This article originally ran in the September issue of AVN. To see the digital edition, click here.
A slender, independent-minded beauty from the Midwest, Saya Song had been shooting porn professionally since 2015, doing scenes for major studios such as Evil Angel, Girlfriends Films, Jules Jordan Video and New Sensations. But then she came to a crossroads. It was time to go hard or go home.
Actually, she did both.
When AVN talked to Song this spring, she had recently returned to Los Angeles from the Midwest. “I’m coming back strong after a little bit of a break. I was gone for about six months. I just went back home and took care of some things. I still had my apartment in Michigan. It was nice spending time with my parents and the family dog. You know, it’s always good to be home for a little bit.”
While she was back with the folks, “There was a minute where I was, like, ‘I quit.’ But it didn’t take me long to realize I missed Los Angeles and I missed my friends and I missed interacting with my fans—everything, really.”
Once back in Porn Valley, Song was ready to go hard.
“There’s a lot I have to conquer,” she said.
And she pretty much conquered it all in one big, dramatic stroke: an all-anal showcase with Jonni Darkko that Evil Angel will street on September 5. The cast also includes Lily Lane, Minnie Scarlet, Markus Dupree, Isiah Maxwell, John Strong, Chad Diamond, Chris Cock, Donnie Rock, Filthy Rich and Justin Hunt.
The movie is titled Saya Song’s Anal Initiations, and four of the five scenes are all anal, with some major milestones achieved: Song’s first double penetration, first double anal and first gangbang.
Song spoke to AVN just before she shot the movie this spring, explaining that she hadn’t yet done anal and planned to rectify that in a big way with Evil Angel. “I’m going to do girl/girl anal, my first boy/girl anal, my first d.p. and my first gangbang. So I’m really going all out. Because these are actually things that are my fantasies and I really want to do, so I think it’s time everyone sees that.”
Song has a history with shooting for Darkko, having done several scenes for the longtime Evil Angel director. “He’s, like, the only person I would do this for,” she said.
After she finished shooting, we asked what she enjoyed most about the project. “My favorite scene was my d.p. with John [Strong] and Markus [Dupree]. I have great chemistry with them both and love working with them both; having them at the same time was such a treat!”
She revealed, “Double anal wasn’t actually planned for the day; I’d only tried it once, quickly, in my personal life before, so it was quite a new experience for me and I absolutely loved it.”
Darkko shared his thoughts about the project and working with Song. “We’ve shot a bunch of scenes prior and we had a good synergy. I’m glad she picked me,” Darkko said. “I think we got the best we could get. I don’t think it could get any better.”
Asked which was his favorite scene, Darkko said, “I liked the gangbang because it was just so crazy. It hits the ground running. What happens in these situations is you either acquiesce or you … try to run it. And she just let it go—gave in and let the powers that be take her where she wanted to go. It was just fun watching her. She’d get orgasms over and over and over.”
He mused, “By the end I thought, fuck, man, she’s in it to win it. We talked yesterday and she said, ‘Yeah, I probably could have kept going.’ In those situations you can’t get enough guys. … She loves what she does and it shows. She’s into it. It’s not a ruse—it’s real. Which is nice.”
Darkko talked about his approach to shooting his showcases, noting that he strives to avoid a formulaic approach. “Keep it eclectic and keep it fun. I think the key to it is, it’s not forced—it’s planned and it’s contemplated. It’s not my vision; it’s the performers’. I get them involved. I think that’s where they have fun.”
Darkko said he is meticulous about wardrobe choices, which helps make each scene unique. “We wanted to do a bridal scene … she had a wedding dress. Most of the other wardrobe I picked out,” he recalled. “She wanted to do a punk rock look so we put that together. We didn’t want them to all be the same.”
Though the marketing of the movie will undoubtedly (and rightly) focus on its various “firsts,” for Darkko the quality of the performance is more important. “When people do something for the first time, usually I’m kind of hesitant. People blow it up like the first [time] is something truly amazing—but this actually was.”
He said that’s because Song made the movie for all the right reasons—not because she had to, or her agent told her to. “It’s just because she wanted to. She’s into it. She likes it.”
Indeed, Song seems to be a self-starter who knows what she wants out of her career.
“I got in the biz professionally just a couple years ago in Florida—you know, where everyone starts.” A scout from a Florida agency contacted her after she did her first pro scene: a shoot with James Deen. Before that, she said, “I was doing amateur porn, like my own clips at home, masturbation clips. And one day I was, like, ‘Hey, you know what, I can do this. … there are opportunities out there where you know you are in a safe environment.”
She started on a site called MyGirlFund and now posts content on ManyVids.com and AmateurPorn.com, and maintains a cyber-home at SweetSaya.com.
“I like the professional porn world the most because I’ve met so many people that I can work with. It gives me a lot more opportunity to make my own content. It’s just a lot of freedom and meeting great people.”
She admits to having struggled a bit to get ahead because there are certain factors that might work against her. “Like my ethnicity, my tattoos and my age,” she said. “But I realized I don’t have to let those things get me down because I can actually change that myself by making my own content.”
She notes that some older people still have the mindset that “tattoos are trashy,” and certain companies “will only shoot an Asian girl for an Asian movie and don’t understand that you can put an Asian girl in a movie that’s not Asian themed and it can still be a good movie—it doesn’t have to be an Asian fetish.”
Among her favorite scenes prior to the showcase, Song said, were with Marcus London for Asian Strip Mall Massage 2 (Devil’s Film), with Prince Yahshua for My First Prince (ArchAngel/Girlfriends Films) and a web scene with Gage Sin for BurningAngel.com.
She’d also like to branch out into more girl/girl scenes. “I haven’t worked with many girls. I feel like I mostly get booked for boy/girl stuff. I’ve only been booked for a couple of girl/girl/boy scenes. Morgan Lee is one I’ve worked with; she’s a great performer and she’s gorgeous. I’d love to work with her again. And there are other girls I would love to work with whom I haven’t yet. Charlotte Sartre is one—just because she’s really cute and goth and she does all the butt stuff. We’d probably be perfect together. I think Holly Hendrix is really cute and her performances are great. Katrina Jade, I’d love to work with her. She’s a great performer.”
Another thing she’s looking forward to doing is a suspension bondage gangbang. Plus, she added, “I would love to work with Mason, Axel Braun and Bryan Gozzling, to name a few.”
Book Saya Song through Society 15. Follow her on Twitter at @xosweetsaya.
