Adult Performer- jessica drake

By on May 22, 2020

Synergy spoke with multi award-winning Porn Star, Director, and Sex Educator jessica drake in Las Vegas.

Favourite Movies

‘Fallen’, the original and also ‘Fallen 2’, the sequel that we released 10 years to the date from the first one, those will always be my favourite movies.  ‘Speed’, the motorcycle movie, I rode a motorcycle in that one and for ‘Manhunter’s’, during pre-production I became an actual certified fugitive recovery agent (Bounty Hunter). There was a lot of stunt work in that movie.DNA, Starmaker, 2040, Casual Encounters is also a good one. Fluff and Fold is probably my first ever role where I started to take things very seriously and I won my first best actress award for that one.

 How did you get into adult performing

The short story is I was living in Texas going to college and stripping and I met a group of people who were in Texas, they lived in California, and were involved in the adult movie industry and they told me what they did and I found it very intriguing. I came out to LA a few times to visit them but didn’t perform and about a year and a half after that I decided to do movies.  And about 15 years ago I signed a contract with the best company in the business (Wicked).

How was your very first scene

I was very fortunate, I was in a bed, in a mansion, it was a massive house in Malibu, on the beach, and the bedroom had big sliding doors that were open and there was the ocean, it was amazing.

It was with a guy named Alec Metro who I chose very carefully, I had a great rapport with him. We got along really well. Everybody on the set was super attentive and saying are you nervous, are you OK, are you sure, are you alright – basically I had no problem at all,  no issue with it.  I mean looking back, I’m sure i went into it not understanding fully where the camera was or how to angle my body, but I just had sex, I got on the bed, in that room and had sex and I felt fine about it.

How has your performance changed over time

Well initially as a new performer I was super critical of myself, so when I first saw myself having sex on camera, it would stress me out. It made me super self-conscious and I would be very careful to not make a certain face or arch my back or toss my hair and it made me so critical of myself but it was overshadowing the sex in itself so I stopped watching myself for a while. I tried to just concentrate on the sex and the pleasure aspect of it instead.  Now we’ve come full circle and I am conscious of it but can also continue to enjoy myself while being aware and I’m not afraid to crunch my body up or do it like it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m fine and I’m back to how I was in the very beginning scenes where I’m just having sex although as a director using my director brain and vision, I always know where the camera is.

How has performing enabled you to evolve

I’m going to not give what I would think would be a common answer.  I’m not going to say ohh it’s been so empowering being a performer and exploring my sexuality although there are aspects of my job that are empowering.  I would say that being a performer has given me a greater understanding of the stigma and stereotypes that society in general puts on things like open discussions about sex and sex workers and things like that.  I think being a performer has made me more aware of the need for progress in sexual health and wellness.

How did the sex education aspect commence

Well around 2008/2009 people were asking me sex advice questions and back then my thought process was they must be asking me these questions because I have a lot of sex.  Then I started thinking more about our lack of good sex education specifically in the United States and then I realised that they were asking these questions because they didnt have anyone else to turn to for real Sex Ed and so that led  me wanting to help people.

I started doing workshops initially and I gave a blowjob workshop at the Pleasure Chest in LA and afterwards somebody said that was really great, do you have a DVD to back up the class?  I said not yet but I will, and I went to Wicked and said here’s the deal, I think we should do educational movies.

I also still wanting to continue my career as a performer because I feel like it gives me a massive platform and a fanbase that I can harness to spread awareness and education so for me those two things really go hand in hand. However being a performer made it very hard to legitimise myself as an educator in some circles,  some people wouldn’t take me seriously because I’m the pornstar who now is teaching about sex so there’s a lot of irony when it was happening, it was a tough thing to navigate.  I don’t really run into that as often, but both things are very important to me.

Could you have been a sex educator without prior being an adult performer

I think I definitely could have done the teaching aspect without performing however I think it’s being a performer that gives me a very unique perspective on a lot of different things.  Also, I think as far as performing it sort of lends itself to almost experimenting more with your sexuality than maybe other people would.  

