This is the cover story of the October 2020 issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition.
LOS ANGELES—Natalie Mars likes to ride her motorcycle to get away from the daily grind.
“That’s been a life saver during all this COVID stuff since there hasn’t been much to do,” Mars says. “I’ll just hop on my bike. I really enjoy it. I would say that is a new hobby and that’s kind of my main escape outside of work.”
No one would argue Mars hasn’t earned some down time in 2020, not after what she contributed to adult entertainment in recent years.
The 2020 AVN Transgender Performer of the Year since her debut in 2015 has delivered several breakthrough sex scenes, demonstrating a range that goes from playing with Angela White in a romantic girl/girl encounter to commanding a bukkake in Japan.
Whether she is going hardcore or showing her tender side, Mars gives all of herself without a hint of pretension—and it shows.
“I don’t want to give myself too much credit, but I think I’ve helped to some degree with bringing trans porn to a slightly more mainstream audience,” Mars says.
“And—I’m not trying to put anyone else down—I have a unique appearance that’s a little bit different from most of the other trans porn stars that have come before as far as my look overall.
“I kind of have a natural look. On top of that I like to do a lot of extreme things. I’m a very kinky, filthy person. I think that kind of mix has been appealing to a wide range of people.”
That may be an understatement. Mars at press time had more than 416,000 followers on Twitter and 377,000-plus on Instagram, giving her one of the largest social media platforms in the industry.
“I’m just being myself,” Mars says. “That’s all I’ve been doing—just being genuine to who I am. I’m doing the kind of things I want to do.
“I’m not trying to bow down to industry pressures to be a certain thing and follow a certain path. Over the last couple of years I’ve shot for a few companies that have never shot trans girls before. And a lot of that was me reaching out and just asking if they would be willing to shoot me.”
One of those was Milky-Cat.com, a Japanese site that specializes in group scenes in which several guys ejaculate on a girl. Mars reached out to them via Twitter and found herself on their set in the spring of 2019.
“I don’t think there’s been a western trans girl who’s done a bukkake for them,” Mars says. “It was amazing—a total dream come true. I’ve always really loved that genre. I’ve always really loved bukkake. It’s always been a fantasy of mine.
“I actually just tweeted at their Twitter account and said, ‘Hey, I’d love to shoot for you guys.’ And to my surprise they were interested and then I went out there. They gathered—I don’t know the exact number—it was 50 or 60 Japanese guys. And they put me in the center and everyone took turns cumming on my face.
“It was a lot of cum…They each individually had like really impressive loads—bigger loads than I’m used to for most American men.”
Mars in December 2019 flew to Prague to perform for Legal Porno, which is known for its no-holes-barred group scenes. Her first three scenes on that trip went so well they invited her back in February—not long before the lockdown started—for another round of deep anal drilling
“It’s usually gangbang type of stuff—double anal, triple anal. It’s very anal-focused and a lot of piss,” Mars explains.
“I was getting gangbanged by up to five, maybe six guys and they were all pissing on me and I was just chugging beer steins full of their piss which was hot. I was into it.
“... That was also a total dream come true because I’ve always liked that site. I’ve always been into really hardcore porn, especially anal porn. I think only having an asshole and no vagina I could imagine myself in those scenarios. I can self insert on anal as the person getting fucked.”
***
Mars became the first trans performer to be cast in Angela White’s AVN Award-winning Angela Loves Women series, appearing opposite the three-time AVN Female Performer of the Year in Volume 5 last year.
“I was really honored to be included in that. I loved how it was a girl/girl DVD and she didn’t make a whole thing about me being trans,” Mars says. “It was just another girl/girl scene and I thought that was really cool and really good for trans representation—not fetishizing the fact that I’m trans. Not making a big deal about it. It was just here’s another scene with a girl.
“She was amazing to work with. She’s so fucking nice and sweet. I really got along well with her. She just has an amazing kindness about her, which is unusual sometimes in the industry.”
Mars continues, “It felt very genuine, we kind of spent the whole day together shooting. I felt like we had a really good chemistry and built a really good rapport. When we weren’t on camera, we were cuddling and staring into each other’s eyes.”
White, who also produced and directed Angela Loves Women 5 for her studio AGW Entertainment—which is distributed by Girlfriends Films—says Mars “was a perfect choice” for her all-girl series.
