‘Jezebel’ Covers Return of James Deen to Evil Angel in ‘Consent’

LOS ANGELES—The feminist blog Jezebel sent a reporter to last week’s AVN Adult Expo, and came away with a story on the return of performer James Deen to John Stagliano’s Evil Angel production company, after Stagliano has banned Deen for the past three years after sexual assault allegations against the actor. But when Evil Angel and Stagliano decided to list the ban, they’re “not lifting it quietly,” wrote Jezebel’s Tracy Clark-Flory. “The company is doing it with an explicit porn-slash-documentary film titled Consent.” According to Clark-Flory, the film “will be part of a new Evil Angel series that depicts explicit sex scenes alongside documentary-style footage.” “I’d been reading that some feminists say that a woman can’t actually consent to be in a pornographic movie because ‘she doesn’t really know what she’s getting into,’” Stagliano told Jezebel. “Showing people saying, ‘No, you shouldn’t stop me from doing what I wanna do’ is basically what [this film is] all about.’” The film, according to Jezebel, will depict sex scenes, including Evil Angel’s trademark rough sex scenes, juxtaposed with “documentary” behind-the-scenes footage depicting how the scenes were conceived and cast, and the performers’ thinking in deciding to do them. One planned “rough sex” scene in the film was set to star Casey Calvert, who is described by Clark-Flory as “an experienced BDSM performer,” but who—according to what Stagliano told Jezebel—insisted on performing the scene only with Deen, despite Evil Angel’s ban against him. “This whole thing of ‘brand somebody for life, he’s always a bad person,’ that’s just wrong,” Stagliano told Jezebel. “I figured three years was enough time.” Stagliano also added, “all my competitors are shooting him anyway.” In fact, according to the Jezebel story, Calvert had worked with Deen in several scenes for other studios since the allegations against Deen surfaced in 2015. Clark-Flory wrote that she learned of the Deen/Evil Angel shoot simply by happenstance, as she was interviewing Stagliano near a cafe inside the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Deen happened to walk past and briefly stopped to greet Stagliano—who then “revealed that Evil Angel had just shot a scene with him. He called what had happened to Deen 'unfair' and a 'social media piling on.'" Above, John Stagliano (left) and James Deen. AVN file photos