No Laurel Resting Here: Best New Starlet Abella Danger

CHATSWORTH, Calif.—When we first met Abella Danger, literally the day she stepped foot into Porn Valley in the fall of 2014, she made this unabashedly audacious proclamation to us: "I see myself being one of the top performers in the industry." Sure, many a fresh-off-the-busser before her has uttered the same, but very few of them have gone on to lay claim to the ultimate symbol of A-list status for a young pornling: the AVN Best New Starlet trophy. In other words, Abella Danger has officially proven her mettle as that rare porn star hopeful with the gumption to back up her pie-in-the-sky aspirations. But now that she's received this most rabidly yearned for mark of validation, is she sitting back to bask in the attendant glory? Not by a long shot. "I actually feel a lot of pressure now, because I just want to keep doing better," Danger told AVN. "I don't want to plateau. I just want to get better. So now I feel like I have this weight on my shoulders, like how do I go up from here?" A long-held piece of lore she intends at all costs to disprove is the so-called "Best New Starlet Curse" that seems to have befallen many of her predecessors. "I don't know what I can do to prove it untrue except keep working as much as I have been in the past year," she reflected. "I know I have a lot to learn, and I have a lot left to experience. So there's nothing else I want to do. I'm not going to be like starting new hobbies that are going to take me away from shooting at all. I'm really not going to change. I'm still working toward something. Yeah, I accomplished this one goal, but there's so much left." Among the endeavors she sees on her horizon: "I do want to direct a movie. I really, really, really, really want to direct a movie. And I definitely want to shoot a lot more features this year." Asked if there was anything she wanted to say that she neglected to in her on-stage acceptance speech, Danger was quick to repond, "I definitely would love to thank Phoenix Marie and Nikki Benz, because they're really awesome role models, and I look at them when I look at where I want to be in the industry one day." She also offered a more personal word of gratitude to the arguable king of the entire evening, director Greg Lansky, recalling that in her first month of working in L.A., "when a lot of people told me I was really bad, he was the first person to [say], "I really see potential in Abella, she's coming into her own as a performer.' And I'll never forget that. It really made me want to be better."