Magdalene St. Michaels: A Good Year to Be 'A Certain Age'

LOS ANGELES—There’s nothing typical about adult performer Magdalene St. Michaels. When she decided to make her move into the adult industry—after a chance meeting with Girlfriends Films owner Dan O’Connell at the 2007 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo—at age 49 she was already three decades older than the average newbie. And what followed was a career fueled in part by her natural sensuality and in part by skills from her mainstream career, which included singing, dancing and acting. Following her own trajectory, St. Michaels worked when she could find the right roles, and sometimes when she couldn’t she shot her own projects. But the elegant brunette recently took a bit of a hiatus starting in April 2016, after the movie Lesbian Massage came out from Sweetheart Video. This year, she’s come surging back with major roles in two movies that are out already, and one very special project that will debut later this year. That movie reunites St. Michaels with director Nica Noelle, for whom she worked on many titles under Mile High Media’s Sweetheart Video and Sweet Sinner imprints. Noelle, who has spent the last several years directing Mile High’s TransSensual and Icon Male studios, now has turned her attention to a bold new initiative: working with Swedish director Erika Lust to relaunch LustCinema, a new U.S. studio where female directors can create cinematic, plot-driven feature movies and original series. For her first LustCinema project, Noelle penned a script titled Women of a Certain Age. “I decided to do a movie with Magdalene St. Michaels … to me, she is the grande dame of porn in terms of acting and in terms of passionate sex scenes—I don’t think there’s anybody like her in the industry. Her authenticity is off the charts, and she’s fearless in front of the camera. ... There’s no vanity—she inhabits the role, and that’s what I really wanted.” Two other cast members also had done a lot of work with Noelle before: Michael DelRay and Dante Colle. “I was always really impressed by them,” she said. “I used both of them a lot on the gay side [for Icon Male]. I knew they were both bi. And I thought it would be nice to bring them over to this movie.” St. Michaels describes her character: “I’m a 60-year-old woman who’s recently lost my husband—he’s passed away—and I’m a professor. I’ve kind of lost my sense of identity through my husband, and we never had children.” She had taken time off from work to take care of her husband, and is now facing up to the loss and seeing a therapist (Dana Vespoli) to grapple with how her identity was tied up with her deceased spouse. Along the way, one of the professor’s students, played by DelRay, instigates a relationship with her. The course of intergenerational love doesn’t run smoothly, though. “It was really great because I’m really into the acting,” St. Michaels said. “This seems to be a more in-depth storyline.” Above, Michael DelRay and Magdalene St. Michaels in Women of a Certain Age, coming in September from LustCinema, Erika Lust's new U.S. imprint. And there’s lots more character development to come in future episodes. “I asked Nica yesterday, ‘What’s it going to be?’ And she said, ‘We’re going to mix it up.’ There’s going to be all kinds of relationships in there. It might be girl/girl, it might be trans.” Noelle explained, “My career has gone through all the genres. I started in girl/girl, went to straight, then went to trans and gay. I’ve really tried to make sure that I could work with everybody.” When Erika Lust told Noelle to make the movie she had always wanted to make, Noelle jumped at the chance to blend the genres together. Noelle cast Dana Vespoli, “who is a good friend of mine and a director I admire for so many reasons,” as a manipulative therapist who “tries to mess with Magdalene’s head in a couple of ways that aren’t too nice. And Dana meanwhile is also seeing Dante Colle as a patient, and messing with his mind as well.” Women of a Certain Age is set to launch in September, along with the debut of LustCinema as a U.S. studio. Noelle describes the finished product: “It’s very psychologically heavy. There’s no campiness, there’s no comic relief. It’s not over the top. The pacing is very slow. The sex scene doesn’t happen until 30 minutes into the movie. … It was the movie I wanted to make.” And once she turned it into the LustCinema team, Noelle was asked to run the U.S. production of LustCinema. “When they saw it they said, OK, we want you to help us do this in the U.S. because you clearly know what we want.” The first four episodes of Women of a Certain Age showcase Magdalene’s character, but Noelle will focus on other characters in future episodes. “Why this project is so dear to me, I can finally bring in gay performers to showcase gay relationships, trans performers, trans