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Vegas-based porn star Charlotte Sartre talks diversity, Dostoyevsky, puppets and more

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Charlotte Sartre
Photo: Wade Vandervort

Charlotte Sartre—also known as Goth Charlotte—is one of Vegas’ fastest-rising porn stars. At 24 years old, the tattooed and soft-spoken Northern California native has captured the attention of all genders for her inclusive yet intense scenes, and she just won this year’s AVN award for most outrageous scene. Haven’t heard of her? That’s okay. Some of your friends probably follow her on Twitter.

We caught up with Sartre inside her Vegas home, where she lives with her fiancé, adult film star Lance Hart, four cats and six tarantulas. Wearing flame-adorned pajama pants and a fluffy gray robe, Sartre discussed everything from how she got her industry start to her upcoming wedding (she and Hart are set to tie the knot on February 16), diversity in porn and more.

How did you get into the industry? I always had a fascination with porn. I was one of those people who discovered the internet a little too early and got really curious with Googling. I was like, oh my God, you can type in “boobs!” I was always really queer from a young age, but not knowing there was a word for that. I discovered there were sex-positive, feminist porn stars like Stoya and Sasha Grey, and they were also petite brunettes versus the tan, big-boobed, blonde trope that I kind of thought was the end-all, be-all of porn. I was like, wow, these ladies are super cool and comfortable with themselves, and they’re presenting themselves sexually on their own terms—kind of reclaiming their sexuality. I thought that’s really cool.

I went to school for a little bit and studied accounting and taxation in college. I love doing taxes, but I don’t really like telling [people] how much they owe. That part was tricky. When I was 20, I started webcamming. I was living in the Bay Area at that point, and I started looking at different companies I could shoot for. I didn’t have an agent, so I was just bothering anybody I could.

What’s a favorite company you’ve worked with? Kink.com has a really good reputation in the industry, and it also doesn’t hurt that they’re the most ethical company I’ve worked for. I feel like that gave me a good foundation for performing. They saw, “Oh she’s shooting for Kink? She’s a reliable person.” Also they set standards for what I should expect on the set. You go there and the rate is discussed prior. This is the standard across all porn sets, but you’d be surprised. They have very in-depth paperwork, a “yes” and “no” checklist, and your scene partners have to review your yeses and noes, like I’m OK with being spanked; I’m OK with being called a slut but not a bitch; don’t twist my nipples, but you can pull my hair, that kind of thing. At Kink they have to sign off on your limits, and if you break any of these, the director’s on it immediately, like, “Hey! She said no on this, why are you doing that?”

How do you book your shoots these days? I’m all self-booking, so I make the arrangements myself, which is a lot easier in my opinion. There’s no game of telephone, there’s no room for miscommunication and I don’t have to give a percentage of my check to anybody. I feel if I’m sucking 100 percent of the dick or vagina or whatever, why do I have to give somebody 10 or 15 percent of my check? If you can answer the phone or an email, have a Twitter and know how to use a calendar, you really don’t need an agent in my opinion, but for some people it’s really beneficial.

What do you think allowed you to grow your audience so fast? Social media. I believe in the early 2000s and ’90s, when social media wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, agents were more of a necessity. I see Twitter as the LinkedIn for porn. As a producer, my partner and I book people for our productions sometimes. It’s very easy. You can look at their Twitter, and usually in their bio they’ll say that they’re self-booking, or contact my agent. You can see their tweets, see if they’ve been having any meltdowns or rants. People will say anything online, and it kind of gives you a feel of what the person’s personality is like. If I see a director I might want to shoot for, I can just message them.

How has social media helped you grow your fanbase? One thing that gave me a slight advantage was I kept my same Twitter and Instagram from when I was in high school. I had a Tumblr following or a bit, I was blogging about spiders and porn and other stuff I liked, so I had some carryover fanbase from that. I no longer have a Tumblr, because they changed their rules a bunch.

My Twitter had maybe 1,000 followers, and most of them were people I knew from high school. I figured if they didn’t already know I do porn, they’re going to find out anyway, and they’ll either want to still be my friend- [or not]. Most people are still really cool with me. I didn’t want to make a whole new persona. I think what people like about me is I post about my cats or, “I’m going to do this today,” or I post about spiders. When I was doing a lot of taxidermy I’d post about that, or when I was studying accounting I’d post about that, so people got to see me being a normal, multifaceted person.

How did you come up with the names Goth Charlotte and Charlotte Sartre? Goth Charlotte because I was trying to find a username and Charlotte Sartre was taken everywhere. Usually people who recognize me in the grocery store or at the airport call me by [Goth Charlotte] because it’s easier to pronounce. A lot of people have asked me, is that a play on Good Charlotte? Literally I have never heard a Good Charlotte song.

Are you into philosophy? I’ve been into philosophy for a long time. My dad started giving me philosophy books when I was 14 or 15. He was a philosophy major-turned-criminal defense attorney. From a young age he was like, “Here, read this Dostoyevsky.” It’s still something we share a special bond with. I’ll text him like, “Hey, have you read this by [Emil] Cioran?” And he’s like, “No! Is it depressing? If so, I’m in.”

