Cherie DeVille: Cherry on Top! (Interview)

“I have been in the adult industry for almost twelve years now, and I am currently 43 years old,” Cherie DeVille shared with YNOT Cam.

She continued, “I grew up predominantly between Washington DC and Cape Cod — winters in DC, and summers on the Cape!” which sounds like something out of a romance movie.

This also sounds so cinematic: “One fun fact that people don’t realize about me is I used to be a professional swing dancer, and I’m still very passionate about it.”

Swing dancing up and down the eastern seaboard — what more can we learn from Cherie DeVille? Read on to find out!

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YNOT Cam: What prompted you to begin your career in the industry and online?

Cherie DeVille: Before I was a performer, I was and still am a physical therapist, which I love. It’s very rewarding and a fantastic job, but I’ve always had a bit of a wild side. I’ve always been a little bit of an exhibitionist and used to be a big swinger, and when one of my friends told me about Model Mayhem, I actually put up a bunch of my pictures and started making what I call “fun money on the side” doing nude photography shoots.

Eventually, one of those shoots ended up in a low level men’s magazine, and my current agency — OC Modeling — found me online and asked if I wanted to do adult performance, which I had never thought of actually. I had never considered doing porn, and as I thought about it and looked into it and contacted a lawyer to make sure I couldn’t lose my [physical therapy] license, I just felt like it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

Mostly, I thought I would just get to a point in my life and look back at all the wonderful things I had done and just be one more adventure, but it turned into a career which is even more fabulous!

Though you don’t predominantly work online, what are some highlights, challenges, and general observations you have about that aspect of your work?

The past six years in my career, I have been making most of my money with my self produced content, which is online. So, I’d say some of the highlights are an increased autonomy and increased residual income. That, compared to what I was doing before, which was the same day paycheck.

And some of the challenges are logistical stuff. Your house is only so big, so making sure you can get multiple sets in the same place. Also, dealing with the boredom, for me, of often working alone is a challenge as I’m a very social person.

So, those are the biggest challenges — making my space look new and different all the time and realizing that now that I don’t work out of the house so much I need to build up those social opportunities in other parts of my life to fill that gap.

As a Brazzers contract star, what are some of the advantages to exclusivity in this manner in today’s industry? 

Even before I was a contract star, I was only working for other companies a couple times a month because I now put time into my self produced content. It was actually the perfect thing for me.

Being a contract star means I get paid far more doing the few scenes I have time to do than I would if I weren’t contracted. And Brazzers, as we know, is one of the biggest adult companies ever. So not only is the paycheck I get for being a contract star better than my previous rate but the exposure is insane.

Simple things like they have more money to spend on advertising than I do, while they are technically advertising a scene for Brazzers they are also advertising my name which translates into sales across all of my platforms. They may put a Traffic Junky ad on Pornhub for one of their scenes, but everytime that happens, all of my sites explode.

They also promote me on their social media which feeds my social media, which is one of my biggest means of advertising, so it’s a huge win-win.

Your column on the Daily Beast is amazing – Can you tell us more about it? 

The connection came about through my PR, the writing came about during the middle of the pandemic — because, like a lot of us, we were trapped inside, with a lot of things going on in the world, a lot of thoughts, a lot of emotions. For me, this is a really constructive way to vent. I asked my PR team if they could try and get it placed. They have connections with a lot of different news outlets, including the Daily Beast, who was very interested in it.

We’ve been collaborating for about a year now.

Do you feel pressure being a “voice for the industry” in this context?

As for the pressure, yeah it is a little bit of pressure. I feel the more people in the adult industry and sex work spectrum that can get their voices out in the mainstream, the better — but I’m just an opinionated lady. I certainly don’t think I’m a spokesperson for the entire industry.

At the same time, I like to call attention to what I feel are some of the issues in the mainstream that affect our industry. I feel like I would hate for anyone reading it to think that I was THE voice. I’m just an opinion, a voice, and hopefully humanize people in sex work. I hope I help people realize that all of us are multifaceted individuals with thoughts and opinions — not just objectified for sexual pleasure.

I’m in that weird generation where we don’t like to talk about money, but I do get paid. It’s not a huge amount, but to be honest I would probably do it for free. Not for the exposure, but because I’m passionate about advocacy and humanizing sex workers. If I can be one more sex worker voice that people see in the mainstream and say “Oh that’s an actual person,” that’s honestly enough payment for me — but the cash is nice too!

Doing an AMA on my instagram today!! I'm CherieDeVilleXO come ask me your questions!! pic.twitter.com/mSFGI2sDqG

— Cherie DeVille (@CherieDeVille) March 27, 2022

Can you tell us a bit about cammodelprotection.com? Why is it a good place for models to utilize? 

I’m their brand ambassador — have been for at least a year now, maybe two. I’ve been paying for their service for many years, really since I started putting up my own content online.

As we all know, piracy is a major issue for all content creators whether you’re a huge company or a tiny studio. And it just pisses me off seeing all my hard work getting put up on sites for free, getting stolen, getting put on tube sites and torrents and all that.

I love that they help me take down all of that content, doxing info on Google, impersonator accounts on social media and so on. It’s just so much work every week that it wouldn’t be something that I can put my personal time to with my tight schedule. I like to have my time spent working doing content creation and delegating tasks that don’t literally need to be done my be.

Get help taking down the fake social media accounts stealing your content and scamming your fans @cammodelprotect https://t.co/VVw8SN2Zo3

— Cherie DeVille (@CherieDeVille) March 29, 2022

Outside of work, what are you most interested in?

I am a huge nerd. I love playing Dungeons & Dragons, I love board games, I love video games and I love dance, especially swing dancing. I also love to travel, and lately I’ve been super into my plants.

During the pandemic, like a lot of us, we’ve been doing a lot more indoor activities as well, and one of those for me was creating a lot more plant space in my house and a bit of a garden oasis in the back. Caring for my plants has been a new passion of mine.

Find Cherie DeVille on Twitter at @CherieDeVille.

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Erika is a sex positive people watcher (and writer). Email her at erika@ynotcam.com.