Vanna Bardot: The Female Performer of the Year Interview

This is the cover story of the May issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—It turns out the biggest day of Vanna Bardot’s career got even better after the 2024 AVN Awards Show ended. The newly crowned AVN Female Performer of the Year reveals that during her post-show celebration at Fontainebleau Las Vegas in January that she received exciting news from Vixen Media Group co-owner and executive producer, Mike Miller. She’s getting a Fleshlight. “We all went out after and Miller told me it’s officially happening,” Bardot says. “So it was a very sweet night.” Bardot could not have scripted the evening of Saturday, January 27th much better if she tried. The Miami native waltzed into the 41st annual AVN Awards ceremony at Resorts World with nominations in several major categories and high hopes for some new hardware. By the time she left the building she had collected four individual trophies—Best Anal Sex Scene for her first anal, Best Double-Penetration Sex Scene for her first DP, and her record third consecutive award for Best Girl/Girl Sex Scene, in addition to her Female Performer of the Year triumph. Her VMG star showcase, Influence: Vanna Bardot, also won the Mark Stone Award for Outstanding Comedy. Then before the night was over she realized her dream of having her own signature toy line. “It’s so crazy. I never would’ve thought when I got in that I would be on the level of getting a Fleshlight,” Bardot says. “All the Fleshlight Girls are like huge deals. “It’s the top of the top in the industry, so it’s something I didn’t really dream of until maybe like a year ago like once I had my showcase confirmed. “I was like OK, maybe this could put me in a good position for getting Performer of the Year or a Fleshlight—or potentially both. It was only about a year ago where I was like maybe this is something I could really do.” The Austin, Texas-based Interactive Life Forms will launch the Vanna Bardot Fleshlight line on May 27, rolling out the Dopamine, which is her replica vagina, and the Oxytocin, which is modeled after her butt. The 25-year-old star named the products herself. “I already had these names in mind a while ago—if I ever got a Fleshlight,” Vanna confesses. “Dopamine is the reward chemical in the brain and oxytocin is the love chemical.” Inspired to meet the moment, Vixen Media Group in April orchestrated the most elaborate photoshoot in the company’s history, teaming with Fleshlight to create an ad campaign designed to be a throwback to a classic era of adult. In an homage to the late-night phone sex commercials and men’s magazine photography of the late ’80s and early ’90s, VMG went big with Bardot over two days at a luxury estate in Beverly Hills, Calif. “I think we really nailed something very cool,” Vanna says. “The inspo for the shoot really started last year at the end of my Vixen Angel day when we were driving back from the marina. “Mike and I were talking about how much we loved Penthouse, especially the late ’80s, early ’90s era—around like Vanessa Williams. It was really such a golden era for them. “We just loved that style of photography—so much more went into those photoshoots back then. Now Penthouse is still great, but it’s definitely very different from what things used to be. We really wanted to bring that back and do something similar to that. “It was really cool to be involved from the first storyboards that were made and then getting to see everything come together. “And my Fleshlight is officially launching Memorial Day, so the whole theme of the shoot really screams summer. It’s exciting.” The timing allows the images to serve dual purposes, as they’re doubling as Bardot’s May AVN magazine cover and layout. “We’ve been talking with Fleshlight about doing some creative concepts for a while,” VMG’s Miller explains. “Everything just really aligned and we were able to put a shoot together that could also be a great AVN feature. There are also some cool Easter eggs involved in the campaign.” Miller & Co. worked with Bardot on creating a phone sex line for fans, so that if they buy her Dopamine Fleshlight they will unlock a special code to get an eight-minute audio recording from her; if they purchase the Oxytocin, they’ll gain access to a different code. “The other thing we wanted to do with it was shoot a commercial that fits with the aesthetic of the shoot, so we did a lot of the glamour shots around that—old-school Penthouse style with classic poses.” It became an enormous undertaking for the VMG production team, which did a deep dive researching the old “1-900” commercials that ran on late-night TV in preparation for the shoot. “This is the best marketing campaign we’ve ever put together,” Miller says. And for good reason. Not only did VMG crown Bardot a Vixen Angel in October in Miami Beach, she also shined as an exclusive contract performer for all their all-girl studio Slayed from 2022-23, not to mention headlined the company’s biggest production of 2023, Influence, which accounted for a total of six AVN Awards in January, including Outstanding Directing - Individual Work for Derek Dozer. “When we’re invested in a performer who we consider family the relationship always goes on and we continue to support them,” VMG casting director and producer, Mike Moz, tells AVN. “You see the artistic work we did on this campaign. “We could go out and hire a team for a day and pay well over twice what it cost us to do this but there would be very little chance to have the cohesiveness in both the planning and the execution of this kind of production.” Indeed, there is something about VMG collaborating with Bardot that brings out the best in both. Vanna’s first-ever scene for VMG in 2019—for their Deeper imprint—led to her first AVN Award in 2021 for Best Solo/Tease Performance. Under the direction of three-time AVN Director of the Year Kayden Kross, Bardot danced for almost six hours in ballet shoes that were a bit too small and then had sex with Kyle Mason on a piano en route to the victory for “Woman,” which was part of the 2020 DVD release Dance for Me. “That was really the start of my real career,” Bardot says. “That was when things started to pick up and I was like, wow, things are really happening. “That scene was so near and dear to my heart. I grew up dancing and that was the first dance scene I got to really do. And it came out so well. It was so special to