Logic dictates that the longer you work at something, the better you become at it. While that holds true in the case of Charlotte Stokely, who has been performing in the adult industry since 2005, Charlotte will be the first to tell you that it takes more than just hard work to thrive and survive in the adult industry. It takes a certain attitude. Not a “winner takes all” attitude or “every woman for herself” attitude; it takes a positive attitude – a positive attitude about sex, a positive attitude about health, and most importantly, a positive attitude about people.
Charlotte is currently starring alongside Elsa Jean in Becoming Elsa, a story about a young girl discovering herself and her sexuality. In the movie, Charlotte plays Elsa’s bold, adventurous psyche. We interviewed Charlotte to get her perspective on her nearly 14 years in the adult industry and find out more about her second film working with director Ricky Greenwood.
HM: Charlotte, you have been in the industry for a good long while now. The profession is not easy. It has all the tough parts of both athleticism and modeling, right?
CS: Yes, it is physical, it is mental, and it is emotional. It is definitely a full-time job. I am working all the time, whether I am on set, packing a bag for set, reading a script, writing a script, or promoting on social media.
How have you been so successful without burning out?
Consistency. I am consistently a professional performer and I absolutely love my job. I am never dreading going to work, so I show up with a positive attitude, and I’m horny and I keep the energy going. I think the directors and co-workers enjoy having me on set. And when you can make a woman come real hard, they will request for another, and there is this lovely cycle of love. Most people may only last from 3-5 years in this industry. I have been in it for 14 years and it just keeps getting better and better.
You look siginificantly different than you did when you initially started.
Yes, the older I get, the prettier I get
I was going to say exactly that. You seemed to have grown into yourself a bit more, I have noticed that with a lot of performers, they tend to look better as they get older.
I think that part of it is wisdom. You tend to learn what looks good on you. For instance, I prefer natural makeup as opposed to whore makeup. When I wear whore makeup, I just look crazy, but with natural makeup I look my best because I can highlight my strengths. You also learn how to grow into your body and how to take better care of yourself. You wake up every day and you choose whether it will be constructive or destructive. I choose constructive and then it all seems to fall into place.
You are also a lot more fit than when you first started.
I was definitely a lot more curvy when I first started and my body has changed since then. I call it getting rid of my baby fat. When I was 18, I wasn’t as health conscious as I am now. I learned how to eat right and how to avoid certain things and certain situations.
Don’t you also do nutritional counseling?
Yes, I have practiced holistic healing for six years professionally. I worked with reversing diseases of all types. I had a great success rate. I would love to finish school and finish my degree. I have some certificates, but not a degree. Healing people is one of my passions and sex is healing, so it seems appropriate that it ties in.
So, if you had a choice of a second career, it would be holistic healing. And you have done that professionally?
Yes, for six years I worked a professional holistic healer. I was helping a lot of people, but then they would come in and say, “Well, my doctor told me I shouldn’t take this natural supplement,” which I couldn’t understand. So, I think, “fuck it,” I need to get that title so that I can help more people. Because unless you have that title, people assume you don’t know what you are talking about. But, there are plenty of doctors who don’t know what they are talking about either.
I agree. I believe there are a lot of things that diet and exercise can cure. I have seen it firsthand. But if your trainer tells you to do it, there isn’t as much credibility as if your doctor tells you to do it, right?
Absolutely, my biggest advice to anyone who wants to lose weight or reverse disease is to eat right for your blood type. When you think about it, it makes sense. We are all born with different enzymes and different foods are good for you and different foods are bad. Anyway, it is a part of my life that I can’t ignore, so even though I am a porn star, I can’t stop helping people… it’s in my blood. Ha! Seriously, as an empath I succeed well in both of these categories. I know someone’s body language and I know what they want and what they like, whether they say it or not. So, whether it is in the bedroom or in the kitchen, I can look at someone and tell you pretty much what is wrong with them. I can see it in how they walk, I can see it in the shape of their body.
Back to the movies, you were in Ricky Greenwood’s first movie, Confessions of a Sinful Nun and now you are in his next movie Becoming Elsa. What is it like working on a Ricky Greenwood set?
I love working with Ricky. He’s different because he wants you to embrace the situation and he is great with the cinematography. So when you kiss the girl for the first time, he wants that little sunbeam right over her hair. We do the magic physically and he does the magic with the camera. He just has this vision about how to create the environment – along with the situation that is happening – to create an organic sexual situation. He doesn’t care about positions; he just wants you to be you in that situation. He wants passion and emotion. On a lot of other sets, directors are more concerned with positions and how the sex looks on camera.
You worked alongside Nina Hartley in Confessions of a Sinful Nun, had you ever worked with her before?
I never had sex with Nina, but I would love to. I would love for her to apply her wisdom of sex on me. There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom, anyone can read a book on sex and say they have the knowledge, but she has the experience. I would pay her to fuck me.
Are there any other porn stars from previous years that have inspired you in your career?
The first household name I ever heard of was Pamela Anderson. That was before the internet. I didn’t grow up with a cell phone in my pocket watching creampies. The only time I saw a naked girl was in a Marlboro calendar, it was of a topless girl on a motorcycle. I didn’t see any porn when I was young. The next person was Jenna Jameson, and she had her own production company and was hugely successful. When I first entered the industry, that is where I wanted to be. But the industry has just changed so much. But I am starting my own VR company. I am super excited, but we haven’t released anything yet. We will come back and talk about that in a couple months.
