LOS ANGELES—Nina Nova credits her mother for instilling the values she carries with her today.
“My mom is a bad bitch,” Nova says. “She raised me really radical. I grew up in New York City. I wasn’t raised in a conventional childhood.
“I knew from a young age that the sex education wasn’t accurate. It wasn’t what we needed and I kind of decided do something about it.”
Did she ever.
Now about two-and-a-half years into her professional porn career and riding the momentum of 2025 AVN Awards nominations for Hottest Newcomer and Hottest All-Girl Collab, the ambitious starlet tells AVN in many ways she has only just begun.
Nova estimates she’s done almost 200 scenes so far—including all her content collabs—and she takes pride in being an independent performer.
“I had an agent that booked me for one scene and then I’ve been self-booking 99 percent of my career,” Nova says. “It makes it all that much sweeter being able to say I did this, I am my own team.
“But you’ll never catch me saying I’m self made. People lifted me up so I could be here.”
Nova says it requires an enormous amount of “tenacity” to self-book over an extended period.
“It’s damn near impossible, but the biggest thing is the persistence I’ve had and putting myself in the rooms I needed to be and believing in myself when no one else believed in me,” she adds. “I can’t express enough the work I did to make it this far. It feels awesome.”
A resident of Las Vegas for almost 20 years, Nova moonlighted in sex work while she was a college student studying human sexuality and volunteering as an advocate in the sexual health field.
“My major was human sexuality and gender,” Nina says. “Through and through, this life chose me.
“I was always interested in sexual health and sexual liberation. Then a homegirl came up to me and said I think you would be great in my cam studio.”
Open to the adventure, Nova worked out of the studio for about six months and then started camming from her home. Formerly known as Nina Nightly before mainstream porn, she cammed on and off for about nine years as she continued her studies.
“I was in college, so it was quite part time,” she recalls, noting she at first was using Streamate and then migrated to MyFreeCams.
“I would always go back to MFC. It was always a good time over there.”
Even though she’d sometimes take up to half a year off from camming, she always stayed consistent with her content creation during that time. She gained experience creating numerous explicit videos and selling premium Snapchat subscriptions long before she joined OnlyFans two years ago.
Nova recalls how AVN Hall of Fame star Nina Hartley inspired her to pursue her dreams in adult.
“As a sexual health educator I’m enamored with her and the work she has done to illuminate eroticism and sensuality,” Nova says. “I met Nina Hartley at the Erotic Heritage Museum when I was in college. I was already camming and I went to a talk and got to meet her.”
Nova adds, “We live in a really sexually constipated society. We live in a really confined world right now and anywhere where we can see people expressing themselves freely and really stepping into their eroticism is very powerful and liberating.
“There is so much shame; there is so much stigma. We are told to feel bad and told to feel yucky. But those desires are part of what makes life so sweet. That’s why I love doing this work. I get to make people’s desires and fantasies reality.”
A longtime volunteer for SWAID Collective, a mutual aid group by and for sex workers, Nova says that she has cherished working alongside fellow performer advocates such as Codi Vore, Summer Hart and Xander Corvus.
She says it was the veteran Brazzers contract stud Corvus who gave her a big vote of confidence at the start of her performing journey.
“Xander is one of my dear friends,” Nina says. “I wanted to try something new and Xander just believed in me in a way no one else did.”
Nova points to several memorable scenes in the past two-plus years—first and foremost, Lesbian Sex Toy 2, with Millie Morgan for Girlfriends Films in 2024.
“It was my first scene with Girlfriends Films,” Nina explains. “They were the No. 1 studio that I wanted to work with. I love lesbian porn and I knew I wanted to land with Girlfriends Films. The chemistry in that scene is electric. It was fantastic, such a good time.”
Nova also recently made her debut for Reality Kings in a scene with Lasagna Del Rey and Mick Blue that she says showcased “how I swing both ways.”
She also cites outings for Kink and MeanBitches among her highlight performances, not to mention her gangbangs.
Nova has done multiple scenes for GangbangCreampie.com and also recently appeared on CreampieCathy.com.
“I adore them,” Nina says. “I want to push my limits. It’s my dream to do a 100-person gangbang.”
So far her high is eight guys with plenty of double-vag, which is her go-to move in gangbangs.
“It’s my party trick,” Nova says. “When four or five different guys cycle back-to-back doing double vag consistently. I get to show my pussy power.”
Nova says she realized her affinity for gangbangs early on.
"I feel like a lot of women have a gangbang fantasy but not many are willing to speak it out loud,” Nina continues. “But the moment I got offered one, I was in my element. And I started to see how the fans loved it and I excel at it.
“I enjoy it and I think that shows. It actually feels good. I think with all my gangbangs there is no doubt I’m having fun and enjoying myself.”
She attended her third AVN Adult Entertainment Expo this past January—the first time as a nominee—making appearances at the Evolved Fights booth, RealLifeXXX, InkedVixens and BasisDx.
“I signed at a few different booths this year and I carried myself differently,” Nina says. “I brought my own prints and my own DVDs this year. It solidified it for me with all the hard work I’ve been doing.”
As she looks ahead, Nova says she wants to do an even bigger gangbang and she’s starting to do more femdom work. She also wants to do more of the Expo circuit and dive deeper into fetish performing.
“And I’m working on doing more trans and queer studio work,” Nina adds. “I also want to go overseas this year and take this brand global.”
Photography by @PepperNoirLA
