‘Who’s that girl?”
It’s a showbiz question as old as showbiz itself, from Lana Turner being spotted at the soda counter at Schwab’s in Hollywood, to the title of an early Madonna movie, to a billion men and women frantically IMDB-ing “Alexandra Daddario” during a certain scene from a season-one episode of “True Detective.”
The question was heard again last August during the XBIZ Berlin show, whenever a slender brunette with dreamy eyes was spotted at events and panels, sporting a look reminiscent of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Zorro”-era Catherine Zeta-Jones and Krysten Ritter circa “B in Apartment 23” — bangs and all.
“That girl” was Catherine Knight, a Berlin-based former Chilean fashion model — yup, legit cover girl, multiple times over — who two years ago took the plunge into OnlyFans and was quickly spotted by the eagle-eyed scouts of Julia Grandi’s powerhouse JulModels agency.
Even in the rarified company of top European and international adult performers, Knight is a head-turner. Nominated for Best New Performer, she dazzled at a Q&A panel answering queries about her quick rise to the top, her perfect English softened by the signature sweetness that makes Chilean the most honeyed of Spanish accents.
Although that award went to one of her scene partners — the equally deserving Scarlett Jones — newcomer Knight shocked the crowd at Berlin’s historic Metropol theater by picking up the first two awards of the evening, for Best Glamcore Scene (Private’s “Friends With Benefits,” with Erik Everhard) and Best Lesbian Scene (Sex Art’s “Sirens,” with Jones).
Knight spoke to XBIZ over the phone from Berlin, in a conversation that revealed her unique path from fashion to porn — and sexual self-realization.
“I started out as a model in Chile when I was 17 and did that for a whole decade,” the 29-year-old Knight explained. “From there I worked a lot in Asia, and did two long work trips there, and got to travel around the world.”
Knight dropped her former stage name when she started doing sex work, but let’s just say it would be quite familiar to Chilean art directors and fashion brands — though since she was something of a chameleon lookswise, they might do a double or triple take were they to spot her in her adult incarnation. “¿Quién es esa chica?”
After a decade of success, Knight says, a lot of the modeling dried up as the 2010s were closing out, because “the budgets were not the same in Chile.” She then started dabbling in sex work, including camming, which she described as “not my thing.”
Then three factors converged to put Knight on her current career path. One was the beginning of the pandemic, which made in-person sex work more difficult. The second was the unstoppable rise of premium fan sites. “I started noticing all the girls who were camming were dropping their OnlyFans links, so I decided to start mine,” she shared.
The third factor was finally leaving South America for good and heading to Germany’s cultural mecca, Berlin. Knight had always felt the city “was home,” ever since being in a throuple there. Knight, who is out-and-proud polyamorous, currently has four partners.
“I came to visit them and I fell in love with the city,” she said. “From the moment I arrived, I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to live here one day!’ The relationship didn’t pan out, but I knew I wanted to come back whenever I saved enough to do so. And when the pandemic hit two years ago, I saw everyone hitting the pause button and I decided, ‘Well, time to take the plunge and go.’”
It helped that at that point, undoubtedly buoyed by her striking model looks and her experience taking a killer photo, her OnlyFans had started to seriously take off.
“I started bringing fans in through my Instagram account,” she said. “I already had a good amount of followers because of my modeling. I was already kind of a public figure in Chile.”
With OnlyFans, Knight finally found “her thing,” which she defined as “creating content, making videos, interacting with the fans, having my own schedule.”
During her first months on OnlyFans, Knight was just posting her own personal phone pictures. “I wasn’t even making dedicated content for it,” she said. “Selfies, going out, things I was already posting on IG. Then I started promoting the link on IG when you still could, before they became awful and started targeting sex workers.”
Not long after that, Knight got the call to join the big leagues of adult entertainment, when a JulModels scout contacted her last year.
“They found me on Twitter, where I was publishing campaigns for my free OnlyFans, and they told me that Julia Grandi wanted to meet me, that they worked with Vixen and other production companies. At first I thought it was a scam!” she laughed.
After verifying that she was indeed being called to do a big studio project, Knight took months to think about the offer. “I didn’t know if it was a good move or not. I didn’t know anything about the industry,” she recalled. “But then I was talking with other girls I was making content with who were with the agency, and they told me it was great.”
Knight shot her first studio scene in September 2021, and from there you could say she dove right into the deep end.
“It was anal, for Private, with Cherry Kiss, Dolly and Vince Karter,” she shared with pride. “It was a roller coaster of emotions. First time being in that space, I didn’t understand how things worked — I was genuinely, totally amateur. Turns out I can be super shy! The stills were incredible because I had this background as a model. But the moment the video shooting started, I was like, ‘Oh, shit!’ — a bit shocked. I mean, it’s intense — the strength, the energy you have on a mainstream set. I wasn’t used to that from my OnlyFans content, where it was softer, sweeter. This was intense, gonzo.”
Eventually the initial shock gave way to a new Catherine Knight. The proverbial Kraken had been released, and it was horny AF.
“Yup, I got used to it,” she understated. “Now I need that in my personal life. Doing porn changed my way of seeing sex and my needs and what I like in my private life. All those things became integrated — face-slapping, spitting, all of it … I love it all!”
Knight is truly thankful for her “extremely pro” co-workers. “I love the porn people,” she said. “I have connected with them really well.” Her content-making has also put her in touch with U.S. talent — like Jax Slayher and Isiah Maxwell — with whom she is eager to work more in the future.
“My colleagues and scene partners help make my scenes incredible,” she enthused. “I’m not just in them — I’m a fan too. I love watching them. Some performers say, ‘I don’t watch my scenes, I’d be too embarrassed.’ Me? I watch them all. I study them.”
Knight’s dedication, honed in the grueling world of international modeling, is paying off. “Before I started in porn, I had already learned extremely useful skills from modeling — knowing how to pose, how to move in front of the camera, what your angles are, how to do makeup, how to flirt with the camera.”
What would the people in her former life, and home country, think of the fully sexually-realized version of herself?
“Early on, I was ‘in the closet’ as a sex worker in Chile,” she reflected, with a tone that conveyed her frustration with judgmental types. “But when I moved to Berlin, I said to myself, ‘I don’t care what people think, I really don’t care what they think of me in Chile.’ And I’m not planning on going back anytime soon.”
“People started realizing through Instagram or Twitter what I was doing, because I stopped hiding it, but I don’t know what they think. I imagine some of them think it’s awful!”
Occasionally, Knight gets a discreet DM from down there telling her, “I admire you for being brave, for doing this,” or a Chilean fan may send a winking emoji and say, “Hey — I know who you are.”
“But it’s not fashion industry people,” she laughed. “Those are only lurking, in silence, looking at my stories and watching me live my best life.”
Knight explained that in the fashion world she grew up in, even if you’re not in porn but simply in the category of “sexy model,” you are unlikely to be hired by big brands or for magazine covers. But things are changing. It’s 2022 and Chloe Cherry is walking runways for Fendi and Versace.
“It moves me how the worlds are getting intertwined, and sex workers are not being judged like they used to,” Knight concluded. “It would be a dream to come back to modeling, but as ‘Catherine Knight,’ owning it. I think that may be possible now.”