Riley Reid’s First Day In P*rn

Riley Reid, one of the most popular Adult stars of all time, poses for a photo by Holly Randall

Now, Riley Reid’s one of the most famous adult stars of all time. In 2011 she was a college student and exceptionally bad stripper. How did the young future starlet find her way into porn? She’s ready to share all the juicy details…

Riley credits her home city of Miami for her strong sexuality (stock photo by Canva)

“I didn’t know how to make money” the South Florida native shared about her time stripping in her late teens “The most money I made one night was, like, eighty bucks. I was a horrible stripper! I was so bad!” Still, she wasn’t dissuaded from sex work. A dedicated slut and orgy attendee since high school, Riley knew she belonged in the world of paid pleasure. When a dancer friend of hers mentioned an opportunity as a porn extra, she jumped on the chance. 

Unlike most adult stars, Riley didn’t even have sex during her first porn shoot, although that wasn’t for lack of the director trying. “On my first day as an extra they did try to get me to perform as the boy/girl” she recounts, but she was on her period and knew she wanted to take it slow. “I don’t know if I would have felt pressured into it, but I was like ‘I’m definitely not sticking a fucking makeup sponge in my vagina [to hide the bleeding’…] I’m imagining I’d have to go to the hospital to get the sponge out!” 

Still, even with a bleeding pussy and no sex to be had, Riley had a blast on set her first day. It was a huge production with about fifty girls working as paid extras while partying, drinking, and dancing in a club’s VIP section. The dimpled star was always a party girl anyway (an easy identity to acquire in her bacchic home city Miami), so she was really just being paid to have a good time. 

It’s funny for Riley to look back on that first scene. She’d been so young and clueless at the time. The makeup sponge suggestion was very weird to her before she was used to work in the industry, and she’d had famous co-stars without even knowing. The main boy/girl couple on her first set was JMac and Nikki Delano, two now-veterans of the Miami Adult industry who were only then getting their starts. To Riley at the time, they were just two hot people she loved watching fuck for the camera. “J Mac is this big, manly man” she describes excitedly, and Nikki was a “blonde bombshell” so typical for Adult at the time, very different from the highschoolers she’d previously been surrounded by. Riley remembers standing in the VIP section watching in awe as the couple fucked in front of her and thinking

“oh my god, this is like porn.” 

There was no looking past it: Riley belonged in the industry. Still, she was cautious and took it slow. “I was an extra maybe like five more times, and each time I would slowly do a little bit more” she recalls. First she was just dancing and drinking, but soon she was flashing her tits, making out with other extras, and eventually playing with other girls' pussies for the camera. The directors kept wanting more, but Riley knew her limits.

“They didn’t force me. They asked, I said no, and that was it.”

It was good practice standing up for herself, too, a skill that’s necessary in any industry and many lack when entering Adult. “Any place can put pressure on you to do things that you don’t want to do” she says now, but she knew she was responsible for herself and is glad she was firm with her boundaries and only took gigs on big productions that felt professional and safe. 

After plentiful extra experience, Riley made up her mind: she wanted to be the star of the show. “I learned through being on set that I liked how porn was run [...] I felt pretty confident wanting to put my foot into porn.” With some experience already under her belt, she was able to go in with the upper hand. She found an agent, reached out to BangBros, and the rest is history! Check out Riley’s work here!

Riley Reid smiles five years later on the red carpet at the 2015 AVN Awards.

Author

Jude D. Grey is a sex nerd, fetishist, artist and porn enthusiast currently based in New York. Their writing is informed by an academic background in Sociology and Sexuality Studies as well as a personal investment in sexual liberation for all.