Key facts
- Who: Cherie DeVille, American adult performer and writer, born 1978 or 1979; marketed online as “the internet’s stepmom” (Wikipedia; PAPER)
- First career: Doctor of physical therapy, licensed for 16 years when she spoke to MEL, five years into her adult career (MEL Magazine)
- Entered the industry: In her early thirties, around 2011 (Wikipedia; Mirror)
- Politics: Announced a 2020 presidential bid with Coolio in 2017; ended it in 2019 (The Hill; AVN)
- Advocacy: Open letter against Utah’s HB72 (2021); the face of Pornhub’s Utah block (2023); member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (Salt Lake Tribune; BBC; Vice)
- Mainstream: Liquid Death’s “Don’t F*** the Planet” campaign (2022); Netflix’s Money Shot: The Pornhub Story (2023) (PAPER; Dazed)
There is a type of performer the public almost never hears about: the one who came into this business late, with a degree, a license and a plan. Cherie DeVille is that performer. She is a doctor of physical therapy. Before her first scene she called a lawyer to protect her license. She opened her own practice so that no employer could fire her over her other job. Then she used the name she built in porn to run a presidential campaign, lobby a governor, star in a water commercial and speak for her industry on Netflix.
I’ve been in this industry for 14 years. I’m one of the most-searched male performers in the world, and I’ve worked with most of the top actresses of my generation. This column isn’t about any scene with her. It’s about her public story, which is all on the record, and about why I think every performer, male or female, should study how she handled it. So here’s the Cherie DeVille story from the sources, and then my take.
A doctor of physical therapy first
Her Wikipedia biography says she earned a doctorate in physical therapy and worked as a licensed clinician in Tennessee before changing careers in 2011, moving to California at age 32 (Wikipedia). In an interview with MEL Magazine she put her clinical career in numbers: “I’ve been licensed for 16 years. I practiced for a little while, then went back and got my doctorate” (MEL Magazine).
In 2024 she told the Mirror that the change was “really, really gradual. I didn’t just one day decide I was going to quit being a physical therapist and start being an adult performer.” She was “totally satisfied” with physical therapy. A friend introduced her to the site Model Mayhem, and her first sex work was nude modeling on weekends: “I was just loving it. And that is where I thought it would stop as sort of a little side hustle, a little extra money, some joy to bring to myself in that creative outlet” (Mirror).
Then an agent messaged her and asked if she wanted to shoot videos in Los Angeles. “I thought, look, I have a job. This is probably not for me, but I can’t say no to this,” she told the Mirror. “It was almost like a feeling of FOMO, like I can’t be 90 years old and say, ‘Oh, I could have done this amazing erotic film and had this unbelievable experience but I turned it down’” (Mirror).
A lawyer before the first scene
The detail that impressed me most comes from the MEL interview. Asked whether she worried that porn would affect her license, she said: “Before I did my first scene — besides telling all my friends and family what I was thinking of doing so they wouldn’t have to, like, randomly find out online and have their eyeballs burned — I contacted a lawyer to make sure I couldn’t lose my physical therapy license” (MEL Magazine).
She knew the law was only half the risk. “Of course, any individual company can fire me for any reason, and a lot of companies have morality clauses,” she said. “But ever since I started doing porn, to avoid the potential embarrassment of myself or my employer, I now have my own business. My boss, me, is probably not going to fire me.” At that point she was working as a physical therapist twice a week and shooting the rest of the time (MEL Magazine).
The trips to Los Angeles kept getting longer. “At one point I was going there once every few months. And then I was going once every month. And I got to the point where I was spending two weeks out of every month in Los Angeles. And I said, ‘This is not your side hustle,’” she told the Mirror. The pandemic made the final decision. When studio work stopped, she focused on her online platform, her following “blew up,” and “when the world opened back up, I had become so busy with my online platform that I actually didn’t really have time to do both jobs. And finally I took that one little toe in therapy out” (Mirror). By 2018, according to Wikipedia, she was shooting roughly 200 scenes a year (Wikipedia).
A presidential run with Coolio
In 2017 she announced she would run for president in 2020 as an independent, with the rapper Coolio as her running mate and the slogan “Make America F— Awesome Again” (Reason; Wikipedia). Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote that her “real mission is to challenge stereotypes about sex workers” (Reason).
She said as much to The Hill: “I just want to challenge the public opinion that a sex worker, just because they’re a sex worker, couldn’t be in public office.” She also insisted, “I am going to actually run for president,” and that “it’s evolved into a real and realistic run for president.” Of Coolio she said, “He’s lived and exemplifies what I consider the American dream” (The Hill). Her platform included net neutrality, limits on gun ownership, free college tuition and nationwide marijuana legalization (AVN).
