Above, director Lena Kelly in TransNasty (Evil Angel; photo courtesy of Kelly). A version of this article appears in the October issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see the digital edition.
After just three years in adult, Lena Kelly can lay claim to a major milestone: She’s the first trans performer to direct a movie for adult studio Evil Angel. The studio, home to genre pioneer Joey Silvera, is a leading producer of trans erotica.
An AVN Award nominee for 2019 Trans Performer of the Year, Kelly is known for creating her own content. She started her own website a couple of years ago and also shoots for clip sites, including ManyVids.
“I just found myself writing scripts and getting involved in camera work while I was performing. It got to the point where I’m pretty much directing now, Kelly says. She’s “interested in the gear” and also pays close attention to “each director’s philosophy and the way they run their sets. … So it was really natural for me to start directing.”
Chris Gentile, Evil Angel’s chief creative officer, talks about how the directing deal went down. “Lena approached us earlier this year about releasing some projects with us. I could tell from the first meeting that she possessed a creative spirit. Anytime we see someone who’s creative and also naturally perverted, we know that person is right at home in our ship.”
For her Evil Angel debut, titled TransNasty, Kelly says, “I wanted to do something that was very much what I’m into—really nasty, really hardcore, really aggressive sex. I wanted to combine that with my signature look, which is very careful outfits and costuming and settings, and really just playing off of my sort of cartoony, comic book outlook on life.”
Company founder John Stagliano appreciates his newest director’s sensibilities. He opines, “Lena Kelly is intriguing, most probably perverted beyond my comprehension, and dedicated to learning as a filmmaker. What more can I ask?”
“I like things that are really nasty, over the top,” Kelly says. “So any time I have free rein to be as crazy as I want is a good time for me. That’s why I definitely prefer shooting for a company like Evil Angel.”
The movie features trans performers Aubrey Kate, Natalie Mars and Khloe Kay and cis female performer Charlotte Sartre. Male performers are Michael DelRay, Pierce Paris, Tony Orlando, King Epicleus and Logan X. And Kelly also does one scene, donning a pink, cowboy-themed costume. Evil Angel will street the DVD on October 23.
“I wanted to make it full of life, aggressive, colorful. I really wanted to have fun creatively and not worry about a theme or a storyline or what kind of porn it was going to be. I’ve got a schoolgirl scene, I’ve got a cowboy scene—there’s just some plain old good sex. It’s a whole bunch to offer for everyone. I’m only in one scene. I didn’t want to make it a me movie. I wanted to make it more about me directing. I cast myself because I don’t have to pay me,” she explains.
“I really wanted to have fun with the outfits. It’s honestly my favorite part,” Kelly continues. “I love fashion and I love creating a really spectacular look. All the looks in TransNasty—I really went balls to the wall with the costuming on this one. Everyone looks amazing in this movie. I wanted everyone to be as cute and beautiful as they possibly could. These are my best outfits for sure.”
Multiple AVN Award winner and two-time Transsexual Performer of the Year Aubrey Kate shared her thoughts about shooting for TransNasty, noting that she was encouraged by the director to leave her comfort zone. “Normally I’m the nice one, a cheerleader. Like the all-American blonde girl,” Kate says. In her vignette, Kate is looking forward to celebrating with her boyfriend for their anniversary. “I come home early and he’s wearing my panties. So I basically beat him up. It totally reminded me of TS Seduction on Kink, where I take charge,” Kate says.
“She’s, like, one of my best friends,” Kate says of Kelly, who came up with a fun outfit for the tease at the beginning of the scene. “She keeps saying, ‘You’re going to love this.’ I’m really excited to see the tease,” Kate says.
Evil Angel’s Gentile says, “Working with Lena has been a really great experience, and I can’t wait to see how she grows as a director. Her first release focuses purely on sex, but she’s also pitched concepts for elaborate features and vignette-based releases. I can’t wait to see what direction she decides to move in with her projects. We are very happy to have her on board.”
Another thing that attracted Kelly to Evil Angel is that “each director had their own independence. And I was really intrigued with their business model. The content itself I’ve always been a really big fan of. I’ve met a few directors and producers … I was like, you know, I could do that—make my own porn and direct it. Just being the creative person that I am, I wanted to do that.”
Specifically, Kelly praises Evil Angel’s Aiden Riley, saying the director was “my cheerleader.” And, she adds, “I’ve worked with Aiden Starr a ton. She’s very inspirational to me.”
She’s shot often with other big names in trans erotica: “I’m definitely very inspired by Joey Silvera’s stuff. I love the way it looks—the colorful, cartoony look of it is very inspirational to me. Jim Powers is very influential for me—just the way he runs his sets and how he operates. Every time I work with any director or any company, I’m always looking at the way they do things, the way they treat their performers—just the dynamic they bring to the set. I’m always sucking up like a sponge the way people are on set. I’m always asking questions.”
Kelly also works for Trans Angels, and she recently pitched a script which was shot as a three-part series. “I can’t say too much about it, but it was really cool,” she says. “I shot it in Vegas with Tom Moore. It came out really great. I have to give some props to Tom Moore for encouraging me to pitch them the idea. He was the one who gave me the idea to do it in the first place.”
In addition to talking about her work as a director, Kelly related how she became an adult performer in the first place. "I was living in upstate New York and I wasn’t doing very well—I was living in my car, drinking a lot, and just kinda didn’t have any direction. I didn’t have any money … so I started camming in my friend’s house while he was at work. I did that for a few weeks and at some point a friend of mine who was in L.A. for a while met a bunch of porn people out there. She came back and we hung out and she was telling me how she met all these people who were doing porn out in L.A.”
Her interest piqued, she decided to leave chilly New York behind, starting with a plan to “drive across country and live on Venice Beach or something.”
Kelly eventually was directed to Grooby Productions—“You can send them audition pictures and stuff”—so she got dolled up in Victoria’s Secret lingerie and shot two scenes in Las Vegas. “I hadn’t thought about Vegas at all. … All right, screw it, I won’t go to California, I’m going to Vegas.” So she packed a few things and headed for Nevada. “It was one of the coolest things I ever did, honestly. It was a really, really awesome adventure. And I got to see a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t have gotten to see otherwise.”
After living in Vegas for a couple of years, Kelly moved to Los Angeles in March. “I love it here. I’m having a really good time out here,” Kelly says. “Actually I was born here. I didn’t spend much time here, though. I grew up in New York City, pretty much. But I was born here, pretty randomly.”
Now she’s found success and artistic fulfillment in her new home. “Moving out west and taking care of my personal issues and finding something that gave me direction and purpose in life really made me want to experience reality and be present,” Kelly says. And though Kelly is candid that she once used alcohol as a way to escape, she says that’s no longer a part of her life. “It’s sort of ironic that entering a business where maybe drugs and alcohol are pretty common that I have been so disinterested in those things,” she says. “I like to have fun sometimes; don’t get me wrong. But it’s not taking over my life. … I have my shit together now.”
Indeed, that would seem to be the case. Since entering the industry, she’s performed in more than 120 titles and has won Transgender Erotica Awards in 2019 for Best Self-Producer and Gender X Model of the Year. And she will no doubt emerge from the 2020 awards cycle with some new nominations. Asked whether she attended last year’s AVN Awards Show, Kelly said she was still pretty new then. “I was a little green around the gills to go last year. … 2018 was a fantastic year for me. And 2019’s been really amazing too—even better this year, honestly.”
Follow Lena Kelly on Twitter: @LenaKellyXXX.
