LOS ANGELES—Mackenzie Moss considers herself “a late bloomer.”
“I didn’t have sex until my freshman year of college when I was like 19,” Moss says. “And I was kind of happy about it because I was like, ‘Yes! I made it in before 20! Thank god!
“I was kind of relieved.”
Now the 24-year-old newcomer knows what she likes when she’s naked and isn’t shy about saying it. Just ask Mick Blue, the three-time AVN Male Performer of the Year, who drilled Moss in the second scene of her career for his BAM Visions series, Porn Star Initiations.
“She loves what she does and she is a huge talent,” Blue tells AVN. “I even shot her [on Saturday] for Throated.com and her dirty talk at the beginning of the scene was out of control. So good!”
Moss admits, “It was cool getting to work with such a big performer so early on.”
But the opportunities in Porn Valley are coming early and often for the enterprising native of upstate New York. The new Spiegler Girl is off to an impressive start, picking up several high-profile credits in her first two months as a full-time porn professional.
“During high school I wasn’t confident in myself,” Moss says. “I wasn’t like super flirty. I was in all Honors classes. I was always a little bit on the outside I would say.”
That changed when she got to college in Boston.
“I kind of learned that I was more into kinky stuff and later on one of my boyfriends in college—I remember he almost convinced me to start uploading videos to Pornhub together,” Moss recalls. “But I didn’t end up doing it because I was like, ‘Ahh, I’m trying to go to veterinary school… I’m just too afraid to do it.’ So I didn’t.”
Indeed, all signs pointed to veterinary school for Moss, who graduated in May 2017 with a degree in Biology. But her $80,000 in student loan debt—she didn’t grow up rich—weighed on her while she worked part time at an animal hospital for about a year. Then last June she moved to the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, N.Y., where she was stripping, before she came to LA in January to embark on a porn career.
It was during her time in Williamsburg that Moss began researching who’s who in adult, discovering a handful of performers who intrigued her—not to mention reading about the reputation of super agent Mark Spiegler.
“I had been researching for at least a year, kind of getting to know the bigger names and people that inspire me,” Moss tells AVN. “And I noticed that the people that really inspire me—like Jessie Andrews, Sasha Grey and Carter Cruise—all came from Spiegler.
“They all kind of had a message or something they wanted to get out to the world and they really broke the paradigm—broke the mold a little bit—the stereotypes about people who got into porn or people who do it. And I just thought it was really cool and different."
Even though she started to picture herself entering the biz, too, she still had reservations.
“I was really afraid of the stigma and I think that’s why I didn’t act upon it sooner and why I kind of took a year to come to terms with—this is what I want to do and it’s not a bad thing,” she explains. “And it is a legitimate business that so many people are in.”
She reached the conclusion that Spiegler was “like the best of the best,” reaching out to him in early December.
“I just knew if I wanted to do this I had to go all the way and do it right,” Moss says. “I’m kind of like an all-or-nothing type person.
“I want to do all of the things that I can with it. I do want to do anal and DP’s and all of those things, eventually, but kind of build up to it.”
Spiegler recalls sitting down with Moss before agreeing to represent her.
“She flew out here from New York just to meet me for a couple days, so I knew she was serious," Spiegler tells AVN. “She seems really bright and she’s all natural with no tattoos.
“She’s doing really good. Everybody who has booked her is rebooking her for multiple things.”
The man whose talent roster accounts for six of the past seven AVN Female Performer of the Year winners notes that Moss got her social media in order before she even did her first scene.
“She was smart,” he adds. “She bought her website [url]. She also got all her social media before she started working—like her Twitter, her Instagram—so she would have it. She’s got a plan.
“The thing is I talk to them first. And it’s not just the answer to the question, it’s the moment before the answer. What I want to see is that they’re cute and preferably natural. Smart is a big plus; also I want to know they’re a pervert.
“It’s about instinctively feeling them out. To me a hot chick is hot, but a smart chick that’s hot is really hot.”
After their initial four-hour meeting, Moss says Spiegler told her when she moved to LA they could get started on an official basis.
“And I was like, ‘Oh shit, this is actually happening,’” she says. “I knew at that point so many girls—like I’m so lucky to have this opportunity because I knew… everyone has been telling me, ‘You’re so lucky. He doesn’t take that many people, let alone people who don’t have any scenes.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know. Don’t put more pressure on me!’
“But I knew because I had been doing all this research and reading the forums and reading the articles that he’s been interviewed in about how he runs his business, how strict he is—I mean it’s just a good way to run an agency, I think. He helps us be the best versions of ourselves—not being late, testing on time, etc.”
She adds, “I just felt like I knew he would be able to help me reach my goals the quickest and how he could help me be more diverse with my income streams.”
Moss had a few acquaintances in the porn biz but she wanted to make this entry all her own doing.
“I didn’t want to owe anything to anyone,” she reasons. “I wanted this to be all me. It’s just really exciting for me because I feel like I’ve found something I’m actually passionate about.”
The performer at the time of this interview on February 28 was still less than 20 scenes into her career. Donnie Rock did the honors in Moss’s first scene on January 29th for NetVideoGirls.
The moment was a little less nerve-wracking for Moss because she first met Rock at a porn party in late December and then saw him again while she was walking to her seat at the AVN Awards Show in Vegas on January 26. But despite that she didn’t sleep much the night before the scene.
“I think part of it I was nervous I was going to mess something up or like be late,” she says. “And then obviously I was thinking, ‘OK, this is it. Once I do this there’s really no turning back.’
“But then I was kind of like, ‘I thought through this for a while. I made this decision for a reason and I need to trust myself.’ And once I was in the makeup chair and started talking to the makeup artist all the anxiety really dissolved.”