“Natalie is an authentic performer, a natural beauty, and, most importantly, she genuinely loves women,” White tells AVN. “I had high expectations for our scene and she surpassed them. Even after our scene finished we continued cuddling and adoring each other. I felt so deeply connected to her, it was as if I had known her my entire life. It takes a special kind of person to make you feel that way and Natalie is very special.”
She adds, “Natalie brings a lot of uniqueness to this industry in looks, style, and performance. Natalie is like a hentai character brought to life. She is unabashedly herself and open with her kinks in a way that encourages others to embrace their own.”
***
Mars also caught the attention of Adult Time chief creative officer and director, Bree Mills, who cast her in several scenes for Transfixed, a standalone site and popular channel on Adult Time’s Netflix-style platform.
Transfixed, which debuted in November 2018, features glamorous pairings between trans and cis women with cinematic storytelling. Mars kept being requested by top cis girls, so she became a go-to girl on the site, leading to scenes with performers such as Kenna James, Kristen Scott, Haley Reed and Cadence Lux, who co-starred in Transfixed: Natalie Mars Showcase, the winner of the 2020 AVN Award for Best Transgender Production. Transfixed also received Best Transgender Series or Channel at the 2020 ceremony, while Mars captured Favorite Trans Porn Star and Favorite Trans Cam Star in the fan voting.
“I loved working with Bree and Transfixed,” Mars says. “That was some of the more professional cinematic stuff I had gotten to do up to that point.
“It was really cool to work on a production like that where there’s a big crew, doing dialogue and multiple takes from different angles. It’s like shooting a real movie as opposed to fucking someone on a couch. Her whole team was very amazing, so friendly and nice to work with. I loved all my co-stars. I got to have sex with really beautiful women.
“I shot with so many girls because a lot of the girls kept picking me, which is so flattering.”
Mills tells AVN Natalie's showcase "happened quite organically over the course of shooting Transfixed's first season."
“My intention for the series was to create more opportunities in our industry for cis and trans women to perform together and, as such, I took a very collaborative approach to casting," Mills explains. “Almost every single person I spoke to about the series wanted to work with one woman: Natalie Mars. She is probably the most desired woman in porn right now! So, we started booking her for shoots and getting to know each other.
“Besides being professional, confident, and beautiful, she is also super versatile and so much fun to style! From a 1980s lady boss to a dominatrix to a Thelma & Louise throwback, she could play almost any role with ease and became the breakout star of the season. So, when it came time for the DVD release, it just made sense to put her episodes together and offer them as an official showcase. I was so proud to see that showcase end up receiving the recognition it did, because it supports the recognition of Natalie's overall rising star.”
Speaking of being requested, Mars last year also tangled with 2016 AVN Female Performer of the Year Riley Reid for her site, ReidMyLips.com, in what was Riley’s first trans scene. And she took on 2017 AVN Female Performer of the Year Adriana Chechik in a scene directed by Jonni Darkko for Trans Glam.
“We’re both nasty anal sluts so that was a good dynamic,” Mars says.
***
Mars would be the first to admit that everything has moved so fast. She worked at a mortgage company in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she had lived since she was 16, before her transition.
“I wanted to transition for a long time but societal acceptance at the time was a lot different than it is now,” she says. “My parents were very conservative. I had a lot of fear about how I would be perceived and accepted. And then I turned 30 and I was like now or never—not to say you can’t transition later. But for me it was now or never and I said fuck it. At that point I’m 30 years old, who cares about what my parents think. I mean I still care but it was not to the same degree. So I just said fuck it, I’m going to live the life I want to live. And I got on hormones and started my transition.
“And I started doing online sex work and camming and stuff. I was camming for a full year [on Chaturbate] while I still worked at the mortgage company just to see if it was viable.
“I would go to work and get home and get on cam. After a year what I was making on cam was matching what I was making at my full-time job.”
When she started doing porn she would commute to Vegas and L.A. for shoots.
“Then I eventually relocated to Vegas,” says Mars, who was born in Florida but moved all over the U.S. while growing up.
She stayed in Vegas for about three-and-half years before moving to Vancouver earlier this year to be with her wife, Mistress Damazonia. This past January Mars won AVN Transgender Performer of the Year on the final Saturday night of the month and then got married on Sunday the 26th.
