Kylie Ireland was interviewed today by the Sports Swami and Ireland immediately took Swami to task for his “I bet you say that to all the girls” introduction. Asked how it’s been two years and four months sober, Ireland said it was great. “It’s not an easy road. I was kind of a drinker more than anything. I partied a little harder on occasions.”
Ireland joked that since she was dating Jonathan Morgan at the time, she figured it was time to sober up. “I’m kidding. But he’s not particularly why. He’s a good guy.”
Ireland was asked when she knew she had hit rock bottom. “The morning after I woke up from a concert I paid way too much money to go to and didn’t remember.” Ireland recalled it was a Billy Joel/Elton John concert. “When I got home the next morning I didn’t remember hardly a thing.” Ireland thought things were getting out of hand. “I decided that was it.” Ireland said after a couple of false starts she was finally successful but doesn’t miss the hangovers for it. Ireland said what makes it difficult to keep the resolve is the fact the porn industry is known for its partying. “It’s hard to sit there and watch everyone have a great time. Thank God for non-alcoholic beer.”
Asked to explain how her KSEX deal came about, Ireland said she was on Ginger Lynn’s show. “We go way back. I used to do her publicity when she did her comeback movies at VCA Pictures.” Ireland, who was also a former contract girl there, started talking to Wankus and wound up with her own show. Ireland’s goal is to see if she could get back into mainstream radio. “That’s what I went to college for- broadcast journalism. You can’t do porn forever.”
Mentioning her Best New Starlet accolade, Swami said Ireland at one time was up there with the elite names of porn. “I still am,” she tried to remind him. Ireland voiced surprise at having won the award. “I came into this industry. I didn’t know anything about it, really. I watched movies. I didn’t know that we got to go to Europe. I didn’t know about fan clubs. And the Internet wasn’t a thing yet. I didn’t know there was award shows or anything like that.” Ireland said in her first ten months in the business she did about 80 movies. “I was up against Asia Carrera, Kaitlyn Ashley, Chasey Lain, Misty Rain, girls like this were up for Starlet of the Year that year.” Ireland not thinking she was going to win, said she got up and went to the bathroom.
“I’m sitting there tinkling.” That’s when Ireland heard her name called out. “I couldn’t make it. They let me come back up on stage and apologize for not being there. I guess I’m not the only girl who missed the award because she was peeing.” Ireland said the class of ’94 was a pretty formidable crop of girls most of whom are still around. “A lot of us are still making movies but you get buried under the new girls because there’s so many. I can’t keep up with the new girls. Every five minutes, a new girl.”
Ireland said she’s also run into problems with webmasters who get lazy, want to coast and collect money. “They just don’t do a lot of work after awhile. I’m not about coasting.” After going through several webmasters, Ireland says she just learned how to design sites herself. “I come up with the design but I don’t do all the html and all that because I simply don’t have the time.” Ireland said she’s currently working with Lola, Flick Shagwell, Katrina Kraven and Julie night. “I’m doing sites for them and publicity for their sites.”
Swami brought up Ireland’s history of bad contracts with various porn companies. “They just really didn’t know what to do with me,” she explained. “I’m very much a team player and I want to work on things together.” Ireland’s first contract after she had won Best New Starlet was with In-X-Cess. “They had other directions they wanted to go. They were working on a lot of mainstream stuff.” Ireland said it didn’t work out because she wanted to do a lot of movies and they didn’t. “It wasn’t much of a contract for me,” she said noting that the company wasn’t publicity oriented with her being a publicity whore. She then signed on with Sin City.
“After six months they hadn’t paid me anything. They hadn’t put me in a movie yet I wasn’t supposed to be working for anyone else because it was exclusive.” Ireland ended up suing them in small claims court to prove a point, she said. “We ended up on the Judge Judy Show. We settled it on television.” Ireland said she got to the point where she didn’t want to do a lot of movies anymore and so her subsequent contract with VCA clicked. “It just clicked; it wasn’t anything in particular.” Ireland was at the company for five years. The last year she started doing publicity. “That worked out really, really well. Because I being contract girl and knowing what I wanted was able to turn that around and apply it to the company and the girls. And it worked out really well.”
