LOS ANGELES — Every in-demand adult performer has found different ways to adapt to the new normal of having to stay home, unable to book professional shoots, and Whitney Wright’s way is characteristically creative.
This week, Wright and her roommate — who just so happens to be fellow Spiegler Girl Gianna Dior — took part in a possibly groundbreaking experiment: to see if talent could shoot high-end, professional quality content for prominent adult studios, by themselves, at home, and without breaking the social isolation protocols.
A major studio — one of the adult industry’s most prominent brands — contacted Wright and Dior with an intriguing proposal.
“They said that since we lived together, and as long as we were both tested, they would pay us for solos, or a G/G scene,” Wright told XBIZ from their sun-kissed Los Angeles pad. “It was great because we’ve been isolating from everyone and staying at home.”
Wright lit up when XBIZ asked her about her roommate.
“Gianna! I’m so glad I’ve had her through all this,” Wright enthused. “She’s my best friend, she makes me laugh, and she’s a great listener when I need to vent. We’ve been through a lot of life stuff together and have seen each other through a lot.”
“Living with her is just as exciting as you think it would be,” Wright laughed.
"Before all of this happened, we would always go out to eat, go shopping together, go to pop-up events in Los Angeles," she added. "Now we do little projects together every couple days, like painting or baking and decorating. As for balancing work and non-work life, it kind of all comes together. Gianna and I are both workaholics. So now we’ve both been doing content like crazy, in lieu of the work and shoots we were doing just weeks ago."
Our New Normal for a While
“Since it was just us, we shot it all on my phone,” Wright explained about the secret experiment she and Dior created earlier this week for a major studio. “No crew, no director, just myself and Gianna. So we have big, open windows, and that brought in a lot of natural light, plus we have ring lights and Quasar Science LED lamps that put out a lot of light.”
The studio recommended Wright become familiar with the app Filmic Pro, which gave the phone settings similar to the pro cameras used on adult sets.
Wright told XBIZ that the whole shoot “went really well. It was fairly easy. The only challenge I would say would be running the camera and making sure that I’m getting all of the footage, and then performing in the scene. Also, I didn’t have a slate, so I kept having to remember to say, 'Okay, Take Two!' and then also getting some handheld B-roll footage and singles.”
For the performer-director, accustomed to leading full crews for Adult Time and other large-scale operations, the at-home set-up “definitely felt like a quarantine measure.”
But, Wright acknowledged, “performers have been making content like this for years, and thriving with it.”
“I know a ton of performers that have done so well on their platforms that they quit shooting for studios, because they make more money doing so,” she said.
Wright said she has already been approached by three other brand-name studios to deliver similar content for them.
“I think a lot of companies are adapting to this,” she added, "so I definitely feel like this could become its own genre, but I do know that a lot of people prefer the more polished, professional scenes.”
“It could go either way — but right now, I think that kind of content will be our new normal for a while.”
Mental Health and the Importance of Having a Schedule
Although Wright had been paying attention to the ramp-up of social distancing measures throughout March, she found she was not really prepared mentally for it.
“I knew that we would all probably be told to stay inside to slow the spread of the virus, but I didn’t completely grasp what that would entail, I guess,” she told XBIZ. “I live a pretty active life, and that was faced with some opposition.”
As the new realities set in, Wright found herself at a low point, because she felt “like I couldn’t control what was happening around me. I felt like I would eventually go crazy. I started sleeping as much as I could and kind of giving up on any kind of structure, because I felt like it didn’t matter anyway.”
But then she started seeing a therapist online, who helped her navigate her feelings about what was happening in her life.
“She recommended I make a schedule,” Wright explained, “and said that with everything going on, it’s easy for us to feel that we’ve lost control of our lives, and that making a schedule and sticking to it gives us back that sense of control, because we can choose what we’re going to do and when.”
“So I did that and started waking up at an earlier time. I stopped checking the news so much — which I found extremely helpful — and started looking at the positives. Now I had time to write more, I could FaceTime my family and have time to talk and re-connect to them, whereas before it seemed like everything was just ‘go, go, go.’”
Wright came up with a work routine that made sense for her and “actually adapted pretty well to it."
"I have three days out of the week where I’ll just bang out content both NSFW and SFW, for Instagram," she explained. "I’m posting every day and I’m able to be more active on my platforms because now I have nothing but time, whereas before I was shooting quite regularly for professional studios, plus directing and producing, which took up so much of my time.”
Sometimes, though, Wright, like all of us, still struggles with what is happening.
“I woke up a few days ago, checked the increase in cases in the U.S., and had the realization that someone I know, or even a few people that I know, are going to die from this,” she told XBIZ. “I don’t know how I’ll handle it when that time comes, but I’ve at least come to the reality that it’s coming. Talking to my family and friends has helped majorly, though, over the phone or FaceTime. Just hearing their voice or seeing another person’s face makes me feel like I’m not the last person on earth. It brings me some optimism.”
Although she misses her pre-COVID-19 routines — "Going to Pilates, and running on the beach, going out to eat with my friends, and shopping, and going to the movies" — the coronavirus quarantine made her realize perhaps she had been taking all of that for granted.
“I had no choice but to adjust,” Wright said. “While it was a bit of a mental struggle, I think I handled it. I now have a schedule and hobbies."
"I have bought a bunch of plants and fig trees! I'm starting to turn my balcony into a little oasis.”
Main Image: Whitney Wright at her home studio in Los Angeles
Photo: Matilda Davenport
