Pamela ChelinIn January, as an intern at Lazard Asset Management, Paige Jennings created a Twitter account where she posted nude photos of herself. She didn’t anticipate that within 24 hours of posting them, her Wall Street employers would discover her budding porn star alter ego, Veronica Vain.
“Obviously I put the pictures there as a marketing move and eventually wanted a lot of attention, but I didn’t think it would happen that quickly. I didn’t think it would first be discovered by my own company,” says Jennings.
Her superiors’ reactions weren’t what one would expect. “It was actually comical,” says Jennings. “They weren’t scolding me. The boss's boss, who I had caught staring at my ass, had laughter in his voice. He couldn't believe he was having this conversation.” Still, she was fired. One of her former colleagues then informed Bro Bible that Jennings had been fired for posting the photos, which prompted an article. Soon Business Insider followed. “That is when all the calls and emails started coming in. Media, porn, everyone was at me,” says Jennings.
Jennings is not alone in leaving what is perceived to be a respectable job for porn. Porn actress Nicole Aniston was a bank teller and Mercedes Carrera was an engineer. Jennings says porn beats sitting at a desk all day and that she never fit into “the corporate box” with her “ballsy, fearless and shameless” personality. Plus, she says she genuinely loves sex. Her Twitter bio says “I just left a job on Wall Street for a porn career because I can't stop masturbating at work and love cumshots.”
“I'm not coming from a position of desperation or victimization,” she says. “I couldn't handle the office world, so I went to porn. Girls with bad pasts don't grow up to graduate from college and get a job on Wall Street. I'm clearly an adult who had an education who chose this path.” She laughs at the suggestion that she gives additional meaning to the term “money shot.”
Veronica Vain; Credit: Photo by Chris Streams
Though a newcomer to porn, the 23-year-old Florida native has accumulated almost 85,000 Twitter followers in four months. “I feel flattered,” says Jennings. “I didn’t think everyone would find me this interesting. It’s definitely cool because a lot of people think I'm hot. But it's high pressure and I hope I can deliver. Usually, when a girl starts to get a lot of attention, she's already done a lot of porn. I have to perform or people will write me off.”
A few months ago, Jennings came to Los Angeles to shoot her first porn film, Screwing Wall Street: Arrangement Finders IPO, which was released yesterday through production company Evil Angel. She says there was one on-set surprise she hadn’t anticipated. “I thought it would be a lot more centered around the actual sex. But it’s not. That is the fun, but it's actually the shortest part of the day. Most of the day was shooting dialogue over and over again and getting ready to shoot dialogue just like shooting any movie.”
Jennings used her financial background to add to the film’s authenticity. “The movies I'm interested in making have better story lines than, ‘Hi, I’m a nurse why don’t you have sex with me?’” she says. “My movie has a much more interesting storyline than typical porn. Instead of buying stocks, I'm having sex to have information to trade on. And I helped make the script more consistent with finance. For example, the script referred to junk bonds and I told them, 'It's not the '80s. They have mortgage backed securities now.'”
Additionally, Jennings used her financial experience to negotiate a six-figure deal for herself. “I have a finance degree and I know the value of marketing,” she says. “They came at me with a deal and I told them I wanted more. It's that simple. I was a stripper once. I know how to haggle.” Jennings says that porn typically pays by the scene and not per film. Most porn actresses, she says, would have received between $1,000 and $1,500 for a first scene.
Ashley Madison, which owns a website for extra-marital dating, casual encounters and discreet affairs, agreed to a product placement in the film for their sugar-daddy website, Arrangement Finders. “They make a lot of money. I knew that,” Jennings says. “I'm their demographic, the girl they want to sell to their user base — sexual, young, ambitious, decently eloquent and experienced with the lifestyle. I have had great experiences with sugar daddies in the past.”
Jennings says that because porn is not very profitable, she is going to use her business acumen to try to make changes to the industry. Having been recently referred to by Dealbreaker as a “porntrepeneur,” Jennings says, “There's a lot to be done and I want to be a part of it. Porn is an inefficient market and it is not sleazy. It's a business like every business. There are a lot of frontiers that have yet to be explored. I'm not going to be the savior of porn, but I think I can make some noise.”
Currently in negotiations with a sex toy company, Jennings says that the porn industry needs to bring in more strategic partnerships with a wider variety of product placements. Additionally, she says the porn industry needs to look to the music industry as an example in order to make “a la carte porn” available. Jennings is trying to create a partnership with a soon to be launched porn mobile app. “Porn needs to do what Apple did and add value with way porn is consumed. People still have free music with streaming sites like Pandora, but everyone has iTunes on their phone and everyone makes dollar impulse purchases. They are fast and convenient. Someone could go and buy all my scenes and store them in a library. There are people who would do that.”
Jennings, who had her breasts augmented for the second time (from 32D to 32 triple D), says she’ll ultimately move to L.A. from New York. She will return to L.A. next month to shoot more scenes. “Everyone is booking me. I'm trying to spread it out so I don't get too worn out.”
She says it's not only sex that turns her on, but also the idea of people watching her having sex. Watching her own self have sex, however, was strange. “I was like, ‘Wow, that is my O face? Oh shit, I don’t think that’s attractive.’ But I hope the world does.”
Jennings says her mother and boyfriend are supportive of the move, and that she has encountered relatively few haters. “I’m not getting as much backlash as you'd think. It’s kind of hard to hate on me. I never live my life by what other people think and want. And I’m not hurting anyone, so what is the problem?”
Pamela Chelin on Twitter:
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter:
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.