Born to Perform: Up Close With Nicole Doshi

This is the cover story of the December issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—Sometimes Nicole Doshi gets into sticky situations on the set. Like when she made her debut for the horror porn website Parasited. “The thing that I remember the most is the slime,” Doshi says. “The slime was all over… it was stuck in my hair. I went home and tried to wash it out. It was a little difficult.” Even though it turned slippery for Doshi, she embraced the challenge of pretending to be possessed. “And you have to have a bug in your mouth and pretend you were fucking with the bug,” Doshi says, revealing that the rubber critter had batteries in it. “It was very interesting, something very different.” No matter what the day calls for, Doshi delivers. It’s why the Chinese star in just over three years has emerged as one adult entertainment’s most bankable performers—as sure a thing as it gets in 2024. “She’s always amazing, always fun to have on set,” says AVN Award-winning director Ricky Greenwood, who called the shots for her slimy three-way with Avery Black and Scarlett Alexis. “Nicole always make us laugh and she’s in a good mood even if the shoot is stressful or demanding. “Everybody is very happy to see her name on the call sheet.” One of the busiest girls in the industry who is as comfortable in a gonzo setting as she is in a feature role, Doshi at press time had piled up more than 320 credits, including 70-something in the past year. For her efforts, she earned her second straight nomination for AVN Female Performer of the Year, the top individual award in the business. “Nicole is a bundle of professionalism, humor and enthusiasm,” says veteran director and screenwriter Jacky St. James, who has watched Doshi in action in her Bellesa Films productions in recent years. “She never phones in a performance and you would think she never has a bad day because her work never reveals that. I have so many highlights of Nicole these last few years—a machine gun-style squirt being a highlight! “Also though, she handled a scripted scene effortlessly and brought her character into the sex. You’ll be hard up to find anyone on the caliber of Nicole Doshi. She is a true star.” Indeed, Doshi did a tour of the porn biz in the past 12 months befitting of her reputation, counting multiple outings with a wide range of studios such as Brazzers, Digital Playground, Adult Time, Evil Angel, Jules Jordan, Elegant Angel, Bang!, Mike Adriano, Girlsway, Devil’s Film, Dorcel, Tushy, Vixen, Blacked and Deeper, among dozens of others. And Doshi did it all—anal, DP’s, creampies, squirting, girl/girl, VR and group sex outings. “If I go on set I make sure I perform the best and I give the best scene,” Doshi says. “I do my best to do whatever the director asks for.” She also received a 2025 AVN nomination for her Best Foursome/Orgy Scene for her performance in Dorcel’s Climax 4 with Ana Foxxx, August Skye, Kendra Sunderland, Kenna James, Valentina Nappi, Charles Dera, Isiah Maxwell and Seth Gamble. In what is proving to be a fruitful move, Nicole this year officially joined the Spiegler Girls agency, where agent Mark Spiegler has guided eight of the past 11 winners of the Female Performer of the Year award. “When we got her of course she was already great,” Spiegler tells AVN. “But she might’ve been stereotyped somewhat into a niche and she’s bigger than that. She’s able to act and she does great scenes, so we were able to expand her repertoire into a larger range of roles. And also she does pretty much everything, so there’s no problems finding her jobs.” Spiegler continues, “Also she’s mature. She’s professional. She’s got a great attitude. Personally, she’s like really nice. Everybody really likes her when she steps on set—it’s not phony. And she likes everybody and is glad to be there and does her job. Working with her is just easy. “She’s one of the girls who reminds me of Bobbi Starr. We don’t have to worry about them showing up on time or forgetting anything.” Doshi’s simple approach to her job continues to garner respect from producers and peers, not to mention endear her to a legion of fans around the world, including in her native China. “I love working with Nicole because her energy is always high and she brightens up the room with her personality,” says reigning AVN Male Performer of the Year Isiah Maxwell, who has performed with Doshi over a dozen times in the past three years and did her second ever scene—for Blacked Raw. “Her success is well earned. She understands how to elevate her performance with each scene premise and it’s fun to work with someone who has great on-screen presence and energy.” Another performer who knows Doshi well is the three-time AVN Male Performer of the Year Mick Blue, who did the honors in her first professional scene for Tushy in 2021 and has since shared the screen with her over a dozen more times. “She definitely is one of the best girls out there in my opinion,” Blue tells AVN. “It’s always a huge pleasure to work with her in the first place and in the second place I think she’s been maybe a little bit underrated in the industry for her achievements. So I really hope that her star and success will shine bright in the near future.” Blue continues, “Working with her is anything you can ask for in every single aspect you can imagine. She’s super funny. She has an outgoing personality, but even more so, besides that she’s a great performer. She’s a great actress and she definitely does something right also with her personal stuff that she produces as a content creator.” Born and raised in the coastal city of Qingdao, China, Doshi immigrated to America in 2014 to attend college at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. “My city was very beautiful. It’s a beach town by the Yellow Sea,” Nicole tells AVN. “We have beach, we have mountains. It’s rated in China one of the top cities to live in. “It’s very beautiful, it’s very greenery. And we have very historical stuff from WWII, the Germans took over my city. “We have the famous Qingdao beer. They left the factory there after WWII, so we took over and started making beers.” She grew up in a small community, living in an apartment building and attending the same elementary school as her neighbors. When she turned 10, her parents sent her to a private boarding school. While at first it was a difficult adjustment being away from home, Doshi says “it was fun.” “I was definitely not a good student,” she admits. “I would escape class to go watch movies. The big thing for us is karaoke. We skipped class to go karaoke singing. “I think I become wild because my family is very conservative and growing up I still remember my dad had this porn DVD in his drawer and when they go to work during the day I would open it and put it my computer and watch it and then put it back before they come back. “That was the naughtiest thing I’ve ever done probably.” Doshi even recalls having a boyfriend who was in her class, but when her father found out, he put a stop to it. “When I come to America I said, OK I’m a free bird. I can do whatever I want, I can make my own decisions,” she continues. “And you just feel like you’re curious about everything—including the sexual things.” Doshi tells AVN she attended college for two years in China, taking general studies, before reapplying to the international program at Nebraska. “Because my parents want me to be like a finance person,” she explains. “Because I was not a good student and they send me to America to go to American school. I can learn more things than China. America is more developed, the education system is really good. “So we applied school in Nebraska and then I got accepted. … Anyway I hated it.” In order to start the program, she first had to pass some English classes at the university. “In short, you have to pass a test for you to go into college,” Nicole says. “So I’ve been there for two months and then I left. I’m like I hate it, I hate it so much.” Still wanting to create a life for herself in America, she moved to New York, taking a job at Starbucks. “They trained me for two days and then I got fired the third day,” she says with a laugh. “Because I kept making the wrong drink. I’m so clumsy. ... And then I’m like OK, so I found a massage place and I started giving out happy endings.” She did massages and escorting over about a four-year period in New York—and also got her real estate license “because I wanted to buy and sell houses for people as an agent.” “But it doesn’t go well,” Doshi recalls. “It was so hard, you needed to speak great English, know everything, know people. You can’t be shy to talk to people. “I didn’t sell anything for like seven, eight months, or even rent anything. So I’m like OK, this isn’t working. Let’s go back to whatever I do best.” She adds, “I was already escorting while I was doing massage and then I saved some money, I wanted to do something like find a real job like my parents said. “That’s what I did... I tried but sometimes things doesn’t work your way. I’m better at something else.”  Her first signifcant step toward adult performing came when one of her escorting clients suggested she start posting nudes on Patreon. But when Patreon banned adult content, she migrated to posting on ManyVids and OnlyFans in 2020. But when her OnlyFans got deleted, things changed. She had been posting random sex tapes with her clients and risky content such as her fucking a beer bottle. “I think things wouldn’t happen if there’s no reason for it. I think things happen for a reason,” Doshi says. “They decided to delete my OnlyFans page but that’s my big source of income, so I’m like, OK what do I do now? “And right after Vixen Media reached out to me and asked me if I want to shoot with them. I’m like OK, this is a good opportunity because I lost my OnlyFans. I could shoot a couple of porn mainstream scenes and get fanbase to my ManyVids or Fansly. So that’s the transition.” Doshi showed she had what it took on a professional porn set and since has racked up a total of 21 scenes for Vixen Media Group across all their studio brands. One of those scenes was a four-way for Tushy with veteran Italian stud Christian Clay, one of VMG’s most prolific performers who is in his 24th year in adult. “I met Nicole in February this year,” Clay tells AVN. “We did a collab for a content share and I understood immediately how nice and kind she is. She’s very professional. She is the type of girl who knows exactly what she wants. ... “After that we had a scene for Tushy and it was so fun. It was a DP scene and she acted like she can’t take it but she’s super pro... After we had more collabs and all are very nice. Then we start to do these funny videos for social and we get very close as friends. So I can say she is for me one of the top 10 best performers of 2024.  "As a person she is so nice and funny and of course she is very beautiful—the type of girl you would like to hangout with." Doshi smiles when she thinks about how far she's come. She remembers seeing Isiah Maxwell before their scene in 2021 and thinking that this career may not last long.  “On set I saw his dick and I’m like OK, I’m going home, I’m never coming back after I finish this scene,” Doshi says with a giggle. “I kept telling myself I’m going to just get over today and I don’t think this is for me. “Because I can’t fuck this dick every scene, it’s too big for me. And look where I am now, I keep fucking it. ... I think I have achieved big dick. Not long after, I fucked Dredd.” And Nicole reveals that she doesn’t think too far ahead—and that includes during awards season. “To be honest I never thought about awards,” Doshi says. “If there is one, of course I would be happy. But I just enjoy go on set and fuck. And now I’m really into playing acting. Like I could act different scenarios. I really like that.” Now with over 832K followers on X and another 311K on Instagram—several account deletions later—Doshi's reputation precedes her. But she hasn't changed. “I’m still who I am because every day is a surprise,” Nicole says. “You never know where life is going to take you. Things happen for a reason. But I don’t have any big plans. I am just going to keep doing what I am doing until something comes up, a better opportunity or whatever. I’ll just see how life is taking me. I’m exploring... I’m happy.” Russian stud Alex Mack, the 2021 AVN Best Male Newcomer, has worked with Doshi as a performer and as a producer. “And she’s consistently a joy to be around—kind, professional and a lot of fun,” Mack tells AVN. “Nicole gives 100% every scene, no matter how long the hours on set or how hard the day is, which is what truly makes her an exceptional performer. "She’s more than deserving of the recent nominations she’s received, and I can’t wait to see her take home some trophies!” Photography by @legacyshots