Page 82 - AVN July 2019

“I worked hard for what I have.”
Nikki Benz remembers the grind. It’s what makes the lifestyle she enjoys now that much
more satisfying.
“I worked hard for what I have,” Benz says. “I worked my ass off.”
Even though she landed a performance contract almost from the get-go in 2002, the
Canadian star never stopped hustling, flying from coast to coast and going from the porn set to
the main stage of your favorite gentlemen’s club as she climbed up the ranks.
“There were many times where I had to feature dance all weekend and fly a red-eye back
to L.A. and go straight to set,” she says. “I hope the fans—when they read this interview—
appreciate how hard that adult stars work. Because it is work; it’s fun, too, but we put in a lot of
work.”
Now the 2016 AVN Hall of Fame inductee from Toronto finds herself in the enviable position
of being able to choose to do projects on her own terms. It’s a luxury that comes with a track
record of 17 years of operating at the elite level of adult entertainment.
Benz loves being able to engage with her enormous fan base—the notorious #BenzMafia,
which became one of the first porn star fan followings to earn its own moniker in 2005, based
on Benz’s affinity for Mafia-inspired movies. She shares her daily life on do-it-yourself platforms
such as FanCentro’s premium Snapchat feed and OnlyFans—not to mention her free-to-view
social media accounts, where at press time in early May she had more than 3.5 million followers
on Instagram and another 884,000-plus on Twitter.
Her massive social media presence is about to get bigger this month, when Benz plans
to officially launch her account on the new AVN Stars platform. Without question, as she
approaches her 17-year anniversary in adult, Benz has emerged as one of the top porn stars in
the world and by far the most successful performer ever to come out of Canada.
Benz has come a long way since her first scene, a girl/girl liaison with fellow Hall of Famer
Gina Lynn that appeared in director Jim Gunn’s Strap-On Sally 20 for Pleasure Productions.
Gunn tells AVN he has fond memories of Benz’s beginnings in porn. “My recollection of
recruiting Nikki Benz—at that time working as a stripper in downtown Toronto—is that she initially
saw one of the ‘Models Wanted’ advertisements I used to run in a local adult entertainment
publication in Ontario and contacted me about making adult movies,” Gunn says.
Impressed by Benz’s performances, Gunn soon connected her with Frank Kay, who owned
the New Jersey-based Pleasure Productions.
8 2 A V N . C O M | 7. 1 9 | N I K K I B E N Z