Tori Black Appears on 'Ray Donovan'

HOLLYWOOD—Two-time AVN Female Performer of the Year and recent directorial debutante (for Elegant Angel Productions) Tori Black made a substantial appearance on Sunday night's episode of Showtime drama Ray Donovan. In a plotline clearly inspired by last year's scandal surrounding former Miramax and Disney executive Richard Nanula, Black played top porn star "Lexi Steele," the must-have sexual target of Hollywood bigwig Stu Feldman (Josh Pais). Having been rebuffed by her multiple times previously, Feldman sends Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) to Porn Valley to change her mind, promising in exchange to get Ray's daughter into the prestigious school she wants to attend. Problem is, as Lexi's husband/suitcase pimp Ricky (John Ales) lets Ray know in no uncertain terms, she's no hooker; she is an actress who has sex with other professional, tested actors on camera only. So Feldman takes matters into his own hands and—a la Nanula—sets up a faux porn shoot on his own studio's lot with Lexi and himself as POV director/cocksman. When he sets down his camera during the sex, though, trouble ensues.     Unfortunately, the parallel to Nanula's antics and composite of a couple of other well-known porn stars' names to form that of Black's character are where the similarities to real life porndom end. Typical of mainstream productions that care only to paint the industry in the stereotypical broad strokes of their uninformed preconceptions, this one makes no effort to get any detail right. Steele's husband looks like a character you'd expect to see in Saturday Night Live's "we're not porn stars anymore" sketch, complete with handlebar mustache, splayed open silk shirt and gold necklace. It's nebulously stated that Steele is "one of his actresses," but it's never made clear what exactly that means. Is he a studio owner who has her under contract? An agent? A director who uses her a lot? More likely, he's just a cooked-up figurehead who exists only in the mind of screenwriter Michael Tolkin. At one point, he defiantly shouts at Ray, "We have a guild!" OK, so there is now APAC, but we're pretty sure nobody has taken to calling that the "guild" as of yet. Later, before Feldman commences shooting his scene with Steele, the husband asks him, "You have the money and health certificate?" Anybody in porn who has once referred to a test as a "health certificate," please step forward.   All right, since you're all still exactly where you were, we will say this: all of that aside, the episode is entertaining and it's always nice seeing one of our own mix it up on screen with big time Hollywood players. We only wish they'd taken a literal page from elsewhere in this very script and made use of Tori Black as a consultant, since she was right there and all.