be able to win that one.” In fact all of Vanna’s AVN Awards for scenes so far have come from her performances in VMG productions. “I love being with them,” Bardot says. “I’m really proud that I’ve been able to bring home so many awards for them and they helped me to bring home so many awards for myself. “I will always continue working with them and striving to do bigger and better things in the future. It’s going to be really hard to top what we’ve done already.” Fueled by a clever screenplay by Kross, the narrative of Influence explored the shady underworld of organized crime and crypto-scammers, marking the first full-length movie centered around Bardot. VMG rolled it out in five parts starting in September, creating a crossover showcase with scenes that debuted on their studio sites Tushy, Blacked and Slayed. Bardot's performances included an anal with Maximo Garcia and a DP with Alex Jones and Dante Colle—a pair of career firsts that became AVN Award-winners.  "We really made the right choice with Vanna," Mike Miller says. "And I think on the other side of it she definitely exceeded expectations with her work ethic and even the way she carried herself on stage that night." Bardot tells AVN, "it's crazy how close of a relationship we’ve built." "I idolized Vixen coming in and there was a moment in time where I didn't know if I would ever be able to shoot for them," she admits. The former hair salon assistant, whose six-year anniversary in adult is this month, tells AVN so much has changed for her since Day 1, when she was 19, wearing braces and unsure if she was going to make it. “It’s crazy looking back at those photos from my first couple years just because it feels like such a lifetime ago,” she says. “I came in and I had a very different look, first of all. “I don’t think anything changed internally about what my goals were and what I wanted but definitely I went through a lot of stages.” Vanna tells AVN one of the most critical decisions of her career came when she decided to change agencies and join ATMLA, which was acquired by industry veteran Mark Schechter in 2012. “I wasn’t getting the work I wanted but things really changed when I moved to ATMLA,” Bardot says. “I was completely booked for like two months. It changed everything. I don’t know where I’d be honestly if I didn’t go with them at that moment. “I think even if I waited a few months then COVID would’ve happened and it would’ve been much more difficult to get out of my contract. “Mark really listened to what I wanted and helped me get there.” Schechter, a former casino executive who used to be part owner of the Blazing Bucks affiliate program, tells AVN seeing Bardot receive the level of recognition she did on January 27 was a moment he will never forget. “I still get choked up with tears of joy every time I get the opportunity to share the clip of Vanna’s acceptance speech for winning AVN Female Performer of the Year!” Schechter says. “Watching her receive the highest award for a performer with such grace, honor and pride was the pinnacle moment for my career so far as an agent in this industry.” Schechter continues, “Vanna has been with ATMLA for four-plus years, executing a textbook example of what it takes to be a successful performer, and to achieve industry-wide, peer recognition of excellence. Driven from the very beginning, with her own vision and roadmap, Vanna made it very easy for my staff and I to guide her along the way. “All of us at ATMLA are very happy for Vanna and excited to see what she has planned for this next leg of a star-studded career ahead of her.” Bardot did so many things she’s never done to prepare for Influence, which began principal photography in June 2023. She worked out with a personal trainer, lifting weights three times a week at 7 a.m., taking 15,000 steps a day and following a strict diet to get her body and mind ready for the role. Her boyfriend of four-plus years, A-list stud Codey Steele, saw her dedication up close. The native of Arizona, who is in his 10th year in adult, also had a front-row seat for her victory. It was Steele, who along with Hime Marie and Melissa Stratton, presented Bardot with the Female Performer of the Year trophy. The couple shared a kiss and extended embraced at center stage in one of the signature moments of the 2024 ceremony. “He’s been there with me almost since the very beginning,” Bardot tells AVN. “So he’s really seen all these things I went through, all these different stages, things I dealt with. Especially the awards being so close right after my mom’s funeral was a lot. And he knew how much this meant to me. “It was just really great to have one night to just celebrate and be in the moment and just be happy.” Bardot lost her mother unexpectedly in December 2023, receiving the news the day after she returned from a Vixen Angel trip to Tulum, Mexico. She says her mom had been struggling with various medical issues for years. “It was really hard,” says Bardot, who decided to remain as the lead actress in an upcoming feature for Wicked Pictures a week later. “I didn’t know if I was going to do it or not and [directors Michael Vegas and Siouxsie Q] were like, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find another project for you in the future.’ “They had made the story for me. But I wanted to still be able to get it done. I tried to use it as a distraction from what was happening.” Bardot’s first thought after her night full of honors was her mom. “It was really hard because the first person I wanted to call to tell about my success was her,” Vanna says. “She was my number one fan. She was the first person I told about everything and she was always so cool about it and supported me.” As she looks ahead, Bardot tells AVN she is planning to relaunch her OnlyFans soon in addition to being selective with her studio bookings. She recently shot a pair of new anal scenes for Jules Jordan Video, including one with Jordan himself. “Working on my own content and my own platforms is my biggest goal for this next year,” Vanna says. “I’m really glad that I did put in so much energy into awards seasons and trying to do these big movies. It’s really benefited me now. “I’m getting so many opportunities because of my wins and my success and now I really want to use that to my full advantage. I don’t want it to be a wasted opportunity. I want to collab with people and grow my own personal brand.” Photography by Vixen Media Group