Queenie Sateen Tells Amanda Lepore How to Make It as a Pornstar

Just over a year-and-a-half ago, queer New York nightlife legend and musician Queenie Sateen packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. But it wasn’t traditional fame she was after. Rather, Sateen found herself gracing a sultrier silver screen as an adult actress and singer with a knack for creativity (she helps score and style some of the features she stars in), quickly rising the “most watched” charts on some of your favorite tube sites. “Porn is an art, like music, like photography,” she tells her friend and fellow performance artist Amanda Lepore shortly after being appointed Pornhub’s newest brand ambassador. “I just want to be able to show that to people.”

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SATEEN: Hey, Amanda.

LEPORE: Hi.

SATEEN: I’m so excited to talk to you. I miss you so much.

LEPORE: I miss you too.

SATEEN: I miss New York, but I mostly miss going to yoga with you. Remember when we went to hot yoga in full makeup and it all melted off? [Laughs]

LEPORE: Oh, yeah. I don’t like hot yoga so much.

SATEEN: So, they want me to talk a bit about how I’m the new PornHub brand ambassador. What’s your favorite kind of porn, Amanda?

LEPORE: I like gang bang porns because I like to look at lots of dicks.

SATEEN: I do love lots of dicks. There’s nothing better.

LEPORE: [Laughs] I never did anything like that. I never even did a threesome before.

SATEEN: Really?

LEPORE: Yeah. But if I’m alone and want to get off, then I’ll watch that.

SATEEN: That’s so hot. I haven’t done a gang bang yet.

LEPORE: Oh, it looks like a lot. [Laughs]

SATEEN: I’ve done a couple of orgies on camera, and it’s always so much. Think about when you’re in the club with everyone’s energy, and you need to go home and be alone. It’s kind of like that, but more intense because you’re getting fucked by everyone.

LEPORE: Wow. 

SATEEN: [Laughs]

LEPORE: I don’t think I could ever do that. I’m more one on one. I get jealous and everything. So I’m weird that way, but I’m clearly open-minded. [Laughs]

SATEEN: So Amanda, I’m dying to hear what you think of my transitioning from club kid-slash-musician to budding porn starlet?

LEPORE: Well, when you hear about porn before, it’s usually desperate girls or it has a sense of tragedy. But in your case, it’s just what you love to do and you’re making a good living from it, so it’s amazing.

SATEEN: Thank you. I feel like the trope of sex work being out of desperation isn’t really a thing in the porn world. I’ve met so many just smart business-minded women that just love to fuck, and love to be on camera. It’s really a performance more than anything.

LEPORE: For sure.

SATEEN: I see it as an avenue for people to express their other talents. For instance, I’ve written three songs for porn this year. I also just did my first wardrobe styling gig. I don’t know if you knew this, but in porn they do feature movies. I styled an entire cowboy movie and I wrote a country song and I also had lesbian sex in it.

LEPORE: Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Is the makeup different in porn? What do they do if someone comes in your face or something? 

SATEEN: So there’s a couple really great artists in the industry. They don’t really use a different foundation or lash glue. It’s just the regular stuff. Sometimes they’re using Charlotte Tilbury Foundation—

LEPORE: So it’s kind of like real life glamour makeup.

SATEEN: Exactly. I want to look perfect throughout the whole scene, even after I’ve given a sloppy blowjob, but a lot of the time it’s just not possible. You have to let go of looking perfect. I feel naked without lip liner—

LEPORE: Right.

SATEEN: So I always want to have a lip liner on the little nightstand in these scenes and just constantly be retouching my lips, but unfortunately that’s not part of it. Though I did realize that the Charlotte Tilbury lip liner does stay on throughout a sloppy blowjob.

LEPORE: Well, I’ve been using Dafna Beauty. She does retro makeup, like red lipsticks and some fuchsia and stuff, but it’s really hard to get off. You might want to investigate that.

SATEEN: Link me girl.

LEPORE: And House Labs has that lipstick that’s kiss proof, but the only drawback with it is that it’s really dry. 

SATEEN: It’s a little bit crumbly on the dick?

LEPORE: I think so. If I were to do a porn, I would use the Dafna Beauty one. But it’s not transfer free, but you would have to just be sucking or kissing softly and stuff and everything.

SATEEN: For sure. You know what has become my thing in porn, Amanda? I squirt gallons and gallons. I squirt like crazy.

LEPORE: Oh my god. It’s rare, right? For girls to squirt.

SATEEN: It’s not rare, but not every girl knows how to do it. I believe that everyone can sing, and I believe that everyone with a vagina can squirt. I just think you just have to be fucked hard enough with a girthy enough dick.

LEPORE: Do you have control over it?

SATEEN: Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. I feel like it’s become kind of second nature to me. I’ll just be very hydrated and then if I’m being fucked in a certain position, all I’ll have to do is be fucked really intensely, and then it’ll just kind of happen.

LEPORE: Oh, okay.

SATEEN: But I don’t know, for other people it might be different. Amanda, you know what my fondest memories with you is?

LEPORE: What?

SATEEN: Sitting in the corner at On Top [Susanne Bartsch’s notorious New York party] when we used to host together, just watching videos of rib removal surgery.

