Hitting All the Right Notes: Up Close With Destiny Mira

This is the cover story of the November issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—What started out as “a funny little name” for her old spam page has turned into a calling card for Destiny Mira. The breakout star known as @crybabybihh on social media admits her former finsta used to be where she would vent to a select few friends. But in the past year that handle has become one of adult’s top trending X accounts with over 700,000 followers waiting to see what she’ll do next. “I didn’t take myself seriously when I first started,” Mira tells AVN. “Like I didn’t know what to name my Twitter—Destiny Mira was already taken.” Now when she attends industry shows and people see Destiny on her badge, America’s Favorite Crybaby says that some of them tell her “I didn’t know that was your name!” “I thought about making clothes with that on it,” jokes Mira, the 25-year-old native of New Orleans who reveals the “bihh” in her @ is slang for “bitch.” But no one is crying about Mira’s rapid rise in the past five years as she’s built her profile through a diverse range of content creation, studio scenes and countless viral hardcore clips that offer glimpses of her performing prowess. “I feel like I blossomed a little bit,” Destiny says. “When I first started I was a little bit more shy and I didn’t really know if people would like me or the content that I put out. “I even was kind of scared to get on Pornhub because I didn’t want to read the comments. But as I have gotten into it I’ve honestly been surprised and it made me really happy and feel more comfortable with myself. And I’ve made a lot of friends, so it’s really cool to see the progress that I’ve made. “I definitely feel a lot more confident in the industry now.” It shows. Mira made the most of her first full year of shooting mainstream porn in 2024, which also happened to be her first full year with professional representation in the form of A-list stud and talent manager, Ricky Johnson. “In 2022 I only did like two [mainstream] scenes. Last year I did maybe like four or five scenes all year,” Destiny explains. “So this has been my first year of really doing scenes every week or every other week and actually getting a different audience from the mainstream people who see my scenes on Brazzers or Adult Time. “I’ve gotten a lot of exposure this year.” She points to Johnson’s guidance as one of the main reasons for her emergence. Destiny met Ricky in 2021 after making a flirty comment on one of his Twitter posts. Ricky got the hint—and soon after that they made a content date. “That was before I did any mainstream,” Destiny recalls. “I hadn’t really worked with anyone as big as him, so I was really surprised. “And we ended up working together quite a few times. It was always just a great scene. People would always say that we had great chemistry. They would tell me that, ‘Your best scenes are with Ricky.’” Johnson started his porn career in late 2015, racking up over 1000 credits at press time—more than 300 of which have come for either Brazzers or Reality Kings. The handsome native of Inglewood, Calif., became a ZZ exclusive in early 2019 and hasn’t looked back. Now he’s also the resident deal closer for his namesake studio, Ricky’s Room, where Mira also has made a few memorable visits. “She’s an amazing performer,” Johnson tells AVN. “She does come off shy when you meet her but she becomes extraverted on the set. “She’s sexually liberated and she knows how to read people’s energy. She’s a quick learner and I think the sky is the limit for her.” Ricky first started managing Destiny’s career in mid-2023 when he was still an agent with Hussie Models. Then when Johnson went independent with his Model Service in early 2024 it was a natural for Mira to go with him and continue booking through the seasoned vet. “She’s still rocking with me and I do my best to give her alley-oops,” Johnson says, adding that he and his business partner Janaé help guide about 15 girls through the Model Service with their bespoke management style. “Not everyone needs an agent. It’s more so a place to network… I think the game is headed more toward everyone is their own individual company.” Mira says it was Johnson who helped her get into mainstream in 2022 before he even started representing her in any official capacity. He suggested her to some of the Brazzers directors and soon she found herself on set with Xander Corvus for her ZZ debut under the direction of Mello Jackson. “They flew me out to Vegas and that was like the first time I got to experience being on a mainstream set and having little scripts and doing multiple takes and multiple angles,” Mira says. “I had a lot of fun and they’ve been just shooting me ever since.” The Vegas-based shot-caller Mello Jackson—who’s been working for Brazzers for the past 13 years, including the past five as a director—estimates he’s shot Mira at least 10 times since 2022, telling AVN she is a sensational performer. “From when I first started with her she has really grown and blossomed,” Jackson says. “She’s always a delight to have on set. She comes in focused and understands the task at hand and she executes.” Mello says don’t be fooled by Destiny’s reserved demeanor. Because when the cameras roll, “she really knows how to turn it on and shine.” “She’s naturally beautiful, too,” Mello continues. “She’s one of those talents who doesn’t need much makeup or anything. She can definitely go all the way to the top.” Born in the Big Easy, Mira moved around a lot as a kid. She lived in Georgia and California and then relocated to Scottsdale, Ariz., when she was 6 and eventually settled in Phoenix at age 9. She got her first job with AMC Theatres at 15, staying for the next five years while also trying various second jobs at a local brewery, Streets of New York pizza, Subway and most recently, Target. A Science Magnet student in the Biotechnology branch in high school, Mira earned academic scholarships to the University of Arizona, Arizona State and Northern Arizona, but it was her visit to NAU in Flagstaff that captured her imagination. “Because when we were on the tour in the group we could hear the marching band playing—and I played the flute since I was in fourth grade,” explains Mira, who was the section leader of her HS marching band. “I’m really rusty now. I still try to take it out and play sometimes but I’m nowhere near as good as I used to be.” Always musically inclined, Mira also used to take piano and singing lessons and participated in musical theatre. “I’ve done like every type of band,” she adds, noting she played in a jazz band and in the pit orchestra during a musical. “I loved playing flute. That was like my whole life in high school.” Mira played flute for a year in the NAU band but stepped away when she realized it lacked the family-style vibe she had experienced in high school. Destiny says she majored in Psychology with a minor in Music