Something Wicked: On the Set of Bree Mills' ‘Breadcrumbs’

This feature appears in the December issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. STUDIO CITY, Calif.—The set location is just over the hill from Hollywood, at a large, relatively secluded mid-century home in a desirable suburban neighborhood where it’s not uncommon to see a film production crew working at a rented house. Ventura Boulevard and a large CBS Television production facility are nearby. In the driveway of this house was a neatly stocked van full of all the equipment you need to light and shoot a high-end adult movie—in this case, it’s Breadcrumbs, the first feature-length production directed by Adult Time’s Bree Mills for legacy adult label Wicked Pictures. Yes—that Wicked, the one that went viral amidst the publicity behemoth behind the November release of Universal Studio’s film adaptation of the Broadway play of the same name (starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo), which saw the adult studio’s website address accidentally printed on the packaging of merchandise from the PG-rated musical. A silly coincidence that seems almost like a setup for Wicked XXX, a parody of the type that the studio was famous for when AVN Hall of Fame director Axel Braun helmed titles for them. “Even though Wicked Pictures is a stand-alone studio, it’s not a full Adult Time studio, but we do have a channel partnership—like, we have a Wicked channel at Adult Time, and it’s still within Gamma Films which I’m the president of, so—I basically knocked on the team’s door and said, ‘I want to make a Wicked movie this year,’ and they said, ‘Okay.’ I knew it would be a good space to tell this kind of story and to feature our ambassadors in the leads,” Mills explained to AVN on the set for Breadcrumbs. It seems apropos that Mills, also the chief creative officer at mega-platform Adult Time, brings her narrative style to the legendary video brand, which built its legacy on scripted adult movies that were available primarily on late-night cable TV (i.e., Cinemax) and hotel and motel pay-per-view menus in the ‘90s heyday of “Skin-a-Max.” In Breadcrumbs, “Charlotte [played by Lexi Luna] and Max [Seth Gamble] are married high school sweethearts who have settled into a family life that outwardly seems fulfilling. But inside, Charlotte grapples with her sexual identity and her true desires, while Max feels increasingly unseen and disconnected from his wife. Charlotte’s doubts intensify during a girls’ weekend with a group of other mothers. She meets Lucy [Siri Dahl], an outgoing lesbian, and they quickly bond. Charlotte is drawn into an affair, experiencing emotions and a connection she hadn't anticipated.” “So, Seth, Siri, and Lexi are all Adult Time ambassadors,” Mills said. “I knew from having worked with Lexi—I had a pretty good idea on subject matter that would be interesting to her, and I knew that she definitely had a lead actress in her, I just needed the right project.” “My go-to for any dysfunctional husband character is Seth—and Seth, with his production team, I kind of wanted to have a bigger project to work with them on, and we were pretty clear from the beginning for me to come and direct it so he could have an acting role in it. It’s important for us at Gamma to have a distinction that if someone is going to be in front of the camera, they’re not also directing the scene. We keep those roles unique,” Mills said further. “So, this was a good choice for him to be in front of the camera while he evolves as a co-producer and for me to come in and direct. It was a good way to flex that with this team, and it was instantly a really good chemistry.” It was Gamble’s LucidFlix van in the driveway and his crew on the last set day of the production, which, as co-producer, he said had been smooth and well-organized after a year’s worth of planning. “So, this project specifically, we were talking about a year ago, and Bree was like, ‘Hey, you’ve been over at Wicked,’” Gamble said, describing his process as a producer. “And we’d done some things together. I think the first project we co-produced was Serial Breeder? It was for Pure Taboo... That was really at the inception of producing and directing for myself, and as time progressed, I think Bree had seen that I built a more tuned ‘machine’ and more consistency, and she was like, ‘Let’s do something together.’” “If anybody knows anything about [shooting] features, we haven’t hit a 12-hour day. So, I think we’ve shown that this working collaboration is going pretty well,” he added, then named off the crew (several of them longtime colleagues at Wicked), all eagerly awaiting a lunch delivery of sandwiches and salads. “... Sammy Slater, my second camera is Nick, my lighting tech is Billy, Claudia Ross—she’s been production manager and set designer, and Ezra—he’s my set designer/production assistant. That’s pretty much my main team... and my makeup artist is Lucy Rita.” Before lunch, supporting actress Dahl was looking forward to shooting her main scenes, and said, “I have worked with Lexi before, but this will be our first time working together. I think we’ll probably shoot it last today. We have a dialogue scene coming up next.” “I love it—being the more experienced woman,” Dahl said of her character Lucy. “There’s a part in the dinner-girls’ night, where we’re playing Never Have I Ever, and I ask, ‘Has anyone been with a woman?’ And everyone raises their hand—except for Charlotte... She and her husband have been growing apart, so the way I come in the story—she’s already experiencing having dreams about having sex with women, then she meets me and is immediately attracted to me, and she’s like, what do I do? So, I comfort her, and then it does lead into her having her first experience with a woman. “I’m bisexual personally, but in my real life, I’ve had a lot of experiences where I was the first woman with another woman for the first time,” Dahl shared. “And it does require a little extra... it’s a vulnerable thing for anyone to have a first-time experience, so I think that will play really well.” Beyond being somewhat typecast as a “confident lesbian,” she said she enjoys scripted content. “I love getting to learn a character and do more dramatic work with acting,” Dahl described. “The industry’s a little different than it was when I started over ten years ago, and the industry does change over time, but we don’t get as many dramatic, scripted projects as we did back then, so that is one of the things I really look forward to is doing these more dramatic projects—especially if Bree is directing because she’s really collaborative. She knows how to bring out a natural performance from everyone, and it just makes everything so much better.” It could be argued that adult movie scripts also have evolved over the last couple of decades since Wicked produced light-hearted fare like Operation Desert Stormy (2007, AVN 2028 Best Sex Comedy) or 2014’s supernatural thriller Underworld. As the popularity of parodies has faded and campy vignettes have become fare for clip sites and content creators, a new era of adult filmmakers, like Mills, have used the genre to take a different angle on what sparks eroticism, pushing the boundaries of where art imitates life. Mills said that, lately, a lot of her work has reflected her concepts around parenthood and sexuality. “This year, I find that the themes for my movies have been about parents—and topical because that’s the era I’m in personally, kind of dealing with the idea of becoming parents with a lot of other dysfunctional things happening,” Mills said. “It’s such a relatable story that anyone who is a parent and in a relationship understands,” she added, “but you never see that in an adult film, obviously because, unless you’re talking about a stepmother, you don’t want to talk about parents as a subject. But being an adult, and a parent, and in a relationship is extremely important to talk about because it’s extremely relatable. That was one of the inspirations behind telling this story and not shying away from the fact that they are parents. You obviously never see their son, but he’s very much in the story, and even in the perspectives we brought into certain moments, it’s important to talk about what it’s like being a physical, sexual adult and being a parent.” Breadcrumbs, starring Luna, Gamble, Dahl, Melissa Stratton, Emma Hix, August Skye, Charlie Forde, Kenna James, and Charlotte Stokely, is available now at Wicked.com and on Adult Time’s platform. Photography by Natasha Inamorata