"it was more one of someone who saw a toy to play with.”
Mia Khalifa claimed she only got into the adult film industry at the insistence of her then-husband, after being handed a porn studio’s business card as she walked down the street.
She only spent three months doing porn but became one of the most popular performers.
Since quitting the industry, Mia has distanced herself from the industry and has been vocal about its dark side.
Appearing on Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast, she admitted making “a lot of choices that I can’t take back” – with porn “one of the biggest”.
But Mia said her first mistake was “getting into a relationship that I never should have been in with someone who was extremely abusive”.
She described her time with the man who later became her husband as “grooming”, saying it was “just a relationship that I feel like a lot of girls get into when they’re in their late teens”.
Stating that she now prefers to use her birth name Sarah Joe Chamoun, she explained:
“I got talked into eloping to Las Vegas four days after my 18th birthday.
“I didn’t have a sense of self so I attached myself to someone who was more than happy to abuse that and someone who could see that and see someone easily manipulatable… but at the same time eager to please. It was just the perfect storm…”
However, Mia’s relationship with her ex-husband took a dark turn when he pressured her into doing porn for the first time.
Her husband, who was in the US Army at the time, “put that whole [porn] world in front of me and encouraged it”.
When she was 20, Mia was handed a business card by a porn studio.
When she showed it to her husband, he encouraged her to do it.
When asked what her husband stood to gain from the porn offer, Mia replied:
“Fetishisation.”
Mia starred in an adult film where she wore a hijab and it made her famous.
However, it led to a lot of backlash.
Mia Khalifa received death threats and when her family found out, they disowned her.
At the height of her fame, Mia faced pressure from her ex-husband.
She told Stephen: “I even feel weird calling it a relationship, because the dynamic was not one of a relationship – it was more one of someone who saw a toy to play with.”
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