When I talk about education, I sort of wear both hats at the same time. I’ll give you an example. I was at Sexpo Melbourne recently and they offered to have me teach and I really wanted to do that.  I was on the Fleshlight booth, I was in the VIP photo booth and I also taught one workshop every day.  

The title of my workshop was ‘How to Fuck like a Porn Star,’ we thought it was very sensational, a little salacious, people are going to show up, they’re going be really curious about that. Well, every single day that work shop was, from the minute I walked in, it was already full,  standing room only in the back and they thought they were coming to see something like how to fuck like a porn star and what they learned instead was communication and negotiating boundaries, how to use safe words, the importance of lube, how to model consent in your home with your partner or in the dating game.

They learned about testing, safer sex, that’s what I covered because a lot of the time that is what it means to be an adult performer.

To be an acclaimed performer and sex educator is reasonably rare, what aspects of your personality do you think facilitate this.

If you think in terms of personality traits, I always want to help people, I always want to enable people to do the things that they want, whatever that is. A lot of the time it looks more like facilitating than teaching and by that I mean helping the person along on their self-exploration or journey of discovery as opposed to hear ‘learn this’ exercises,  so for me I think that I just have some personality traits to really want to help people.

 I think that’s the foundation for what I do. I also think I found a way to use this status I have. I found a way to use that for good and it’s just something that really resonates with me. I love learning new things so the first time I became certified as a sex educator was back in 2011 and since then I completed another certification program in San Francisco,  which is a six week course, fairly hard to get into but the best training I’ve ever done but it’s a process, so I think my love of learning and doing all the continuing education, I mean other educators do that too, don’t get me wrong but I think it’s a combination of all of those things that that makes me the educator that I am.

What did you want to be as you were growing up

So many things, I wanted to be a ballerina, a veterinarian, a nurse, I wanted to be a cat, I went through a period of time where I wanted to be a lawyer. The first time I ever seriously considered a long-term occupation I was in college; I’d been a liberal arts major and accidentally took a psychology class because I just needed something in that time slot and I loved it.  I switched my major to psychology and then two years later stopped going to school and joined porn!

 What’s next

I don’t set New Year’s resolutions, but I like to make lists and I just found a list that i made last year -19 things I wanted to do in 2019.  I just made a new list for this year- 20 things in 2020 and two of the biggest things on that list that I will work the most on are finishing a book that I’ve been working on for two years and I really want to do a TED talk.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks go viral all the time. The TED organisation has speakers, you get 18 minutes, its public speaking, no notes and a massive audience. A variety of people have done them, business people, actors, all kinds of people. I think that finishing the book will give me the necessary push towards doing a TED talk, those two things are definitely on my list for this year.

I was doing a recap of my last year and I worked so hard and I’m very happy about the fact that I know exactly where I come from, how fortunate I am to be where I’m at. This year I want to be able to step back a little when I need to.  I’m not very good at it, so I would really like to do that, as well and travel. I love to travel and I travel a lot for work constantly so ideally some more pleasure travel.

What do you like to do in your downtime

I love to read, I like to cook, I run to relieve stress – I don’t know if that really counts as downtime or not and I love to go to spas and get a massage.

Stats:

Age:  45

Height:  5ft 8 1/2

Weight:  118lbs

Residence:  California

Movies:  150+

Significant Awards:

2005 AVN Award – Best Actress, Video – Fluff and Fold

2005 XRCO Award – Single Performance, Actress – Fluff and Fold

2007 AVN Award – Best Actress, Film – Manhunters

2007 AVN Award – Best All-Girl Scene, Film – FUCK

2009 AVN Award – Best Actress – Fallen

2009 AVN Award – Best Double Penetration Sex Scene – Fallen

2010 AVN Award – Best Group Sex Scene – 2040

2010 AVN Hall of Fame

2011 XRCO Hall of Fame

2015 XBIZ Award – Best Actress – Parody Release – Snow White XXX: An Axel Braun Parody

2018 XBIZ Award – Best Sex Scene – Feature Release – An Inconvenient Mistress

https://www.instagram.com/jessicadrake/

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