacco is one of my favorite colors,” she explained. “Patterns on fabric make me twitch. In general, I like the cleanest lines on clothing, the things that feel the best on skin (which I always think does read on camera) and dislike anything that makes it seem like the character is too caught up in ‘now.’ I like things that feel timeless and old technology and am allergic to speech that will age quickly. I have a phrase I use for some projects, and they’re often my favorite. I call them ‘low dialogue.’”
Beyond passing billboards and the raw springwell of imagination, Kross also draws upon a lifetime of favorite mainstream cinematic projects that have shaped her view of filmmaking, with “Tree of Life” and “Natural Born Killers” serving as the two movies that have stuck the most with her.
“I think if you mix in a dash of ‘Basic Instinct,’ which I endlessly reference, it all makes a lot of sense why Deeper looks and feels the way it does,” she said, before offering up literary references she injects into her movies as well. Harkening back to that first foray into studio directing, back when she took over Ferrara’s “Misha Cross Wide Open” for Evil Angel, she explained that it was inspired by Anais Nin’s “Little Birds.”
As for other authors whose works have colored her movies, she listed, “I’ve also used Philip Roth paragraphs as inspiration, Don Delillo, Flannery O’Connor, Mary Gaitskill, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bukowski, Atwood, Amy Hempbel, Steinbeck, John Gardner, Tom Spanbauer, Toni Morrison, Ocean Vuong, Nabokov, Raymond Carver and Otessah Moshfegh. I recently discovered a new author by the name of Dantiel W. Moniz whose influence I’m sure you’ll be seeing in my work everywhere soon, and probably all of ‘year one’ of Deeper was inspired by Maggie Nelson.”
Evolution is neverending, of course, and Kross refines her creative process with all the tempering fires and anvil hammering of a blacksmith; this year, she seeks to push the envelope further with new projects. And yet, no matter the artistry, spectacle and grandeur of each shoot, she believes most strongly in the value of emotional investment in each shoot. Because when Kross reflected on her past 15 years in adult with a bird's-eye view, she advised, “The last thing I’ll say about making content is that it has to be personal. Spec shooting is lifeless, shooting off a checklist is lifeless. If your mind doesn’t dabble somewhere in the same zone as the minds of the people paying to see what you’re making, then you’re never going to understand when you’ve really hit on something. I think we are watching a massive transformation in adult, and it has been so worth the price of admission.”