It didn’t last. AVN reported in February 2019 that she had received “virtually no public support,” failed to attract investors and lost Coolio as a running mate for undisclosed reasons (AVN; The Hill). Her explanation, quoted by AVN, is brutally honest: “If we step out of our lane as—pardon my language—whores, now we are a problem and people don’t like it, in a way that I didn’t understand.” But she also said: “Even if it only showed five people that pornographers are real people with vast interests … then it was worth it for me” (AVN). She endorsed Bernie Sanders when she ended the bid (Wikipedia). She wasn’t the first performer to try this; Mary Carey ran for governor of California in 2003.
Taking on Utah
Her biggest political impact came later and closer to the ground. In March 2021, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that she had written an open letter in The Daily Beast urging Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to veto HB72, a bill that would require new phones and tablets sold in the state to block explicit content by default. “If you want to monitor what your kid watches on their phone, install parental controls that have existed since AOL,” she wrote. “If your kid still manages to watch porn, here’s an idea: Take away their phone” (Salt Lake Tribune).
Two years later, Utah passed SB287, requiring adult sites to verify users’ ages. Pornhub’s response was to block the state entirely. From May 2023, Utah residents who tried to visit the site saw a video of Cherie DeVille instead. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users,” she says in it. “In fact, [it] will put children and your privacy at risk.” The video asked lawmakers to “identify users by their device” instead (BBC). Vice identified her as a member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (Vice).
Liquid Death and Money Shot
She has also crossed into mainstream media in ways few performers manage. In April 2022 the water brand Liquid Death made her the spokesperson of its Earth Day campaign “Don’t F*** the Planet,” against single-use plastic bottles. The ad was directed and produced by Joanna Angel, who had joined the company’s marketing team, and Liquid Death co-founder Mike Cessario said “there’s nothing sexy” about it: it was “just this really unexpected person delivering a sustainability message” (PAPER; Adweek). She has also written for Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast (Wikipedia).
In 2023 she appeared in Netflix’s documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story. In an interview with Dazed about the film, she said: “Without credit card processing, we have nothing,” and “The war is not on sex trafficking, the war is on sex work. Sex work has been around longer than any job I can think of. Our industry won’t die. It will just be pushed underground, which will create danger for all of us.” On porn and sex education she had one of the best lines I’ve read on the subject: “Porn is a beautiful release. The hole it shouldn’t fill is sex education. You’re not watching The Fast and the Furious for driver’s ed” (Dazed).
Death threats, and why she did it anyway
The documentary came at a price. “Stuff like that is always terrifying because you’re really putting yourself out there. And for as many fans as I have, I have 10 times as many haters and that can become dangerous and violent,” she told the Mirror in 2024. “So even they [Netflix] had to purchase all kinds of online protections for me. I got lots of death threats. My poor family really went through it” (Mirror).
She said she did it because she could afford to. “So many of my peers, they don’t have the financial privilege that I do and they don’t have the career privilege that I have to sort of withstand that,” she said. “I have a strong family support system, a strong friend support system. I’m financially sound.” She called it her “duty” to be “an intelligent voice for the industry to help humanise us” (Mirror).
What every performer can learn from Cherie DeVille
- Check the legal risk before you start. She called a lawyer about her license before her first scene.
- Tell your people first. She told friends and family before they could find out online.
- Own the thing that can be taken away. Her own practice meant no morality clause could end her other career.
- Treat it as a business when it becomes one. She noticed when the side hustle was no longer a side hustle.
- Use your platform, but know the cost. Politics and documentaries brought threats as well as attention.
My Take (opinion — Maximo Garcia)
I’ve met a lot of people who want to get into this business, and almost none of them do what Cherie DeVille did before her first scene. She told her family. She called a lawyer. She thought about what her employer could do and made herself her own employer. That’s not the reckless, impulsive porn star people imagine. That’s a professional managing risk, and it’s exactly the advice I give anyone who asks me about starting. You can’t undo being searchable. So you plan before, not after.
Her presidential run is easy to laugh at, and I think plenty of people did. But read what she said when it ended. “If we step out of our lane… now we are a problem.” She’s right, and I’ve felt it myself. People are fine with performers as long as we stay on the screen. The moment one of us has an opinion about tax, guns, free speech or college tuition, it becomes a scandal. She didn’t win anything, but she made people look at that double standard, and “even if it only showed five people,” she thought it was worth it. I agree.
Where she really made a difference is Utah. Her letter to the governor was blunt and practical: parents already have tools, use them. And when Pornhub needed one person to explain to an entire state why age-verification by ID card puts privacy at risk, they chose her. That’s credibility you only get by being consistent for years.
