Page 54 - AVN May 2018

FEATURE |
FEATURE | By Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals
Above, Arya Fae and Ryan McLane; Jake Jacobs and Barrett Blade.
Stormy Daniels with her cast and crew on the set of “Highway Home,” her first directorial effort for Digital Playground.
so long, but that also kept me there perhaps longer than I
should have.
You know, it’s hard to stand in your living room and
look around and go, “I would have none of this if it wasn’t
for my job” and the job that was with Wicked. But it’s also
been pointed out to me that I earned it. Like, I did the
work to get the money ...
... but a bunch of things happened that made it
increasingly hard for me. I didn’t feel like [Wicked] was
aligned with who I was and what I wanted to portray.
“A bunch of things” like what?
I felt like increasingly, over the last couple years, I
have not gotten the attention or the press that I should
have, while other people get all the attention and press.
For instance, if one of the other girls was doing a dance
booking, Wicked tweeted the shit out of it. I did multiple
appearances without a peep. I was repeatedly left off of
things.
One of the biggest blows to me was that I waited until
last year to do my first anal scene, and Wicked didn’t even
mention it. It’s not even listed on the box, that’s how little
they paid attention to me. They were basically burying my
name and my career and giving attention to other people.
Editor’s note: AVN contacted Wicked Pictures head Steven
Orenstein for his comments on Daniels’ statements about her
experiences with the studio. Orenstein responded as follows:
“Stormy had wanted to shoot a big western for years. We finally
agreed to let her shoot Wanted, an Adam and Eve co-production,
just a couple of years ago, to support her in the creation of her
passion project. We were very happy with the job she did and the
final product, although the shoot came in about $30,000 over
budget. The overage we incurred is more than most companies
spend on their budgets in their entirety. Of course based on the long
relationship we had at that point we continued to have Stormy
direct her usual amount of movies going forward without change.
“Stormy was under exclusive contract with Wicked for 15
years. We have always supported her as best we could. Early on
in that relationship, we embraced her desire to write scripts and
then to direct her own scripts, while most still thought of her only
54 | AVN.com | 5.18
as a ‘porn star.’ When she decided she wanted to have a child but
didn’t want to be that long without new releases featuring her on
the market, we agreed to shoot twice the amount of movies in one
year and hold half to release the following year. Besides Wanted,
which was shot a couple of years ago, last year Stormy shot our
highest-budget Wicked Passions feature to date. Certainly, over
a relationship this long, there will be plenty of great and not so
great things that happen. Stormy has always been a very strong
personality and handled things as she felt best. After this long,
things become expected from both sides and to keep a relationship
strong both sides need to work harder in that relationship to keep it
strong. That probably wasn’t done properly from either side.”
And what about when the stories related to Donald
Trump began to break at the end of last year?
Well, let’s just say that I was actually trapped in a hotel
room because of the media attention, and I got 472 text
messages the day the story broke but it took Wicked eight
days to reach out to me.
No one from Wicked—who I thought was my family—
called to say “Are you OK? How do you want us to handle
this? Is your family safe? Is there anything we can do?”
Nothing, for eight days.
Wicked chief Steve Orenstein responds: “Of course we were—
and are—concerned for Stormy’s health and welfare. There is
public communication and private. We were in private contact with
her, having normal talks about things like the XBIZ Awards, where
we had hired security for her, as she had planned to attend until 5
p.m. that evening. At that time we heard about her concerns and
the aggressive press.
“After fifteen years I care more about Stormy herself than
whether she directs or performs more movies for us. Like I told her
directly at the [AVN Adult Entertainment Expo] hours before the
AVN Awards red carpet, when she let me know she had made a
deal for a lot of money with another company and wasn’t going
to continue our deal, I wish her well. If she was able to make a lot
more money than she was making at Wicked I am happy for her. I
truly hope it works out as she hoped and she is happy. We support
her in all her efforts to get her story out to the public and to get
whatever closure she needs.”
(Continued on page 96)