NEW YORK — The Daily Beast published today an in-depth interview with Maitland Ward, promoting her recently released memoir, “Rated X.”
The in-person interview, conducted by Senior Entertainment Editor Marlow Stern at the publication’s New York headquarters, is headlined “Maitland Ward Gave Up Sitcom Stardom for Porn. And She’s Happier Than Ever.”
In his introduction, Stern retells the journey of how “the fun redhead on the seminal ABC sitcom ‘Boy Meets World,’ has transformed into an award-winning porn star whose mission is to shatter the divide between mainstream and adult films,” and calls “Rated X” a “page-turner of a memoir.”
Ward expanded on the book’s stories, with new revelations about what her family thinks about her career and her role as Rachel in “Boy Meets World.”
“I came in as this tall girl with red hair, and I was only a couple of years older than him,” Ward said of the sitcom’s male star, Ben Savage, currently running for a seat on the West Hollywood City Council. “But they had all grown up with each other on the show and I was this new, exotic thing — this unicorn in the wild that he was trying to discover.”
Ward added that the creators of “Boy Meets World” wanted her to be “this sexual butt of the joke on the show, but at the same time they were saying, ‘Oh, we’re not doing that — and you shouldn’t be doing that outside of work.’ Looking back, I didn’t even conceptualize how much Rachel was used as a sexual prop on the show — like me choking on a hot dog and Matt Lawrence coming up behind me and giving me the Heimlich but thrusting me over the counter.”
The reigning XBIZ Performer of the Year said she doesn’t know “why people want me to be this ‘good girl’ but also ‘sexy-sexy.’ It’s really bizarre. And on ‘Boy Meets World,’ it was amplified all the time, and it got me really confused. When I had to dance around in lingerie and be half-naked and the butt of the jokes, that was one thing, but then, yeah, you immediately step off the soundstage and it’s like, ‘You don’t shame yourself.’”
Stern also asked Ward about her complicated relationship with former friend and “White Girls” co-star Terry Crews, currently a notorious anti-porn activist and propagandist for the discredited theory of supposedly cocaine-like “porn addiction.”
“Once I got into anything ‘adult’ he immediately unfollowed me on Twitter and had to push me away like that,” Ward revealed. “It’s not like we were close, but it was a nice friendship. I’d see him at events and stuff. But he came out so hard against porn, sex work, and sex industries, because he has a problem with sex addiction — which is his deal. People have their own problems, but that doesn’t mean you get to make the decisions for everyone … He comes out and tries to destroy all porn careers, and all their livelihoods, and encourages his followers to do so — and it’s not that he even comes out against it, but he’s this vigilante against it.”
The Vixen Media Group contract star also described her working relationship with Deeper’s Kayden Kross, which she said “gives me a chance to be able to play out such wonderfully scripted pieces, and have a high budget for big films.
“We’re doing this five-part film series now, ‘Drift,’ and it’s sort of a metaphor to my story — a much darker, devious metaphor,” Ward added. “I play this Hollywood sitcom star and then off-stage I go into the night, engage in all these sexual escapades, and really discover myself. It’s like ‘Natural Born Killers’ meets ‘WandaVision’ … We’ve always wanted to incorporate good filmmaking with hot sex. That was my dream in the beginning, and I was really fortunate to meet Kayden and for us to collaborate. We really want to bridge mainstream and porn completely, and show the public at large that there can be good filmmaking and hot sex all at once.”
To read “Maitland Ward Gave Up Sitcom Stardom for Porn. And She’s Happier Than Ever,” visit TheDailyBeast.com.
For more about “Rated X,” visit SimonandSchuster.com.
Follow Maitland Ward on Twitter.
Main Image: Maitland Ward at the “Rated X” event Barnes & Noble at The Grove in Los Angeles. (Photos: Gustavo Turner)