Rock, who made his porn debut about four years ago, tells AVN he had a blast breaking in Moss.
“She’s a super fun girl that’s easy to get along with and work with,” Rock says. “Any girl’s first scene is almost always a bit awkward, but she was great. She is very sexual, so that made things run smoothly. She has a young, fresh face and will work a lot. She’s a gem!”
Moss already has performed in a pair of squirting scenes—one for Girlsway with Alina Lopez and Kenzie Reeves and another with Milana May for Mofos.
In addition, she paired off with Jada Stevens for Twistys under the direction of Holly Randall. “She had taken a break and that was her second scene back and also her first time on Twistys as well,” Moss says of Stevens.
Moss’s resume includes Badoink VR with Ryan Driller; NuruMassage with Cherie DeVille and Ryan McLane; Passion-HD with Van Wylde; and CherryPimps with Jake Adams—her fourth scene.
“After that day, too, I was like, ‘I’m in the right place.’ That was so good,” she adds.
Moss also went down on Serene Siren in Vegas in a lesbian domination/wrestling scene for Hustler.
“And I was the one getting dominated because I don’t know any wrestling moves,” Moss says. “I’ve been so blessed with all the scenes that I’ve gotten so far.”
Several more scenes showcasing Moss are soon to be released, such as content from FM Concepts, Zero Tolerance, Amateur Allure, Mile High, FemDom Empire, Nubiles, Team Skeet, PornPros and Sweet Sinner.
“It’s been really wild. It’s only been a month and I feel like there’s still a lot more that can happen either way,” Moss says. “I’m trying to stay humble and I just want to work right now. Just like get people’s attention a little more. A lot of people probably don’t know who I am yet. So I’m just trying to work right now and address my other ambitions like activism or whatever else I want to do later once I have a little bit of a following.”
It’s not surprising that Moss excels at talking smack during sex, given that she admired the work of Sasha Grey—the 2008 AVN Female Performer of the Year.
“I’m very into talking a lot during the scene and just like making it—it’s porn, you know. So perform. It’s a show,” Moss says. “That’s something I really try to embrace and not hold back.”
She didn’t hold back on the set of her first Pure Taboo scene, squaring off with seasoned vets Christiana Cinn and Dick Chibbles for a demented three-way scenario directed by Craven Moorehead.
“I mean Pure Taboo is like such a production and I’ve watched their scenes before and I was like, ‘This is so hot and I want to do this type of thing,’” Moss says.
“I was nervous because I don’t really have any experience acting and everyone kept asking me leading up to it, ‘So how’s your acting?’ I’m like, ‘I guess we’ll see on that day!’
“But I feel like something that helped me is I’m just a naturally very empathetic person. And it’s easy to kind of put myself into the character’s shoes. So I think I did a decent job. They were saying that I did well.”
The plot entailed Moss playing a stepdaughter whose mom had died, so she lived with her dad (played by Chibbles) and was “kind of manipulating his love life.”
“So I had been talking to him online as another girl because I wanted to have sex with him,” Moss says. “Then I hired an escort—who was Christiana—to come in as the girl he had been talking to online.”
The story unfolds from there.
“Mackenzie was a blast to work with,” Chibbles, who has performed in more than 300 adult movies since 2005, tells AVN. “The chemistry she had with Christiana and myself was spot on. Not only the sexual part of the scene, but she fully immersed herself in the character.”
Mark Spiegler believes Moss “can go pretty much all the way.”
“I’m sure she can act and she’s definitely reliable,” Spiegler says. “Someone once said to me, '80 percent of life is showing up.' A lot of girls don’t have that down yet.”
But Moss is not one of them.
She kept her eyes on the prize as an undergrad, while also making time for activism, organizing programs for her college’s community service center.
“I would make experiments and lessons for students in different places in the Greater Boston area,” she says. “Usually, places that are lower economic status that don’t have as many extra-curricular things going on.
“And so I would have people that sign up for my program go out and teach this lesson, experiment with the kids. And try and teach the scientific concepts to them and connect it to a real-life career that they could—if they liked this—maybe they would like doing this thing later on.”
When Moss isn’t working, she likes meditation, reading and making vegan baked goods—she’s been vegan for 10 years.
“I became a vegan in middle school. I remember making little PowerPoints for my parents because back then it was like something that not anyone did really,” she says. “I’ve always just been passionate about animals, too. I always wanted to be a veterinarian growing up. I got very close—like I was this close to going to veterinary school.
“But another factor was I just didn’t want to be in school for the rest of my 20s. This is the youngest I’ll ever be and I feel like this is the time where I should make the most risky business moves—or risky moves with my life—because all I really have holding me back is my debt from school.
“My health isn’t holding me back. I don’t have a lot of people to take care of or anything like that. So I was just kind of like I only live once. I know a lot of people say that but this is something I’m interested in and excited about so might as well just go for it.”
Moss says she would consider going back to school later on to pursue a Master’s Degree in Public Health.
“But stay on the research and activist side of things of sex worker, gender and sexuality,” she says. “I just kind of realized that getting into porn could be more of a positive than a negative if that’s what I want to do.
“And also like I said I was researching these women who had been in the industry and broken molds and seemed really confident and free and open. I was like, ‘This is the type of person I want to be.’ I just started getting an intuition that this was what I wanted to do and could make me happy.”
Moss continues, “Getting into porn I felt like I have a really entrepreneurial mindset and want to treat this like a business. And I feel like I can be good at it and will be good at it and that I could potentially grow a platform where it could help normalize sex work or bring these activist movements more to the forefront.”
Photography by Jeff Koga/KogaFoto