“It was a big weekend for me,” Mars says with a smile. “I won AVN and then I got married…We got married the day after the awards. We had been talking about it for a bit. It was definitely something we had been planning on doing. But actually doing it was kind of spur of the moment. Since it was AVN weekend we had a bunch of performer friends in town and we just booked the Little White Chapel and invited some of our friends and they were all thrilled to come and we just did it.
“We decided to make it a fun, kinky wedding. I was in white lingerie and she was in black latex. We looked all sexy and it was really cool. I’ve never been the type of person—I’ve never had aspirations about getting married. It’s never been on my to-do list. It was never a goal, but then I met her and it just felt right. And if I ever had a dream wedding that would’ve been it.”
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Mars says on the occasion when she is recognized in public that, “I’m generally pretty approachable and try to be friendly, as long as they’re not being creepy or something.”
“For the most part I’m pretty willing to talk and take a picture or sign something if they want. I’m not a super standoffish person,” she says.
“It’s hard to gauge your own fame sometimes I guess,” Mars continues. “Because I’m in my own little bubble. I have my following. Every now and then someone will say something to me I didn’t expect. Like I was talking to this guy online and he was saying his 16-year-old daughter and her friends look up to me as this role model. Not from the porn stuff.
“They watch my Instagram. Like really? Teenage kids know who I am and look at me as some kind of inspirational figure. Stuff like that I wouldn’t even expect. I don’t like to be like, ‘Oh, I’m an icon, people know me.’ Maybe I’m a little more known and iconic than I think I am. Do people recognize me more often than I realize and just don’t say anything? It’s really hard to gauge that kind of thing when you’re yourself.”
Steven Grooby, the founder of Grooby.com and the Transgender Erotica Awards, tells AVN Mars “doesn't fit any real stereotype.”
“She already had a following from her amateur posts so when we finally got her in for shoots in 2015, we already knew we'd have a big seller,” says Grooby, whose site features almost 20 scenes with Mars. “She's developed her look and brand incredibly during that time and I think she's one of the models/performers who has truly been driven by her fans which has made companies sit up and take notice.
“The body of work that she's produced over the last few years has been impressive, but more so how she's broken down some barriers with companies who traditionally haven't worked with trans models. Both doing a bukkake scene in Japan, and working in Europe on hardcore productions have opened her and trans content to more viewers and opened opportunities for other models.”
Grooby continues, “I think the main impact that she's had is two-fold:
"Showing other potential models that they can give it a go, and although she'd developed into a stunning and glamorous woman, you don't need to fit the stereotype of what many in the industry consider a stereotypical trans star to be the most successful.
“This has been Grooby's ethos since we started, so working with her over her first years in the industry was successful for both parties.
“That you can produce the porn you want to make. If you've seen Natalie content from her earliest 4chan days, she loved big anal toys, fisting, fetish and unique content, really pushing the boundaries which had rarely been seen in quality trans porn before that. Whether by design, or not, she owns that space.”
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Mars won back-to-back Best Hardcore Performer awards at the TEAs in 2019-20, adding a trophy for Kink’s Kinkiest TGirl Domme as well in May. Grooby says this isn’t a hot streak for Mars, this is just who she is.
“I never really thought that she was on a run,” he says. “It surprised me to see until I looked, that it's only been five years since she first appeared on Grooby Girls. It's not only looks or performance that makes a performer successful, it's also personality and the best performers are easy to work with, always professional and provide a positive attitude whether on set, in their social media and online personalities—and Natalie has personality in bucketloads.
“She's someone who is a pleasure to be around, and that goes a long, long way in this industry.”
Mars, who has more than 300 credits in her career, including 100-plus in 2019, says her rise still is hard to grasp.
“It’s definitely pretty surreal,” Mars says. “I never would’ve imagined I’d be where I am now even a few years ago. Obviously, it’s very flattering that so many people are interested in what I do and enjoy my work and find it sexy and like to masturbate to it. It’s pretty fun to think about all the people who are probably masturbating to me right now, right this minute.
“It’s cool. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t think about it most of the time. It’s not like I like just constantly have in my head, ‘Oh, I’m Natalie Mars. I’m known worldwide.’
“Most days I’m living my life and being myself. Most days I don’t feel like I’m a celebrity of any sort. Occasionally I’ll have my moments where I’ll feel like a celebrity at a convention or at an awards show, when everybody seems interested in talking to me. That can be overwhelming.”
Photography by Keith Ryan