LEPORE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SATEEN: I still want that. Should I go to Doctor—

LEPORE: I don’t know. It kind of freaks me out when they take out the actual bone. I just had the one in the back like broken and pushed in. So there’s no scars or anything. It seems like too much to remove like a whole rib. I think it would mess up your posture and stuff.

SATEEN: Right. You kind of need all your bones. [Laughs]

LEPORE: Yeah, or you would have to wear a corset. It sounds quite weird. The other one makes sense to me because sometimes when people wear corsets and stuff, the bone fractures or breaks. Like with Thierry Mugler years ago, models would complain that it was broken after doing the show.

SATEEN: Right. Did you go to Tijuana for your rib breaking surgery?

LEPORE: I went to Guadalajara.

SATEEN: Do you think he’s still doing it, your doctor? 

LEPORE: I don’t know, that was over 20 years ago. But I was impressed. I thought that the hospital facilities were really good. It seemed nicer than New York, kind of.

SATEEN: Oh, glam. So the Guadalajara hospitals were giving?

LEPORE: I mean, I wouldn’t go back now, like I have more money thankfully. [Laughs[ I could get it down by a good doctor in New York now.

SATEEN: I think about it sometimes, but then I’m scared of going under the knife again. Remember when I got the BBL? That’s such a crazy procedure.

LEPORE: Well, liposuction is kind of violent. 

SATEEN: Yeah. I’m glad they knocked me out for that one. I guess it isn’t a baby procedure, but I think of it that way because everyone gets BBLs now. But you’ve had a fat ass before it was a thing. You were like the trendsetter with that body type.

LEPORE: Yeah. I didn’t do the BBL because I was always skinny, so I don’t think I had enough fat. I did it with silicone, but it was when silicone was legal. So it was done super well and it didn’t move.

SATEEN: Yeah, you have the best pump ever.

LEPORE: I mean, I spent about $40,000 on it, so it wasn’t cheap.

SATEEN: Most expensive body on earth. So Amanda, if you were going to direct a porn, or if you were going to creatively envision a porn that you would star in, what would the plot be?

LEPORE: Oh my god. I don’t know. I think if I was into it, I would’ve done it. I mean, I was a dominatrix for years.

SATEEN: For sure. And you still strip?

LEPORE: I do, yeah.

SATEEN: The show that you did at the trans strip night in New York was so iconic. You popped the lipstick out of your pussy and then you applied it.

LEPORE: Yes.

SATEEN: Iconic. I think if I was going to pop anything out of my pussy on stage, it would be a rhinestone vape and then I would vape.

LEPORE: [Laughs] That would be cute.

SATEEN: And I would credit Amanda. Do you have any other questions for me about porn?

LEPORE: I mean, I heard that from people that it’s not that sexy because they tell you what to do and everything. So it doesn’t seem as good as intimacy or the real thing. Is it more like acting?

SATEEN: Okay, so I was in the super slutty era when I first came in porn, so I think being able to fuck people I didn’t know, in front of people—I did get some kind of satisfaction out of it. But after you do it over a hundred times, it is very much a performance. Sometimes it’s way more fun and passionate. Sometimes it’s like you are doing a bit and it’s more active.

LEPORE: I guess it just depends on the connection, right? 

SATEEN: For sure. There are some really, really hot girls and super hot guys in the industry, and when you work with them, it’s kind of like, “hell yeah, I get to have a fun day on set.” It’s a performance, but there’s also real chemistry. 

LEPORE: What happens if you’re with someone and you’re not attracted to them? 

SATEEN: You have to act like you are. You don’t really necessarily get to choose who you’re working with. I would say 80 percent of the time it’s someone that’s chill, and then there’s the other 10 percent where it’s like, “I’m going to act like this is the best sex I’ve ever had.” But most of the time it’s pretty awesome.

LEPORE: What was the worst experience that you had and what was the best?

SATEEN: The worst was I had to work with someone that I really, really didn’t like. And every time I was on camera with him, I was acting like I enjoyed it and I was having fun, and then every time we would cut, I would literally act like he didn’t exist. And I kind of got off on it. 

LEPORE: [Laughs] Yeah. You were in control. 

SATEEN: And then the best scenes I’ve done are the ones that I’ve been able to make music for because—like you said, we are cut from the same cloth. We invented ourselves in New York nightlife, and we create our own image through the things that inspire us. So every time I can incorporate that, every time I can make music and express my creativity, those are my favorite scenes. It’s not even necessarily about the sex, it’s about what I want to put into the world. I want whoever’s watching the porns that I’m in to see a really nuanced creative person—and also a hot bitch.

LEPORE: Oh, I love that. Well, I’m so happy for you, it’s great that you’re successful at what you like to do. 

SATEEN: Thank you so much.

LEPORE: And I’m glad that you have so much control and power from it that you’re not like one of those girls that just need money. You know what I mean?

SATEEN: For sure. I think that that’s kind of a misconception of girls in porn. Porn is an art, like music, like photography, and I just want to be able to show that to people.

LEPORE: That’s amazing.

SATEEN: Thank you so much, Amanda.

LEPORE: Aw, I love you.

SATEEN: I love you so much.

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Creative Direction: Jess Cuevas

Fashion: Pornhub and Willy Chavarria