Bree Mills isn’t just redefining adult film. She’s ripping up the rulebook and rewriting it in her own ink.
As the creative force behind Adult Time, Mills has long championed a vision where storytelling is just as important as sex. Now, with her fifth win for XMA Director of the Year under her belt — this time in the Individual Work category for Adult Time’s “Birth” — she’s once again demonstrated her passion for telling stories that linger long after the credits roll.
Spend a few minutes with Mills and you’ll see why she’s one of the most respected creatives in the industry. She has built her career on raw, unfiltered storytelling, refusing to color inside conventional lines. She’s bold but thoughtful, intense yet disarmingly warm. Her work certainly isn’t about playing it safe, but it’s not about shock value either. It’s about pushing boundaries with purpose.
“Sex needs to weave itself within the story,” Mills tells XBIZ. “The sex that I portray should be captivating and interesting and erotic — even if it makes you curl up into a fetal position afterwards and think about existential dread.”
The deeply personal and widely acclaimed “Birth” exemplifies this philosophy, delving unflinchingly into raw emotion and psychological intensity.
One of the most innovative aspects of “Birth” is its sound design. Working on a budget, Mills had to get creative, which inspired one of the film’s most haunting elements: the sound of breathing.
“I said, ‘What if we made a score out of breath?’” Mills recalls. “I worked with each of the actors on every possible type of breath work, and we used some ambient scoring to create an original score that elevates the feeling of chaos and claustrophobia that Casey Calvert’s character is feeling.”
Her influence extends beyond directing. Mills has been a driving force in reshaping industry standards and elevating how performers are seen in the media. From fostering a collaborative environment to ensuring actors are recognized for their craft, she continues to push for a culture of professionalism and artistic respect.
“With ‘Pure Taboo,’ it was always about working with actors as actors, not just as performers,” she says. “We built that brand on pushing the boundaries and showing the dramatic acting range of the talent we worked with.”
Mills gets particularly excited when those performers include clips of their work with her in their mainstream reels.
“I love seeing actors I’ve worked with join SAG!” she says.
Mills also sees “Pure Taboo” and other projects as opportunities to challenge double standards between adult and mainstream media.
“Why is it that an actress who plays a dramatic role that has challenging, controversial or difficult scenes can get nominated for an Oscar in Hollywood, but if it’s adult it’s flagged as obscene or degrading?” she reflects. “I have really tried to push that through the stories and show the hypocrisy that exists there.”
At the same time, she remains conscious of the fine line between art and eroticism.
“People are watching our content to jerk off,” she acknowledges. “But we do have a real influence over how people develop their own perceptions of sexuality. That’s something to always be very mindful about.”
In addition to her Director of the Year win, this year was particularly meaningful for Mills because “Birth” also won the XMA for Best Screenplay.
“It felt very rewarding to be recognized for both directing and screenwriting because at the end of the day, as an individual creative, that’s kind of what you get graded on,” she shares. “It gave me a little more confidence to keep doing it this year.”
As a self-proclaimed nerd with a sharp sense of humor, Mills’ personal demeanor tends to contrast with the often-intense themes of her work.
“I’m a lousy pornographer,” she jokes. “I’m not out at the parties. I’m just this very square person who happens to have a wild imagination.”
That lighthearted approach helps her navigate the weight of the intense storytelling she creates, and fans of her work often glimpse her sense of humor via her social media presence.
Her sets, though highly professional, also offer their share of wild moments. One infamous story involves an unexpected on-set mishap with a pickle.
“I wanted to do these nightmarish anal stories, and I thought, ‘Okay, let’s do a story about a stepbrother and stepsister,’” she recounts. “The brother’s a little older and the sister’s kind of younger and annoying. One day, the brother gets a panicked phone call from the sister, saying, ‘You got to come home because I’ve done something and I need your help. There’s no one else I can turn to.’ So he comes home and discovers his stepsister has been experimenting in her room and has inserted objects into her body and can’t get them out. She reveals that stuck up inside her bum is a pickle.
“It was supposed to be simple, but the actress involuntarily sucked that pickle right up and we were all horrified because we didn’t know if we were actually going to be able to get it out,” she recalls. “Thank goodness it came out! She was fine — no hospital visit — but that was one of the first moments where I sat outside on the monitor and thought to myself, ‘I have gone too far.’”
Looking ahead, Mills is stepping further into full-time production at Adult Time, with an ambitious slate of projects set for the coming year. Fans can expect the return of “Pure Taboo” features, a blockbuster lesbian trilogy for the “Girlcore” series, a new entry in the award-winning “Transfixed” series and a second season of the horror-meets-adult series “Under the Bed.”
Whether she’s giving performers a platform to tell stories that are meaningful to them or redefining what adult films can accomplish in terms of creative storytelling, one thing is certain: Mills isn’t following a set path but forging her own — and she’s nowhere near finished.