Theory at first. Then a Women’s Studies class gave her a new focus. “And I ended up double majoring in Psychology and Women’s Studies,” Mira says. “I used to want to work with kids. I grew up in a home where my mom had her foster license. We would have kids who were in the foster system live with us for periods of time. “I was always around different personalities, especially children. I used to want to work with kids and do children’s therapy—mostly art and music therapy. Then when I started learning more about women’s history and women’s studies I kind of wanted to do more like sex therapy. “And that was before I even got into the industry that I started leaning more towards sex therapy. Now I feel like I’m getting hands-on experience. I still probably will eventually one day actually get into that.” The studious flute player also admits to having a wild side before adult. It’s that sense of adventure that led her to starting her OnlyFans in 2019 when she was still a student at NAU with the help of a friend who already was in adult. Since Destiny’s friend had worked for some pro-am companies in the Phoenix area one thing led to another—and she decided to try performing herself. “I was in college at the time and ultimately I decided it would help out and so I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’ And it was kind of fun. But it was definitely more like I was just doing my own content and someone else was shooting. It definitely wasn’t like shooting for Brazzers,” Mira says. “They really only shot amateurs, like people who were completely new to the industry. And none of us really knew what we were doing, we were just kind of getting the hang of things together. So that’s kind of where I really started shooting.” As Mira continued with her content journey, she was invited to Vegas in December 2019 to collab with established performers Ricky Larkin and Mason Lear under the direction of GayVN Hall of Fame director mr. Pam. “That was awesome,” Destiny says. “That was probably the most fun that I’ve had during my earlier days doing collabs for sure. That was one of the first experiences I had that made me think that I could really do my own content professionally. And I actually started to invest in my own equipment. “I was asking mr. Pam so many questions about lights and stuff like that, like what I could do to improve my content and she was just laying it all on me. That was definitely an eye-opening experience.” Mr. Pam, whose glittering career behind the camera has spanned more than two decades, recalls how much she enjoyed shooting Mira and the guys that day in her high-rise apartment on the 27th floor next to The Stratosphere. “She was just starting out and her and her friend had driven up from L.A. and my two buddies set up this content trade shoot,” mr. Pam says. “I had only shot guys for the past 19-20 years, so I was just as nervous as she was. When she arrived she was just beautiful, sweet and naturally sexual. We had such a great shoot and I said, ‘You’re gonna be a star.’ “Her content is hot, her body is bangin’ and her face is just gorgeous. I love teaching new models how to navigate in a good way and she definitely listened. I’m so honored to have been part of her beginning adventure.” Still dabbling with content when the pandemic hit, Mira moved to LA in 2021 to see if she could elevate her game to the next level. “For the first couple years while I was in the industry I was living in Phoenix and I would have to drive out either to Vegas or LA pretty much every other week just to shoot content,” she says. “Because that’s where everybody was.” Now Mira is becoming must-see TV when she steps onto a set—her cowgirl technique alone is enough to carry a scene, not to mention her squirting. “I didn’t know I could do it before porn,” Destiny confesses. “One time I had bought this vibrator, it was called a Rabbit vibrator and oh my god that had me squirting in like two minutes. “It took me a while to be able to do it while I was shooting with other people. Even though for content I’m a size queen and I do shoot with a lot of guys with big dicks and that’s what sells pretty well for me—I feel like smaller dicks make me squirt more.” Speaking of size, she loves working with one of the biggest to ever do it—Dredd. “When I first started I kind of had to work my way up to working with guys with really big dicks,” Destiny continues. “But I always wanted to work with Dredd. And I’ve done that twice this year. So that was really cool. “It went really well. He made it really easy and we would take breaks whenever I needed to. “I got so many subscribers just from the first one and he hadn’t even released it yet. He was just promoting it.” Dredd, the 2024 Fan-Voted AVN Award-winning Favorite Male Porn Star from New York, tells AVN he was impressed by Destiny from the get-go. “She’s a great performer for the experience she has—I know she’s still fairly new,” says Dredd, who first debuted in 2009 before taking a five-year hiatus. He returned in 2015 and since has become one of the most in-demand performers in the world. “She just has a really great overall attitude and she’s really easy to work with,” Dredd continues. “I’ve shot with some of the top names in the biz, so I’ve seen multiple great performers and she’s there. Just her performance level, her personality and she’s obviously very hot. I foresee big things for her and I’m looking forward to working with her again.” Mira, whose boyfriend is Anton Harden—another A-list stud—says her ever-growing social media following is “honestly kind of crazy to think about.” “I still definitely see myself as just a regular person,” Destiny says. “In the industry I do feel like I have done a lot to kind of establish myself and get my name out there. And I feel like I still have a lot more to go. “I think I’m still in my prime or maybe I’m not at my prime yet. But I think I have definitely done a lot to be established and be someone that people want to work. “I’m pretty sure on Pornhub when you search Destiny in the suggested ones, Destiny Mira is the first one that comes up. The first time I saw that I was like, ‘Yeah! I made it.’" And as she looks ahead to 2025 and beyond, Mira says she wants to continue to show her performing range and diversify her portfolio. “I kind of feel like I have something for everyone,” says Destiny, whose resume already includes multiple bisexual, trans and BDSM-themed scenes. “I told Ricky I want to do more bisexual scenes again. And I want to do scenes with more trans people. And I want to work with maybe Kink.com.” She also tells AVN the goalposts have moved since her Day 1 in adult. “At this point I’m just taking it as far as I can go,” Destiny says. “When I first started I kind of gave myself a limit that I have long surpassed. “I’m just enjoying being able to invest in other things that I didn’t necessarily have the opportunity or the finances to invest in before.” Photography by @jamesmccloud