LOS ANGELES—A new photo spread on the Playboy Plus subscription site features the debut on that site of longtime adult industry icon Misty Stone—but the project was history-making for other important reasons as well. The photo gallery, Misty Stone in Natural Desires, marks the first production on the Playboy Plus platform to be entirely created by Black talent, behind the camera as well as in front.
“To be honest, you don’t see a lot of people doing it,” Playboy Director of Marketing for Subscription Sites Holly Ruprecht told AVN. “I’ve never heard of a company—and I’ve been in this industry 20 years—doing a Black makeup artist, Black photographer, Black talent. I’d never heard of it, so hopefully it’s something more people will jump on and do.”
The production also features the behind-the-camera debut of another iconic performer, Ana Foxxx, whose outspokenness during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020 gave Ruprecht the idea to give her carte blanche to create her own project for Playboy Plus. She picked Foxxx as creative director and producer on the project, and Foxxx—whom Ruprecht calls "a beautiful person inside and out"—took it from there.
“I heard her speaking during the movement last summer. She said something that stuck with me,” Ruprecht said. “She said, ‘We go to the set as Black women, and they have white women do our makeup, and they don’t understand the skin tone or the hair. They don’t even have the right color for me, it’s too dark or too light, because they weren’t told ahead of time they were working with a Black woman.’”
That’s when Ruprecht had the idea to offer Foxxx a gig directing and producing a photo shoot—and turning the whole production over to her, from selecting the talent, to hiring the entire crew.
The performer-turned-director hand-selected the photographer, John Taylor, and crew. She also chose locations, wardrobe and everything else that created the world of Natural Desires, which was shot on location in Glendale, California. But she told AVN that she did not set out to create a groundbreaking project.
“When I went into going to produce for Playboy, I didn’t even particularly choose everyone being Black. I chose people that I knew,” Foxx told AVN. “The photographer, J.T., was one of the first people to shoot me, and I’ve worked with him plenty of times for Penthouse. My production manager, Lotus Lain, is my best friend. It just turned out that everybody turned out to be African-American.”
But when she learned that she had, without even trying to do so, assembled the first all-Black production team for Playboy Plus, she was “kind of in disbelief. I was so happy—so happy and so honored to be a part of that.”
The groundbreaking accomplishment, she said, is also a personal milestone in her own career, after a decade in the adult industry and hundreds of scenes to her credit.
“I just want to scream it from the mountaintops,” she declared. “I want people to know it’s really important, how long I’ve been here, how much I’ve worked, and everything coming together to get me here. I just want everybody to know what an accomplishment it is.”
The Playboy Plus project is only the start of a new phase to Foxxx’s career. She already has new shoots planned for May. But her first foray behind the camera stands as a career and personal pinnacle.
“It makes me prouder than I ever thought I could be, honestly,” she said. “I think I desensitized myself to a lot of things. I didn’t expect to do great things because it’s really hard to be here. And I just made myself really proud, at the very least. Being a part of this is something more than I could imagine in my whole life. ”
One of her most important jobs as producer on the Playboy Plus shoot was to keep her star happy—to “make Misty have the best day ever.” And according to Stone, she appears to have succeeded in that department as well.
"It was an absolute joy working with Ana and the whole Playboy Plus family on this production,” Stone said, in an email. “I couldn't be happier with how everything turned out. Ana was so easy to work with and professional and I'm so proud of what we accomplished."
Foxxx, for her part, credits Playboy for allowing her the freedom to create the Misty Stone photo set, and to do it her own way.
“Working for Playboy was so easy,” she said. “They listened to me, heard every word I said, and gave me every tool to do what I needed to do. There’s quite a lot of freedom in porn, but there’s something about Playboy. It’s like, if porn caters to the performer on, let’s say, an 80 percent level, Playboy did it on a 110.”
She emphasized her gratitude to Playboy for granting her the chance to realize her own vision for the production, saying, “I consider Playboy Plus a little bit more mainstream than adult. And they are the first ones to give me an opportunity to shine, really. It’s taken me 10 years to get there, so I really appreciate Playboy Plus for trusting me, taking me seriously, and seeing that I have a creative vision. It makes me proud to be a part of their family, because everything I’ve seen them do historically has been nothing but stunning.”
Photography courtesy of Playboy Plus (John Taylor and Cassandra Keyes)
Click here for a photo gallery of Ana Foxxx and here for a gallery of Misty Stone.
