Catching Up With Ella Reese

This feature appears in the June issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—People come to the adult industry through many different paths. Ella Reese’s journey started with a visit to the GayVN Awards. “I was stripping in Vegas. And then I went to the GayVNs—I had some friends there—and I made some new friends there, and I drove over to California and tried it out. I did that, and then I just have stayed ever since.” How did you get from hanging out at the GayVNs to shooting porn? “Well, my friends do porn, too, so they, like, kind of helped me. My first scene ever was a bi scene, for Jim Powers, with two guys. Super fun. There’s something hot about a guy fucking another guy. I just love it.” She had been stripping “all over. Alaska, Wisconsin. One time in L.A. And then Vegas.” What did you like about it? “I really liked... cash,” she says with a laugh. “I liked getting dressed up, wearing little outfits. It was also a social thing: I liked making friends with the girls.” She liked it when features came into the club: “They were bad-asses. I wanted to be like that. I always had my regulars, so I didn’t feel slighted.” Reese, a native of Appleton, Wisc., has “Live for something or die for nothing” tattooed on her hip. “I got it when I was 18. I don’t remember where it came from.” The message “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies, we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life” is tattooed down her spine in Gothic lettering. She says her tattoos are meaningful to her, “they’re not just random stuff. If they have good placement, they are like accents on the body.” “I love getting glammed up and being able to personify different characters. I love acting,” Resse says. “Mostly I’m like myself when I am Ella, but, like, just amplified. Over the top.” Reese, who is repped by Invision Models, is proud of her work in a recently-completed feature titled Clout for Seth Gamble and Wicked Pictures. “It’s my first feature. It’s going to be my coolest stuff so far. I have some community-theater acting background, so I have seen a script before, that helps. I was a computer hacker, and I wind up shooting someone to protect my boyfriend.” She is also proud of the scenes she has shot for Blacked and Blacked Raw: “I love working for them. I can’t wait to shoot with them again. Their scenes look so beautiful. They put a lot into it, it looks really high quality. I really want to be a Vixen Angel. I’ve been wanting that from the beginning.” Reese likes to watch her own scenes: “I think it’s hot. Like watching myself get fucked. It turns me on. I love it.” Do you watch it with other people? “I have. But also just by myself. It all turns me on.” She likes shopping in downtown L.A.’s garment district. “I run around and get stuff ready for shoots. This is what I’ve been doing recently. I went downtown to go shopping for, like, outfits for shoots, right. And I like it. I got, like, 5 or 6 looks there.” Her ideal scene is “something really pretty, glammed out, on a beach, with lots of oil. And I really want to work with Jason Luv. I love that he’s super tall. And I love his tats, being tatted like that. I like a big guy, you know? I really do. I like that. He works out a lot, too. Big muscles. I just want him to, like, throw me around, you know?” Photography by @KogaFoto