Sasha Grey: THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE

Sasha Grey a adult porn super star in mainstream film about a paid escort directed by Steven Soderbergh

Two-One-Three - By Jason Coleman
Making a fictional film about the dark world of paid escorts is controversial indeed, but using an actual porn

actress as your mainstream lead is even more so. That’s the predicament that adult film star Sasha Grey found herself in after being cast to star in the latest film from acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh called THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE. Referring to a call girl that provides deep French kissing, “full service” intercourse with protection and oral sex without protection, the films has Grey playing an elite call girl who juggles clients and her trainer boyfriend, played by Chris Santos. The213.net recently got a chance to sit down with Grey to talk all about working with Soderbergh, her research for the role and what the future holds in terms of both adult and mainstream films.

213): What did you know about Steven Soderbergh before you started shooting The Girlfriend Experience?

Sasha Grey: I knew I was a fan! My first meeting was really exciting and I felt like a bumbling little kid. It was a forty-five minute meeting at the Warner Bros. office and it wasn’t a traditional audition of casting session or anything like that. We just talked about The Girlfriend Experience and where he wanted to go with it.

(213): Did you get a chance to interview any real life high-end escorts and how did that inform your performance?
Sasha Grey: I met two, but interestingly enough the two women that I met their real life tendencies played heavily in the film and that came more from Steven’s end of things. The personality books – one of the women we met really does screen her clients like that. The fact that she buys prepaid phones, one of the women was very paranoid and she doesn’t take her ID, her personal information, nothing with her, but she does buy prepaid phones. The whole writing in her diary about what the date was like, one of the women did that because her whole idea behind that is that if she’s really supposed to care about these guys but she has a long list of them she has to remember things about them. What’s your dog’s name, what’s you favorite color, things like that – the little things that your girlfriend would know.

(213): Seeing that the film had a lot of improvisational, what did the script look like and what were you given to work with?

Sasha Grey: It was about a fifteen-page outline. I would say each scene was there, but it wasn’t really a script. It might say ‘Sex Scene with Client B’, but there’s obviously no sex in the film, so we would get to set and look at that outline. Sometimes we would pick up the daily newspaper and if there’s something that jumped out at us, especially because we started shooting literally the day after the economy crashed, we would pick things from current events that we felt related to our characters.

(213): Has the crossover between adult and mainstream films been difficult?
SG: I’ve kind of been taking it in baby steps right now because my manager and I agreed that we should wait for the film to come out before we go knocking on people’s doors (laughs), so that process will start very soon. But I think people have been very accepting of it just because they hear Sasha Grey alongside Steven Soderbergh and they’re like if he took this chance on her then maybe we can. But I don’t think I’ll be cast as Zach Efron’s girlfriend in his next movie – I don’t think I’ll be in a teen movie and I’m okay with that.

(213): With this film are you going to transition out of the porn industry and concentrate on mainstream films?

Sasha Grey: Right now I want to do both. I think it’s unprecedented that a woman from the adult industry has been able to juggle both at the same time. So I think the climate is right and I think that if people enjoy what I do outside of adult films that there is room for growth and there is room for opportunity. I’m locked to shoot a film in August – I have the lead role and I don’t play a sex worker. (Laughs) I also have two other scripts that I was just offered that aren’t in preproduction yet, but their looking for casting. Again, they’re both very challenging, very different roles, which I’m really excited about because I think that’s that next obvious evolutional step. Plus I’m shooting my directorial debut inside of the adult world in a week and a half called The Fuck Junkie.