The part I respect most is the end. She knew going on Netflix would bring threats to her and her family. She did it because, in her words, she had the financial and career privilege to survive it, and many of her peers don’t. That’s what leadership in this business looks like. Not just making money for yourself, but taking hits so others don’t have to. I write a lot about building that kind of security, money, family and a plan B, at maximogarciaworld.com.
If you like performers who kept another career or built a business, read my columns on Joanna Angel, who directed her Liquid Death ad; Sharon Mitchell, who went from performer to doctor; Nina Hartley, the nurse who became a sex educator; and Siri Dahl, who also fights for performers’ rights in politics.
👉 More from me at maximogarciaworld.com · Want the full collection? Subscribe at fuckingpornstars.net
FAQ
Who is Cherie DeVille?
Cherie DeVille is an American adult film actress and writer, born in 1978 or 1979, who holds a doctorate in physical therapy. She entered the industry in her early thirties and is known online as “the internet’s stepmom” (Wikipedia; MEL Magazine).
Is Cherie DeVille really a physical therapist?
Yes. She told MEL Magazine she had been licensed as a physical therapist for 16 years and went back to earn her doctorate. She kept practicing part-time in her own business after starting in adult film, and told the Mirror in 2024 that she stopped once her online work grew during the pandemic (MEL Magazine; Mirror).
Did Cherie DeVille run for president?
She announced a 2020 independent presidential bid in 2017 with rapper Coolio as her running mate and the slogan “Make America F— Awesome Again.” She ended it in early 2019 and endorsed Bernie Sanders (The Hill; Reason; AVN; Wikipedia).
What did Cherie DeVille do in Utah?
In 2021 she wrote an open letter urging Gov. Spencer Cox to veto HB72, a bill requiring porn filters on new phones and tablets. In 2023, when Pornhub blocked Utah over its age-verification law, Utah visitors saw a video message from her instead (Salt Lake Tribune; BBC; Vice).
How we fact-checked this
Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below and is reproduced as published; the campaign slogan’s profanity has been softened. Where sources differ, we note it: Wikipedia gives her birthplace as Durham, North Carolina, while The Hill described her as a “Washington, D.C., native,” so we leave her birthplace out of the main text. Her legal name, which appears in some press coverage, is deliberately not published here. Explicit scene content was left out to keep this page SFW. Opinions are Maximo Garcia’s own and are labeled as such.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Cherie DeVille — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherie_DeVille
- MEL Magazine: “The Multitasking MILF Who Is Taking the Term ‘Physical Therapy’ in New Directions” — https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-multitasking-milf-who-is-taking-the-term-physical-therapy-in-new-directions
- Mirror: Cherie DeVille on her career change (June 15, 2024) — https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/cherie-deville-porn-career-change-32999284
- Mirror: “Netflix star reveals why she supports the porn industry despite getting death threats” (June 16, 2024) — https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/netflix-porn-star-death-threats-33018296
- The Hill: Porn star and Coolio launching 2020 White House bid (2017, archived) — https://web.archive.org/web/20221013144620/https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/360399-porn-star-coolio-launching-2020-white-house-bid/
- The Hill: Porn star who planned ticket with Coolio ends 2020 White House bid (2019, archived) — https://web.archive.org/web/20240904035556/https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/427874-porn-star-who-planned-ticket-with-coolio-ends-2020-white-house/
- Reason: “Porn Star Cherie DeVille and Rapper Coolio Announce White House 2020 Bid” (Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Nov 16, 2017) — https://reason.com/2017/11/16/cherie-deville-and-coolio-2020/
- AVN: “Cherie DeVille Abandons 2020 Presidential Run” (Feb 2019) — https://avn.com/news/legal/cherie-deville-abandons-2020-presidential-run-165794
- Salt Lake Tribune: “Adult film star urges Gov. Cox to veto porn filter bill” (Bethany Rodgers, Mar 20, 2021) — https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/03/20/adult-film-star-urges/
- BBC News: Pornhub blocks access in Utah over age verification law (May 2023) — https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65464931
- Vice: Pornhub blocks Utah over age verification (Samantha Cole, May 1, 2023) — https://www.vice.com/en/article/pornhub-blocks-utah-age-verification/
- PAPER: “Porn’s Favorite Stepmom Won’t Let You ‘Fuck the Planet’” (Sandra Song, Apr 14, 2022) — https://www.papermag.com/liquid-death-commercial
- Adweek: Liquid Death recruits porn stars for a sustainability-themed campaign (2022) — https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/liquid-death-recruits-porn-stars-for-a-sustainability-themed-campaign/
- Dazed: Money Shot: The Pornhub Story interview with Suzanne Hillinger and Cherie DeVille (2023) — https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/58439/1/money-shot-a-pornhub-story-netflix-suzanne-hillinger-cherie-deville-interview
