Two decades into her celebrated adult entertainment career and Sara Jay is refreshed, rejuvenated, and showcasing her business sensibilities after the COVID-19 pandemic caused a six-month interruption of her shooting schedule. She’s tallied over 5,000 scenes in 20 years, making her one of the world’s most beloved stars of the MILF and big booty subgenres. However, quarantine allowed her career aspirations to grow. She’s now a thriving entrepreneur as Sara Jay CBD—the star’s line of CBD-infused bath bombs, massage oils, and personal lubricants—has emerged as a top product. Though now aiming to expand her business empire, her first love is still providing erotic entertainment to over six million total fans on social media. “As much as I’m working for my career, it also works for me now. It’s great to be at a point where I’m working smarter, not harder,” Jay says.
Regarding how she reached this point of acclaim in her career, the interview below should answer that well, plus more!
MKD: What motivates you now, career-wise? What creates the desire to excel and maintain your level of success?
SJ: I love the adult industry, sexuality, my sexuality, and creating images that help people explore their sexuality. Also, after 20 years in the adult industry, I’m amazed that I have enough control over my career where I can feed so many people with my vagina! As silly as that sounds, the fact that I can do this motivates me daily. After all of this time, I’m not just still making enough money to feed myself, live comfortably, and take care of my family. Still, I also have people, 15—including editors, camerapeople, assistants, and makeup artists—who depend on me weekly for a paycheck.
We’re at a point in the adult industry where creators have more autonomy and a chance to earn from a more significant number of sources of industry revenue. Given that this wasn’t the case when you started your career, how have you adapted, and adapted well?
It’s more challenging work for me, but I don’t mind working hard. As performers and creatives, it’s beneficial for us to have more power in our hands. In 2002, I started my website. Once I saw a steady income from that, I became a producer and creator myself, more than begging producers and directors to hire me. Also, because I was a marketer of my content too, I developed a fanbase. After two years, I realized that this was more than just me liking to have sex; it was a whole professional career.
As far as your career growth, I feel like you were one of the first performers in the 21st century who excelled though physically — for the top tier of the mainstream of your breakthrough era — you “played against type.” If you can, take me back to breaking out, and the moment when you knew that what made you different could lead to your success.
Three or four years into the industry, I had an agent who helped me get feature-dancing gigs on top of becoming a porn star after [solely] stripping. He advised me that I needed to lose 40 pounds. At the time, I weighed 140 pounds. I was stunned! I hadn’t weighed 100 pounds since I was nine years old! I stopped working with that agent, and then I realized, “I’m going to have to figure out another way [to succeed.]” I liked myself, had great self-esteem, was married, and made good money at the weight I was at. I knew I had a market for me that I needed to establish.
As far as that fanbase, what was the most significant factor that has allowed for your fanbase’s explosive growth? What do you believe were the moments that caused the most pronounced increase of those who enjoy your performances?
There are many other ethnicities and types of people out there than the typical white male porn fan. These are also people who were looking for a woman with “a little more meat on her bones.” When I began my career, the internet wasn’t as popular or influential as it is currently. Therefore, the white men who owned production companies and cast models for shoots and scenes—who were not necessarily looking for my body type—could hide behind spreadsheets and numbers to not offer me shoots as much as I’d have liked. However, when the internet boom occurred, my fanbase via social media could be seen and heard.
You’ve been at the forefront of a few subgenre booms in the adult industry, too. To what do you attribute your success to popular movements in porn that you’ve been a significant face, or body of note?
I never realized that anything I did started a “movement” in the industry until after it had occurred. Ultimately, the “big butt” thing got popular, and the “MILF” thing was successful. I shot “MILF” scenes in my early 20s because I wasn’t skinny, like most performers. I was built “like a woman” and not “like a child.” More than anything, I helped to establish markets with standards I set for myself that allowed me to get hired because—not in spite—of what had been identified as my flaws. These eventually became the standards that were followed by others who appreciated that I had jiggles and dimples.
At what point did you realize that you’d made the leveling up from “star” to “superstar?” Was it off-putting or unexpected? When did that moment of self-awareness of your popularity surging occur?
My goal in working in porn was never to be a “superstar.” I’m kind of just a private person who likes having sex. But, during the height of Bang Bros and the Onion Booty series online, I was in a pedicab in Amsterdam, and a pedestrian caught a glimpse of me. Once they did, they started screaming my name and chasing after the pedicab! I was like, “Oh shit,” it scared and blindsided me! At the time, I thought I was only a star when I’d be noticed in a nightclub in a busy American city like Miami. However, that was no longer the case.
You’ve recently successfully launched your Sara Jay CBD line. What spurred you to make this lateral product move at this point in your career?
I’ve had lots of different products throughout my career. However, while traveling to conventions like Exxxotica, AVN, XBIZ, when I interact with fans—and especially learn where, how, and on what they’re willing to spend their money—I realized I could cross-market my interest in the cannabis community with my fans’ want for quality products developed by me. In 2018, when I realized CBD could be separated from the numerous other chemicals in cannabis, then federally legalized, that’s when I decided to create products. So, while traveling in Europe and around the United States at that time, I studied CBD science, legislation, marketing, and product development.
As far as thinking about your career as a whole, and what’s next, what is the takeaway that someone could have that is larger than, “Oh, she’s a fantastic adult actress?”
When I started, I was just really horny. As my career grew, my profits grew from being horny. From there, as my business savvy increased, I got a little less horny and learned pornography’s [holistic] value to the world. My work has achieved accolades far more remarkable than awards; people appreciate my creations and use them to heal after breakups, explain their sexual needs to their partners, remain mentally stable during military deployment, instruct youth and couples about sexual health. My work fulfills my character as a human being.
Watch Sara Jay on HotMovies!
Follow @mrznepviolet and HotMovies on Twitter and Instagram