Fresh Faces: Rachel Rivers

A version of this feature first appeared in the February issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—“My agent thought I looked like the actress, you know, the one who married the Prince, and she played a girl named Rachel on the TV show,” says Rachel Rivers, whose porn name is the most vanilla thing about her. Her agent thought she looked like Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who played a woman named Rachel on the show Suits until 2017 and then married Prince Harry in 2018, the year before Rivers got into porn. While Prince Andrew flirted with the softcore porn star Koo Stark in the 1980s, the sort of things Rachel Rivers gets up to in her scenes would scandalize royals-watchers and mainstream porn fans alike, despite the fact that Rivers just seems so wholesome. “I look at vanilla boy/girl scenes and I just get bored,” she says from her home in Colorado. “I mean—I will do those scenes, but I like scenes where there’s more people, where it’s crazier.” Rivers, 20, got into the business in November of 2019. She’s from that part of the talent pool that is shocked by nothing and that hasn’t done anything on camera that she hasn’t already done in her personal life. Growing up in Florida with a two-year stint in Austin, Rivers cammed, dabbled in the Sugar Baby scene, signed with East Coast Talent, and debuted on the site ShotHerFirst a few months before the pandemic hit. But, really, there was so much more to it than that. “I don’t even know how I started watching the porn I watched,” she says. “I don’t really know a lot of porn performers’ names—although I watch Riley Reid scenes to see how she does things. But I didn’t really follow porn stars. “There was an older guy who looked like Santa Claus that I’d keep seeing in videos, though. He was interesting…” (We have no idea who she’s talking about, but we believe in him, too.) Sometimes, Rivers says, she will be on set with someone “who doesn’t want to get weird. “I really like the messy, sloppy, stuff,” she says, “like really dirty blowbangs, spit hanging off of my face. I like urine, pissing on people, getting pissed on. Just filthy stuff.” And where does that come from? “I don’t know,” she says. “I get naked with my friends, we make out, fuck each other. Sometimes people feel awkward about it, but having sex and being open about it is just part of my lifestyle.” When she recalls life before porn, Rivers says that there wasn’t much of a transition, other than the paycheck. “I lost my virginity, I went on Tinder every day, I flashed my titties, I looked for wild boys,” she says. “But then I also had a best friend who was absolutely not comfortable with nudity and who wouldn’t take a shower with me…” Though she lives in Colorado, where she loves to snowboard, Rivers regularly drives back to Florida, with her pet 70-lb. “mama’s boy” pitbull in tow, to do scenes. She likes Florida for its laid-back vibe, but when she has work in L.A. she will also drive, and make a sightseeing vacation out of it. “I feel itchy when I’m in a lease for more than a year,” she says, “and when I drive to L.A., I’ll stop off and camp in (Utah’s) Moab, or Zion (National Parks). I really like freedom.” Rivers tries to nurture that freedom wherever she can, but occasionally runs into people who react negatively to her lifestyle. “I have to be cautious (in mixed company),” she says. “I might say I cam to gauge how people will react. And when it seems OK I’ll talk about porn, and some people will be very interested and will ask lots of questions and be respectful. Others won’t.” She talks about no longer posting a lot of pictures of her dog on social media because “people can be nasty and disgusting. They’ll say, ‘bring out the peanut butter…’” Rivers says that, as a Capricorn, she’s comfortable being alone. And she also enjoys the freedom that sex work allows her, but she doesn’t abuse it. “I’m not all about getting fucked up and partying,” she says. “I have work the next morning! I save my money for trips. This much into upgrading my computer equipment, this much into savings. I parcel out cash rather than spend it all. I’m an adult.” Though she just has been in the business for a little over a year (and most of that during a lockdown), learning porn tricks like “opening up” for the camera and pointing her toes (she also says that she needed to work on her orgasm face which she says “is not the hottest” in its natural form, but we bet no thinking person has ever complained), she is aware of the difference in the way she presents herself from her early times on camera. “Before I was all braces and glasses and acting innocent and sweet, like [she affects a falsetto] ‘I’ve never put anything inside me before,’” she says. “Now it’s: ‘It would be really hot to piss on you.’” Photography by @jsiegelphotography (1 & 3); @thejasonmoodyshow (2) & @TheDeanCapture (4-8)