You are? That gets to my next question: what the next project is that you have coming up?
Well, besides the VR company, I have a lot of things coming up in the next year.
(Editor’s Note: At this point, we discussed the sequel to a critically acclaimed movie that, as of press time, we were not at liberty to announce. Charlotte said, “We are filming Part 2 and it is going to be wild. In the first one we broke boundaries, but in the next one it is going to be naughty. Very sinful.”)
Then we have, of course, Becoming Elsa. The reason for this interview. Becoming Elsa is so cool. I don’t want to give away a spoiler, so if you are reading this interview, pause, go watch the movie, and then come back to the interview.
Elsa is this girl who is trying to learn who she is and figure out her body, open herself to new ideas about sex, and then she has this psyche – this naughty, sexy, fun-loving, carefree psyche. Then you discover at the end of the movie that I am Brad Pitt from Fight Club. It is basically Fight Club for lesbian sex. And that was just a fun role to play because I got to be like wild and crazy and that was another thing I was thankful to Ricky for letting me play this type of character where I can be like, “Yo, come on, let’s go fuck this bitch,” instead of something more tame and mild. You know? It was a lot of fun.
After all these years and all of your performances, has it inspired you to want to direct someday?
Yes, absolutely. When I am on set, I wear a lot of different hats. I am camera-aware and I know how to set up lights. After so many years of doing this, I can pretty much do any job on a set. I have picked up a lot of knowledge, so yeah, I would love to direct. I have written many scripts that I never did anything with. If a company came to me and it fit the right theme, I would do it. I think I would be a good director since I have the performer background. I understand how they feel on set and what they need.
What female directors have you worked with and is there a difference working for a female director?
Yeah, I have worked with Dana Vespoli and others, Sky Blue, Jacky St. James. I think the male directors can understand just as much as the female directors. I don’t think one is better than the other. What I do think is beneficial is if one has been a performer in the past.
Let’s talk a little about your mainstream performances. Do you want to make the crossover to mainstream performances?
Yeah, I love acting. That is part of the reason I have been in the industry so long. I love that every day I get to be a new person. I have been in a lot of mainstream work, Black Dynamite, Westworld, True Detective, I’m Dying Up Here – the Jim Carrey show. I have a huge, huge, music video coming out that I am not allowed to talk about. Then there is 2307: Winter’s Dream that just came out on Netflix.
On top of that, you also had a mainstream modeling career, Dov Charney, CEO of American Apparel, personally selected you for a campaign. How did that come about?
Well, it is funny, I was actually working on a set doing camera work zooming in on this girl sucking some dude’s dick when a call comes in on my phone. So, we stop for a break and I call my friend and he says. “So, I am hanging out with Dov Charney, he is the owner of American Apparel, and he was talking about how gorgeous you are and how he would love to have you come in and model for him. And I tell him, I happen to know Charlotte, would you like her number?” So, I called Dov and set up a time to go in and do some test shots and I became one of their models for seven years. It was a lot of fun. You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be on a poster, I wanted to be famous. I knew if I was on a poster I made it big! Now, here I am on magazine covers and billboards and T-shirts, calendars, and magnets. So, I really have done everything I want. I have accomplished almost everything I want.
If there was any role you could play, what would you play?
Well, it is kind of already coming along in order. I am going to be motherfucking Batwoman in my own Batwoman video. She fights for justice, she is openly gay, she’s a badass who doesn’t take shit from anybody. But when it comes down to people, she cares so much that she is so busy taking care of other people that she doesn’t take care of herself. I can relate to that. But, truthfully the answer to that question is I don’t know. Growing up, we moved a lot and I always had to make new friends, so I feel like I have always been transforming and growing and adapting.
I understand that you are a big Dungeons and Dragons player? Are you currently playing?
Ohhh yeah! Every single Sunday, the gang rolls up and we roll hard. It is a group of industry and non-industry people who get together and play. I think it is really important to have friends outside of porn. I think that is where a lot of people fuck up is that they don’t have friends outside the industry. It just lets you know there is more to life.
What is your current character?
I love being a Wizard or a Barbarian. I have a 13th level Wizard who is still alive but got dismembered by Amazon women, because while we were playing, I guess I drank too much and got naked and tried to start an orgy with the D & D group during the game and the DM was like, “Stokes, your dying!” But what is really cool is that our Dungeon Master is like world-famous and always publishing new books. So we went to a new Dungeon and I created a new character that was a Barbarian and I like being a Barbarian. As a Wizard, you have low armor, so you fight from the background. But that Barbarian goes in first, like, ” I got this.” The best thing about Dungeons and Dragons is that it is a game about imagination and it lets me be creative and think outside the box. It is a healthy vacation I get once a week to escape from real life and fuck things up.
One last thing, how did you come up with your name?
My nickname has been Stokely since I was 11 and when I did my first scene, my agent at the time said it was too masculine, so I chose Charlotte to go with it. It was a genius accident. But my friends call me “Stokes.”
Watch Charlotte in both of Ricky Greenwood’s films, Confessions of a Sinful Nun and his latest film, Becoming Elsa. You can follow Charlotte on Twitter @char_stokely or on Instagram @charlottestokely.
Follow @HotMovies on Twitter