LOS ANGELES—Dave Rock wants Brooklyn Gray to know she’s on her game.
“The feedback we’ve been getting is amazing,” Rock, the owner of Motley Models, tells her. “All the major brands are shooting you and then they call us up and they rave about you.”
“It’s been a wild ride,” Gray replies with a smile. “I started doing anal, too, and IR—so I’ve broadened my horizons.”
Wearing beige-and-black, pinstriped pants, a black lace top that reveals her toned mid-section and white platform sandals, the rising star from Miami is making her second appearance on the “Backstage Pass With Dave Rock” podcast today.
Rock asks Gray about her shoes—they have smiley faces on them.
“They’re my happy shoes,” she says. “I just got them. … They’re from this U.K. company called Lamoda. I wear a lot of platforms because I like to feel really tall. And I saw these and they had little smileys on the side and I had to get them. They only had my size left, so it was a sign that I had to get them. These are a shoe that will complete any outfit. They’re a good statement piece.”
The 21-year-old Gray—her birthday was March 15—has been making plenty of statements with her uninhibited sex scenes as she emerges as one of the industry’s most promising up-and-coming performers.
“What’s going on with your stomach, Brooklyn Gray? Your stomach is on point right now,” Rock declares.
“It’s a mixture of being sick and doing a lot of anal,” she cracks.
Gray is sitting on the polished bronze couch next to Rock’s clean white desk that’s adorned with his logo—red headphones circling a microphone with flames shooting out of it.
It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon in late February in Woodland Hills, where the former college baseball player and real estate ad exec hosts the show from his house in a quiet, upscale neighborhood.
Gray made her adult industry debut just shy of one year ago, performing in about 70 scenes so far for name studios such as Evil Angel, Deeper, Jules Jordan Video, VogoV, Hard X, Naughty America, Mofos, Tushy, New Sensations, True Anal and Girlfriends Films.
Today marks her anticipated return to the eight-month-old podcast, which Rock launched as a way to learn more about the models he represents and give them additional exposure to the fans who buy their videos and the producers who book them.
Gray made her first appearance on “Backstage Pass” less than six months into her career in August 2019. During that broadcast we learned that Gray maintains a strict fitness regimen that entails 6 a.m. workouts with a focus on her glutes and cardio. A former competitive gymnast with experience on the stage—she did black box theater, often getting roles that had high sex appeal—she told Rock that "performing has always been my passion.”
We also found out Gray was crowned Miss Cooter at the Cooter Festival, got straight-A’s and spent two years in college in Chicago, where she majored in musical theatre “for a minute.” Two of her pre-porn jobs included working at a Kombucha taproom and doing audio engineering.
Rock makes it a priority to invite his top girls back for updates on their goings-on.
“This was a dining room,” Rock tells me. “So I had these sliding doors put in. It gives some sound proofing inside the paneling. It limits the noise a little bit but with the hardwood floors it’s so hard to get perfect audio. But we’re not really worried about perfect audio, it’s more about content.”
Rock shoots the broadcast on a set resembling a late-night talk show with a pro lighting setup and two stationery cameras; he displays a graphic customized for that day’s interview subject on the big screen that’s positioned behind him—next to framed pictures of rock legends and porn stars.
There’s a photo of Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, another one that shows an aerial view of Dodger Stadium at sunset; and a stylized collage of his attractive roster of models from over the years.
While the show takes on a live broadcast feel, each one is edited for content and technical quality before it’s uploaded weeks later. Today marks the 55th recording of “Backstage Pass,” which can be seen on their YouTube channel and more recently—Pornhub.
A native of Westlake Village, Calif., Rock grew up in a Mormon family—a jock and an Eagle Scout before graduation. Rock’s pitching prowess led to a stint on the mound at Moorpark College before a shoulder injury cut his collegiate athletics career short.
His last mainstream job entailed selling ad spots for Realtor.com before he started Motley in 2010 as a one-man show. Today he employs three booking agents and reps up to 40 female models at any given time—about 25 of whom are booking on a regular basis.
“So we switched to a software program for agencies,” Rock explains. “It’s the same software program Ford Models uses to manage hundreds of models all over the world. There’s a booking tool, an accounting component to it…And the girls have an app on their phone. … There’s a little bit of a learning curve for us and then for the models, too. We’re behind on billings. But when it’s all dialed in it’ll be amazing.”
