HOLLYWOOD—As 2020 AVN Best New Starlet Gianna Dior addressed in her speech at last month's AVN Awards Show before passing the crown to Scarlit Scandal, there's been a long-held superstition surrounding the title that it carries a "curse" condemning the recipient to certain and swift career implosion.
While there may be a number of instances that helped bolster this Porn Valley legend, one decided and indeed extraordinary exception to the rule is 2016's winner, Abella Danger.
Arguably—nay, verifiably—one of the top three most famous porn stars of this generation (one guess each who the other two are), Danger has debunked the so-called Best New Starlet Curse with a vengeance. In fact, with her 1.5 million Twitter followers and astronomical 7.6 million on Instagram, she has ascended indisputably into the rarefied air of true celebrity status.
It's little wonder then why former Disney star and current provocateur at large Bella Thorne chose Danger to co-star with her in her newest music video, "Shake It," released Monday on YouTube, where it has so far racked up more than 531,000 views.
Of course, this isn't the first time Abella has collaborated with Bella ... the adult actress starred in the mainstream one's 2019 directorial effort for Pornhub, Her & Him, released as part of the site's Visionary Director's Club series, and subsequently bestowed with five AVN Awards nods, including ones to Danger and her co-star, two-time AVN Male Peformer of the Year Small Hands, for Best Actress and Actor in a featurette.
Reuniting with Thorne for the "Shake It" video, however, was a whole new ball game, Danger told AVN.
"I guess it's completely different," she said, "because for Her & Him, I was doing acting the whole time, and there was a lot of ... not a lot, but there were a few monologues that I really wanted to nail, not just deliver. But then this was so nerve-wracking too, because I knew that I had to kiss Bella in it, so I was like, 'Ooooooh!' I was just nervous, but she's so cool that after a while, it was just really fun."
That ribald meeting of the lips has sparked headlines from the likes of The Sun, The Blast and the Daily Mail—and Danger reveals there's more of it in the video than originally planned.
"We were only supposed to kiss like one time," she divulged, "but we ended up kissing a few times. I was like, 'This is really fun.'"
(Thorne, who also directed the video, apparently agrees: She told People in an interview posted today, "I wanted to make sure that we had fun filming it. ... It was so important that the video represents what the song represents, which is fun.")
Danger said she was approached to do the video by Thorne's mother, Tamara, whom she explained helps manage the multiple-hat-wearing entertainer's career.
"Bella's mom hit me up and asked me if I would be down to be in one of Bella's music videos," Danger related, "and I was like, 'Yeah, of course.' Even though I don't like doing music videos, I love Bella, so I was, 'Oh yeah, I'm down to do it.'"
At that point, though, she said, "I didn't know it was just going to be me and her ... I didn't know I was going to be the main girl in the music video until I got on set, and then I was like, 'Oh my god, this is so cool!' Well, I knew like the day before, because we had to learn this dance ... I knew a couple of days before that I was not just a background chick, but then once we got to set, I was like, 'Oh, I'm like the main girl ... this is like, about me.'"
Because she grew up studying dancing, Danger said learning the routine in the video—choreographed by Rosero McCoy, whose credits include the films Step Up and Honey 2, MTV's America's Best Dance Crew and Thorne's Disney Channel series alongside Zendaya, Shake It Up—was a snap.
"It was really cool to learn from him," she enthused, "and I already had a dance background, so it wasn't hard at all. But it was cool."
The shoot, which took place toward the end of September, lasted about 14 hours, Danger said. "But it was so much fun," she exulted. "Honestly, it went by so quick. Clearly there was a lot that we needed to shoot ... but we [had] learned the dance—I learned it the day before, she learned it a few days before—so we already knew it, so we just rehearsed it in the morning and then once it was time to shoot it, it kinda went by fast."
Of the final product, Danger beamed, "I'm so proud of it. I think it just came out so good.
"And I was so honored," she added, "because she could have really picked any girl to be in that video with her, you know? She knows so many cool-ass bitches, and I was just like, 'Damn, that's so cool that you picked me!' So I was just more honored than anything."
See the "Shake It" video here.
Images taken from Bella Thorne's YouTube channel.