I’ve always been a big fan of Sasha Grey, and she got her name from [The Picture of] Dorian Gray. Online, people love to talk sh*t about her and call her a pseudointellectual, like, “This whore thinks she can read a book!” So I thought I would use that to my advantage and pick a pretentious-sounding name. It doesn’t hurt that it’s hard to say and spell, because that gets people talking as well. I knew I would get some of the same hate that she did, but it gets people intrigued and talking, so that’s worked to my advantage. And I just like reading philosophy. Originally, I was going to use my first and middle name, but I was worried about getting my address found. Online, my personal Facebook has been posted, my legal name, my birth certificate.

How have you navigated all of that? Some days are certainly easier than others. I try to just block and delete any rude sh*t I see. I was doing a lecture at a college in my hometown on human sexuality, and people were kind of piping up with negative comments like, “You just lay on your back all day and get paid for sex. It’s like no, you try doing [extreme sex act involving three other partners] and see how easy you think it is.

Also the media portrayal where the porn girl or escort is some naïve girl who has no other option—that’s the reality for a lot of people—but it’s more likely that it’s somebody who took a calculated risk and thought, this is a great job where I can explore my sexuality and have a stake over my own body, have really flexible hours, have lots of days off and can pay my bills. And I just really enjoy it.

I think being transparent helps me get through the bullsh*t that I face daily. Also trying to not let it look like it bothers me, because that just opens you up to more hate. After a while you’ve just heard it all and you’re like, oh, OK, this is just some troll. In the beginning, anything that anybody said stung. Now I’m just like, oh, this is just some asshole that doesn’t know I pay more in taxes than he does.

Most people watch porn, yet the people making and producing it are largely stigmatized. It’s like, how can you consume something and then turn around and shame the person who made it? I think a lot of it is projection, like the trope of the anti-gay senator or congressman who’s soliciting boys for blow jobs in men’s bathrooms. I think people are ashamed. They want to jerk with one hand and point the finger with the other. I think it gives them a sense of moral superiority. And I think because the public shames porn as a whole, we’ve got this evolution in the way it’s consumed to where most people have never paid for porn a day in their lives, so they think, “Oh, well, if it’s not good enough for me to pay for, why should I respect the people who make it?” You see that with the music industry and movies; people are like, oh, I’ll just torrent it.” People don’t see the direct correlation between money and performers getting paid.

You still have the public thinking everyone is Jenna Jameson and we’re all millionaires, when really we make pretty average incomes. It depends person to person. I always have seen myself being a hands-on type of person. If I wasn’t doing this I’d be a taxidermist or a hazmat removal person where I have my hands in the muck, which is just where I like to be.

What awards have you won in your career so far? This past AVN I won my first [award] for most outrageous sex scene. I like to think of myself as an outrageous person so I thought it was really fitting.

If you win best scene, you and your scene partners and the company win the award. For mine, it was me, Tommy Pistol and a puppet—and I think the woman who voiced the puppet won the award, because the puppet wasn’t there to pick it up (laughs).

Why did you decided to move to Vegas? That was a purely romantic move. My fiancé, Lance Hart, we met in Florida randomly after sending each other cat pictures on Twitter. He moved out to Vegas a couple months after that. I was living in LA, and when the lease was up I just decided to move here with him. LA’s a lot more expensive than Vegas, and I like the laws we have in Nevada better than California. Prostitution is legalized—at brothels outside of Clark County. I think the self-defense laws are a little more stringent, [and] as a woman I want to be able to protect myself should worst-case scenario things happen. No sales tax in Nevada is a big one.

Is the porn industry moving on from Southern California to Las Vegas? Oh totally. In LA County you have Measure B, which is the mandatory condom law. If you’re shooting a scene without a condom, somebody could report you to OSHA and you’d have to pay a gigantic fine and it’s a big pain in the ass for something that almost everybody does. In Las Vegas and Nevada, there’s no condom law.

[Also,] in LA, for every day of production you need a film permit, which nobody’s getting. It’s a bureaucratic process. You have to sit in a room all day and get a permit, and why would you be sitting in a room when you could be filming? They just make it a big pain in the butt. Also, the lower cost of living [in Las Vegas] doesn’t hurt.

It seems like camming and social media have kind of forced mainstream porn to be more diverse these days—like companies are finally getting that people want to see all sorts of people in porn. I think social media has a lot to do with it, because you control how you’re portrayed. Before there was social media, whoever was in charge of putting peoples’ images out there had the authority to pick and choose who they wanted. I think people [are] wanting to see themselves represented more and more. I’m so happy about all the queers getting more representation. We still have a long way to go with not marginalizing trans and queer performers of color so much. At the past AVN awards, my friend Natalie Mars, an awesome trans performer, said it best: “There’s been a lot of lip service about how inclusive everyone’s being, but then you notice there’s still only one trans award that was actually announced onstage.” Only one trans person got onstage; everyone else was cis-male or female.

Also, MyFreeCams hosted most of the awards, which is a great cam site if you’re a cis female, but if you’re a trans performer or a man—basically anybody with a penis—you’re not allowed on MyFreeCams. So it’s a lot of posturing and peacocking to appear more inclusive, but as an industry we still have a long way to go.

What do you think it will take to get there? I think the performers have to take it into their own hands. This is both good and bad, but a lot of people get their sex-ed from porn, so we [can] set a good example [by saying], “Hey, this is a trans woman, and she’s a woman.” A lot of people think porn is not the way to go about changing the way society thinks, but almost everybody consumes porn. I think it’s the perfect place to start.

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