Motley in recent years has repped numerous performers who have become Penthouse Pets, Hustler Honeys and attained various monthly industry accolades. Emily Willis, Scarlett Sage, 2019 AVN Best New Starlet Ivy Wolfe and Naomi Swann are some of his more high-profile models.
Motley in January saw Scarlit Scandal and Aliya Brynn grace the stage at the 2020 AVN Awards Show as official Trophy Girls.
Now Gray—who just found out she made the new issue of Hustler magazine—is enjoying an upward trajectory of her own.
“Tomorrow I finally get to do a blowbang for [Mason],” Gray tells Rock. “Which I’ve been wanting to do since I started in this industry. I’ve been tweeting at Hard X for months and months talking about how badly I wanted to do a blowbang for Mason. So tomorrow my dreams finally come true.”
She says her anal scene with 2018 AVN Male Performer of the Year Markus Dupree for VogoV was one of her best.
“That day was incredible. Markus is one of my all-time favorite performers to work with,” Gray says. “He is incredible at anal. … He’s truly an artist. He knows exactly what the camera needs. He knows how to open you up the right way, how to open himself up the right way. He does your job for you. And his energy is so high.
“And working with someone like that is incredible because I’m always going to reciprocate what energy I’m given.”
Gray tells Rock she’s learning about her body and its limits.
“I’m still learning how to work with my digestive system,” she notes, adding she’d like to take a break from anal for a while because that’s all she’s been booked for in the past month.
“They’ve all been super strong scenes. I’m gonna leave everyone with some kickass stuff and then…I’m gonna wait.”
Rock gets Gray to open up about her relationship with fellow performer Mike Mancini. They met not long after she started in the business. They had been booked together in Vegas, but Mancini had to cancel, leaving Gray wondering what the deal was.
“Me being new at the time, I was like, ‘Why did this guy cancel?’” she recalls.
When she got back to LA she took matters into her own hands and DM’ed Mancini, a seasoned stud with more than 275 credits since 2015.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you come by, let’s smoke. Do content,’” Gray continues. “… We hit it off right away and I just stopped leaving.
“I find we have a really great balance. I’m so grateful to have someone whose so communicative and understanding. We communicate about everything. We have everything out on the table and we both care about each other’s feelings.
“We both are performers, so we know what it’s like. We respect each other endlessly. We set boundaries. He’s a great support system for me.”
They are celebrating one year as a couple this month—March 31 to be exact.
As the podcast races past the 30-minute mark, Rock wades further into Gray’s life off set. She owns a Russian Blue cat named Aurora who is “pretty hypo-allergenic.”
“She’s an angel, so sweet…my favorite thing on the planet,” Gray tells Rock.
It turns out that she and Gray walk Aurora around their neighborhood in a baby stroller.
“She loves it. We take her to get coffee,” Gray says. “She is literally the most well-behaved cat I’ve ever come across. She’s a shelter kitty. … She was the only girl in her litter.”
Gray recently visited Greece with Jenna Foxx and new Motley Model Khloe Kapri—they were toasting Foxx’s birthday. They stayed in a hostel and went sight-seeing, detaching from social media due in part to limited Wifi.
“There are cats that just walk around everywhere there—feral cats… They are beautiful,” Gray says. “They’re trotting all over the city, bathing in sun patches. They let you pet them.”
Gray later reveals she had a pet squirrel that lived for 10 years when she was growing up.
“I miss him. When I was probably…sometime in elementary school, there was a hurricane,” Gray says. “He fell out of a tree in a hurricane and he somehow made his way into our garage and into my dad’s slipper.”
They decided to keep him.
“He was a great pet. I was bitten twice, three times in the 10 years that I had him. They bond to one person,” Gray says. “He’ll tolerate other people. He would give me affection and tolerate other people.”
She adds, “He was afraid of other squirrels. He would run all the way up my body and sit on my head. … His name was Raindrop.”
The full “Backstage Pass With Dave Rock” podcast with Brooklyn Gray will be available on YouTube in April. For updates about new podcasts, follow the show on Instagram and Twitter.
Lead photo by Scarlett Sage; photos 2-3 by Dan Miller