Ireland was asked what went wrong in her marriage. “We’re still trying to figure that one out,” she replied. Ireland was married for ten years. “My husband was really cool about what I did. He knew what made me click. We were the best of friends. We had everything.” Ireland attributed the separation and divorce to issues beyond porn. “It really didn’t have anything to do with the movies I was making. We just kind of grew apart and never took enough time for us. We drifted. We’re still the best of friends.” Ireland was also hitting her sexual peak, she noted, and, without a husband, was free to do whatever she wanted. Ireland also got on the age issue noting that she’s a frequent visitor of chat boards where the latest 19 old is lauded as being awesome.
“I’m sorry. But 18, 19 year-old girls don’t know what they’re doing yet. Maybe they look good but, other than than, I really think they’re boring. Because they really don’t do much.” Ireland said she’s been watching scenes featuring young girls with lifeless expressions and monotone reactions. “It’s like watching a dead fish. It’s very boring. If you want a good sex scene get a girl who’s a little older, who’s in to what she’s doing and you’re going to get a much better scene out of it.” Venturing to make a guess about her key to success, Ireland speculated that she has an approachable, girl-next-door look and is very accessible to fans. “I’m very approachable; I think that’s a little bit of my appeal.”
Swami put Ireland up there with the likes of Jenna Jameson. Asked to evaluate the Jameson mystique, Ireland was willing to give loads of credit to Joy King and Wicked Pictures for putting Jameson on the map. “They really gave her the push she needed in the publicity department. When you have some behind you that is that determined to push you in a publicity type of way, I think that helps.” Ireland pointed to Tera Patrick as another good example of what she was saying. “She hasn’t done a whole lot of movies but she’s very famous and people know her name because of the hype and the push behind her.”
Ireland was asked for her opinion about Patrick signing with Vivid and would there be an ego war with Jenna Jameson. Obviously not up on her websites, Ireland didn’t even know that Patrick had signed with Vivid. “Are they with the same company? A fellow KSEX radio deejay and I didn’t even know she signed with Vivid.” Ireland, however, said she knew both girls well and didn’t expect any fur to fly. “They may seem above it all, but they’re not. They’re both really down to earth. Then, again, who knows. Fur’s flown with Jenna before. She’s been known to get in a couple of scuffles with some girls.”
Asked what she may have gained by being a publicity manager, Ireland said experience and knowledge.
“After being on the road and making movies, which is not the most brain stimulating thing to do, I really enjoyed once I got to do publicity. It was challenging. I really wanted to get the girls out there.” Ireland said she got to work with girls like Ginger Lynn, Marilyn Chambers, Stacy Valentine and Juli Ashton.
“I had so many great products and a good company.” Ireland said she wanted to get the girls out there in the mainstream as Vivid did. “We kind of came to the point at VCA where Russ Hampshire who was running VCA wasn’t into that kind of publicity. He kind of likes to lay low. If you know anything about the history of the business, he spent some time in jail for different things, so he tries to walk the line and not push the envelope.” Ireland remembered an instance where she got The Sopornos mentioned in TV Guide. “I was so excited. I put it on his desk. He was like, what are you doing?! You’re trying to get us sued! So we didn’t quite see eye-to-eye on it.”
Of her publicity stint with VCA, Ireland said it worked out for a year. “Then we decided it was time to go our separate ways. I wanted to do more with it and he just kind of wanted someone to do the normal porn magazines and get it in AVN; those type of things. I wanted to push it much further. I just took over doing my own publicity, Hey, at least I knew I’d be responsible. I’d show up for the interviews! I was going to be there.”
Ireland said you sometimes run into contract girls who aren’t willing to do some of the free publicity. “But I think that’s just as important. Just because you do an interview for a much smaller magazine that’s only distributed on the east coast doesn’t mean it’s not good. All publicity is good. But sometimes girls find themselves thinking they’re above that and that they should be paid for their time and their appearances. Sometimes you have to do it for publicity-sake.”
Swami whipped out another of his stupid love rumors and linked Ireland with football player Keyshawn Johnson. Ireland asked him where he got that. Ireland said it was funny, and that she wasn’t dating anybody famous. “I’ve only fucked one famous guy in my life and that’s like an old story.” Swami confessed his ignorance, and Ireland dressed him down for not knowing the Michael Jordan story.
to be continued