LOS ANGELES—Nadya Nabakova did government work in Oregon and moonlighted as a cam girl before deciding to try porn.
“I worked for the Department of Human Services,” Nabakova reveals. “The office that I worked at serves the elderly and people with disabilities and we helped them get food stamps and medical insurance coverage.”
But despite sharpening her customer service skills in what at times was a volatile environment, she grew weary with her position due to her grumpy colleagues.
“Everyone that I worked with just really hated their job and didn’t really care about the mission of what we were doing,” Nabakova recalls. “It was like everyone’s so mean and upset and doesn’t care about these people that we’re helping, and you just become really numb to everything you’re seeing, too.”
Camming provided an escape—and also got her thinking about other possibilities within adult.
“It’s completely contrary to the preconception I would have—that oh, there’s all these creepy pervs on there,” says Nabakova, who started camming last April and most recently has been using MyFreeCams. “They’re all like really nice people. And I can just get on and talk about stupid stuff.
“So I thought OK, maybe it’s going to be like that. I’ll try porn and see if I can be slutty and get paid for it and meet some other interesting people who like the same things. So far it’s turned out to be correct. It’s a lot of really great, slutty people.”
Nabakova moved from Portland, Ore., to LA in September, making her porn debut for Babes in a foot-fetish scene with veteran stud Ryan McLane. Now booking through LA Direct Models and also doing animal rescue work when she’s not shooting, the 25-year-old performer has since done scenes for DareDorm, Vixen, Bang!, Kelly Madison, WildonCam and MissaX, among others.
First-time nerves aside, her experience on the Babes set exceeded her expectations.
“I don’t watch porn so I didn’t know who the performer was going to be. I didn’t know anything about the website or the company,” Nabakova says. “So we get into the whole thing and everyone was really nice and really professional. I told everyone, ‘OK, this is my first scene just so you know. I just want to put it out there in case it seems like I’m fucking up. Just so you know I’m not terrible, I’m just new.’”
Nabakova adds, “It was my first foot job ever so that was weird. I was just like, ‘How does this work?’ But I made it work.”
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Nabakova lived in Massachusetts and then for five years in Austin, Texas, before moving to Oregon. She got into adult with no prior modeling experience.
“I’m sure some people from high school would be like, ‘Oh my god, that nerdy girl went and did porn.’ I’m not really worried about anyone’s opinion,” she says, noting she had an active sex life as a civilian. “I would probably call myself a slut but I don’t know how much of a slut I actually was or am.
“I don’t have a lot of hangups about sex, so I feel like for some people, yeah you’d be a slut or a whore…I’ve had sex with quite a few people and I try to be safe and conscious about everything I’m doing. But yeah I guess I am a bit of a slut. I’m just an open person and if I’m on a date with someone or hanging out with someone and I feel like that’s what I want to do and it’s what feels natural right then, I’ll just do it. I don’t feel any pressure not to just because of some societal thing.”
Nabakova, who is 5-foot-7 with green eyes and 36-24-36 measurements, says her father’s side of the family is Polish with roots in Lithuania; she has Italian ancestry on her mother’s side. She chose her unique stage name because of her Eastern European look.
“Everyone thinks I’m very Russian all the time,” Nabakova admits. “I figured I would lean into it because everyone always thinks I am, so might as well.”
One of her top scenes at the time of this interview without question was her outing for Vixen with Xander Corvus.
“I really loved working with Vixen; it’s just a whole crazy, professional, insanely polished production,” Nabakova says. “It was with [director Lorenzo Sky] and he was great. I love his personality. He knows exactly what he wants and I appreciate that.”
Nabakova’s biggest passion is working with animals, something she started doing about five years ago in Austin. Her extensive experience includes fostering neonatal kittens and hospice animals, co-managing a cat foster program and processing dog adoptions.
“So if you’re going to come in and adopt a dog—I only did dog adoptions for some reason—you’d have to talk to me and I would counsel you on owning a dog,” she explains.
Nabakova jokes that she would advise people on dog ownership despite never having owned a dog—she currently owns a cat named Kuki.
“I’m a quick learner. I picked it up,” she says with a grin.
“Then I started co-managing the cat foster program. We had people fostering cats and you have to make sure that they’re taking care of them, getting them ready for adoption, doing all of their medical. And then after that I was offered a position on running a study on the feline leukemia virus, which is what I do now.”
As the head of the study she compiles data.
“So we have all this data for every animal that’s ever been in our care,” Nabakova continues. “It’s like they’ve been at this appointment and got this medical treatment and they were diagnosed with this or that. And then I compute all that, put it in a spreadsheet and we’re tracking and seeing overall compared to like a healthy cat population that doesn’t have this virus, what sort of care are they getting? What’s it costing? And then we’re going to be able to show this to other shelters and rescues and say, if you’re trying to institute this kind of program this is the sort of expense you’re looking at per cat compared to like a normal population. Just trying to show people it’s still worth it to save these animals.”
She says the animal rescue field is rewarding work.
“I think it’s just I strongly believe you need to be part of making the world a better place even in a small, tiny little way and with animals it’s really easy because they’re eternally grateful no matter what,” Nabakova reasons.
“They’re never going to be like, ‘Oh, thanks a lot.’ I’ve always loved animals. I’ve always had them growing up. We had tons of animals and I just feel like getting to improve their life even in this really abstract way is really important. It’s really meaningful I think. You need to put positive energy into the world. You can’t just be a negative, upset person all the time. This is my way of doing it. It’s my good karma.
“I find it incredibly rewarding and it’s also very selfish of me to get to do it. I just love doing it even though I’m just putting stuff in a spreadsheet. I can feel so good about what I’m doing and I know a lot of people can’t say that.”
Looking ahead, Nabakova would like to see where the industry takes her.
“I’m ready to be in it for the long haul, be a MILF in several years, hopefully,” she says. “I’m excited to be in it as long as I can, as long as I’m happy with the sort of work that I’m getting. I definitely think that it’s a great thing that I want to do for a while, but also monetarily.
“The money that I can get from it I can use for other things. I can have more of an impact in animal rescue and do that sort of stuff. … If I can be doing this for a while then maybe when I’m done with porn in several years I’ll retire and have my own little animal thing to do.
“But for now I really love doing this. I’m young and people will hopefully keep booking me. So I’m just trying to enjoy it while it lasts.”
Find Nadya on Twitter at @nadyanabakova.
Photos by by Jeff Koga
