This story appears in the July issue of AVN magazine.
LOS ANGELES—It’s always glorious when a movie’s title perfectly conveys its central premise with a succinct couple of words.
And should it not be blatantly clear with the case at hand—writer/director Casey Calvert’s latest feature for Girlsway, which also happens to be a star showcase for skyrocketing lesbian performer Ophelia Fae—the following exchange in the picture’s opening sequence between Fae and Kimmy Kimm (which we were on hand to see lensed one Saturday in April) should bring it into crisp focus:
Kimm (after Fae’s one-night stand Nicole Vaunt has just scurried out the front door of the suburban house where this is set): “So, how straight this time?”
Fae: “Three years with the same dude straight.”
Of course, this being a Casey Calvert project, things are not as black-and-white here as the presumptive lesbian-sport-fucks-straight-women-for-jollies theme would suggest.
During the lunch break on this second day of production, Calvert enlightens us on where this is all headed.
Yes, as she confirms, “This is a movie about a queer girl who likes to have sex with straight girls for fun and because, as she jokes in the movie, she has to because all the queer girls fall in love.”
However, she elaborates, “What happens is, she meets a straight girl who she catches feelings for. So the girl who is hunting straight girls accidentally catches feelings.”
Quite a pickle.
She goes on to explain that the just-shot opener is a red herring of sorts.
“So the beginning of the movie, it masquerades as a kind of tropey, traditionally Girlsway ‘turning the straight girl gay’ movie,” she relays. “And as you get further and further into the story, by the middle of act two, it turns into a much more serious movie about relationships and queerness.”
For Fae’s part, she tells us this movie is a giant leap in her still-fledgling career.
Aside from it being her very first feature, which plops her into the lead role to boot, she says the fact that she’s in all five of its sex scenes makes it “a big zero to 100.”
Asked what kind of acting experience she has, Fae cracks, “I was actually the lead in my fifth-grade musical.”
She did continue to dabble in theater during middle school and took some acting classes in college, but on a perhaps unconventional note, she says, “Really the main acting-adjacent thing that I’ve been doing outside of other shoots is playing [Dungeons & Dragons].”
She asserts: “Honestly, that’s very useful for acting. I think almost more so that trying to act ... just really getting to know your character and really feeling the character.”
All of that said, Fae relates that, in regard to portraying her character in Straight Girls (“Ava”), “I feel pretty confident, because I relate to Ava in a lot of ways.”
She adds, “I think that Ava’s a little bit more toxic than me, but otherwise we’re pretty similar people. There’s a lot of me that I see in her.”
As far as how this production turned into a full-on showcase for Fae, Calvert reveals that it was actually her idea.
“[Girlsway parent company] Adult Time gave me a little two-page, very top-level concept that they wanted for this movie,” she recalls. “And halfway through writing the treatment, I texted Bree [Mills, Adult Time’s chief creative officer], ‘Hey Bree, I know normally this is not what we want to do, but I was thinking it might be really narratively interesting if this is a showcase for someone, and we put this main character in all of the sex scenes. And Bree said, ‘Sure, let’s go for it.’”
She admits, however, that it was not the plan from the beginning to cast Fae as said main character.
“So, I wrote the script at the same time that I held open auditions,” she discloses. “That was another thing that I chatted with Bree and Adult Time about, was like, ‘I want to look for some new faces.’
“I feel like a lot of the people I’ve worked with over the years, as I am now in my mid-30s, are now also in their 30s, and this is a movie about people in their mid-20s,” she puts forth. “I was like, ‘I want to bring some faces in. I want to just see what’s out there. Let me hold open auditions and see what happens.”
Calvert does concede, “Ophelia had been on my radar already. Holly Randall actually texted me one day and was like, ‘Ophelia needs to be on your radar.’”
She continues, “And I held auditions. Ophelia made me a tape that blew me away.”
Noting that Ameena Green (who’s not on set this particular day) landed the role of the straight girl for whom Ava “catches feelings,” Calvert divulges, “Both Ophelia and Ameena were cast based on their audition tapes. I haven’t directed either one of them before, I haven’t worked with either one of them before in any capacity. And they both got their roles from those tapes.”
Going back to the beginning, as far as really knowing one’s character goes, how does Fae reckon she was able to lure straight girl Vaunt into bed?
“I mean, I think if you’ve seen me at any of the industry parties, I’m on the dance floor,” she smirkingly offers. “So, I feel like that’s probably what first got her attention. I think I gave her a big ol’ smile, started talking to her a little bit.
“Maybe the nails got noticed,” she muses. “The ‘lesbian manicure’ ... kind of explaining to her what that is.”
(For the uninformed: a “lesbian manicure” is maintaining short nails on two fingers of a gal’s hand.)
“And then once I explain it ... girls that don’t know about it and then find out about it the first time tend to think it’s really hot.”
Makes sense to us.
Straight Girls debuts today on Girlsway.com, AdultTime.com and AdultTime.xxx.
Photos by Wondra
