Porn star Jonathan Agassi has opened up in a candid interview, about how his drug addiction lead him to lose his job, and how his employer Lucas Entertainment left him out to dry.
In the interview with Attitude magazine, despite being nauseatingly egotistical, Agassi explains how adult film studios lure you in with the promise of making you “famous” enough (Agassi uses the phrase a number of times, arguably incorrectly) to then become a high-end escort – because porn itself doesn’t pay well.
Once these men start escorting, Agassi says that their clients frequently want to do drugs together, which in turn leads to their addiction. But as soon as that happens, the studio flings them out on their ass.
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“Normally I don’t talk shit about the porn industry because I cannot be ungrateful about it, but I can say they kicked me out in a split second without ever asking how I am doing”, he told Attitude magazine.
So, like most jobs then? Generally, if people turn up to work gurning their tits off they get the sack. And I’ve known a fair few people who’ve lost their jobs that way.
Employers don’t often care if you’re OK, they care if you’re getting the work done, which is what you’re being paid to do. But Agassi goes on to explain, “I was their main star in everything, and I know I made millions for them”, which isn’t often the case with most 9 – 5’s.
And when you think about a studio using an individual to cash in – at such high stakes – it paints a vividly bleak image of the greedy, compassionless world we live in. Of course, it wasn’t right for Agassi to rock up chewing his eyebrow, but because drug addiction is still such a taboo, it’s automatically dismissed, rather than seen for what it is: a mental health issue.
Just recently ITV announced that they would be improving their aftercare for reality TV stars after Love Island‘s Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gardon both committed suicide last year. A number of stars have spoken about the “fall” after the initial fame, and as the production company catapult these young, aspirational men and women into a level of temporary stardom, while making ridiculous amounts of money and leaving the individuals basically penniless, (sold to them on the premise that they’ll be famous, which many conflate with being wealthy), it’s their responsibility to make sure they’re OK.
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So is it time for the porn industry to follow suit? It’s fair to say that countless more porn stars have committed suicide than these two that were on Love Island, but there’s not even a whisper of an aftercare package; perhaps because ITV is a mainstream network and porn – like drug addiction – is another taboo of our blinded society. But at the end of the day, sex workers are still human beings.
Although if studios were to care for every porn star that had a drug addiction there’d be no hours left in the day to actually make any porn, it’s not like they can’t afford to employ counsellors or at the very least check-in on the mentally-affected men who bring them in big bucks.