relationships—it doesn’t have to be straight boy/girl sex all the time. I can blend the genres as the story evolves. So we’re not fetishizing anybody. We're bringing people into the story and it doesn’t matter if they’re straight or gay or trans—everybody is welcome in this studio, and that’s very unusual in American porn.” Above, Magdalene St. Michaels; photo courtesy of LustCinema Until the debut of Women of a Certain Age, fans can enjoy St. Michaels in Sweetheart Video’s Confessions of a Sinful Nun 2: The Rise of Sister Mona. In the movie, which just came out this month on DVD, St. Michaels plays Mother Joan, who heads the convent where the titular Sister Mona (Mona Wales) was sent in the first installment of this “nunsploitation” trilogy directed by Ricky Greenwood. Greenwood told AVN he became interested in casting St. Michaels when he saw her in older Sweetheart Video titles directed by Noelle. “She told me that she used to be an actress,” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Let’s see.’ A lot of girls say that and they end up being OK but not great. But she’s amazing.” Greenwood ended up casting her in both Confessions 2 and A Woman’s Promise. He said she was good in the latter, but was much more intense in the Confessions sequel. “Her role in that movie, she’s mean,” Greenwood said. “She gives you goosebumps. I was talking to another person who saw the movie and he said he was scared for Mona at some point. She’s a very good actress; she takes it seriously.” St. Michaels said of the role, “I get to be a real hardass. … It was great working on that movie.” Above, Magdalene St. Michaels in Confessions of a Sinful Nun 2: The Rise of Sister Mona (Sweetheart Video) Greenwood also appreciates what she brings to sex scenes—a skill that few performers possess. “Charlotte Stokely can do it, Mona can do it. They have this pace. … [New] girls want to go fast and they feel if it’s slow it’s not interesting, so they try to change positions always. Those girls will say, ‘Stay there—take your time.’ And they will make the scene so beautiful.” In Confessions 2, St. Michaels finally got to work with Nina Hartley, and their sex scene was extremely emotional—but also challenging because of the setting in a nunnery, with narrow one-person beds. “We did the dialog ... it was very emotional leading up to it,” St. Michaels recalled. And once the action started, “you’re limited on that shoot because all the beds are this wide. ... They were going to have me scream because I see the devil over her head, and Ricky was like, ‘No no no—don’t do that.’ … Because I was so invested in this script, somehow I got into it and got emotional and was literally crying.” Afterward, her character feels so guilty, “I have to whip myself with my beads for having sinned. … I’ve given in to the devil.” Will Mother Joan return in the third installment of Confessions of a Sinful Nun? St. Michaels won’t find out until the movie begins production in November. “Everyone wants to know what’s happening in the third one,” Greenwood says. “I’m looking at casting. I think a lot of people will come back—it’s the epic finale. … I know where I want to go—I know some stuff that I want to keep secret for now. But I don’t think it will go where people expect. I also have people reaching out saying, ‘I want to be in it.’ … Let’s see if I can make room.” Above, Magdalene St. Michaels in Confessions of a Sinful Nun 2 (Sweetheart Video) With three high-profile movies out in 2019—the third, the Sweetheart Video drama A Woman’s Promise, paired her with Ivy Wolfe, AVN’s reigning Best New Starlet—St. Michaels is definitely having a moment, despite being a “woman of a certain age.” In fact, she’s pleased to still be working after 12 years in a business where many performers don’t last six months. “I’ve never had an agent and I’ve never pushed. There’s so many companies in the business that do girl/girl that I’ve never worked for. But it’s an age thing too,” she says. But she’s not sorry to have started where she did. “The fact that I got into this business late in life, instead of ... in my early 20s, it wouldn’t have been good for me. I would have wanted to please everybody. So I got in at the right time. Hopefully I can do more stuff.” And along the way she’s tried to share the lessons she’s learned, including in an essay last year about depression and mental health. After it was published on AVN.com, St. Michaels says, “It’s been really touching to read the responses, not only on Twitter but also people emailing me. Right from the get-go it was really good.” She adds, “I count my life as decades. I’ve been different in every decade. You can never put an old head on young shoulders. … I’ve always been on a spiritual journey since I can remember. Always searching and looking for answers.” Above, Magdalene St. Michaels in Confessions of a Sinful Nun 2 (Sweetheart Video)