Yahoo Lifestyle 
Disney star turned porn star Maitland Ward's coronavirus boom
Former Boy Meets World star Maitland Ward shocked the world when she announced her foray into porn last year, and now she says the lockdown has seen her career soar.
The star tells Yahoo Lifestyle that given the quarantine and lockdown orders in place in many countries across the globe, porn has become an ‘essential service’, and demand is at an all-time high.
“My personal content saw a major uptick during this time,” she says.
“People are suddenly stuck at home, in a scary time. They can’t meet people like they used to. Porn is an essential business in this time because it not only gives the viewer much needed sexual release but also human interaction.”
Maitland Ward swaps Disney roles for porn at 42
Maitland portrayed Rachel McGuire in Boy Meet World in 1998, when she was 21 years old.
The program ran for four years on the Disney-owned ABC Channel.
The star also had roles in The Bold and the Beautiful, White Chicks and Home Improvement before making the industry switch.
In 2019, at 42-years-old, she made the switch to porn, a slow transition that began with her Only Fans account, and eventually hit headline with the release of her first adult film Drive in August.
Maitland says coronavirus proving adult entertainment ‘vital’
One year on, the 43-year-old’s subscribers on the Only Fans platform have almost doubled from 8,000 to 15,000, and she is now an adult film actress with Deeper, part of Vixen Media Group.
She says the boost in business is reflective of people’s inherent lust for porn, particularly during a time when physical intimacy is not an option for many.
“The human connection, that intimacy is needed now more than ever,” she says. “People watch porn all the time normally, but before the pandemic, it was primarily for a release and for fun.”
“People are really seeing now how vital adult entertainment is in times like these and will be in an uncertain future.”
“It’s getting us through all this mentally as well as physically,” she continues. “And that’s no small thing.”
Porn an escape from Hollywood ‘typecast’ after Boy Meets World
The adult actress also revealed that her decision to turn to the world of adult content and film was a liberating one, after she fought against being typecast by Hollywood for the majority of her career.
“Hollywood wanted to typecast me,” she reveals. “To pigeonhole me as this light comedic actress. To be forever what I was at twenty. And while I love comedy, I love other things too.”
“I would not have gotten to challenge and push myself as an actor if it hadn’t been for porn.”
As far as the reaction from fans of her Boy Meets World days, she says she has been pleasantly surprised at how accepting and supportive they have been of her career shift.
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“The majority of Boy Meets World fans are in their twenties and thirties, so I did not get the negative reaction people might’ve expected,” she says. “I actually got the opposite. I guess it’s because internet porn is part of the younger generation’s lives.”
“It’s not taboo like it used to be.”
She says the pandemic is breaking down what walls remain even further.
She says the normalisation of adult content is a cause she is passionate about, as she argues that negative stereotypes that surround sex work are harming those within the industry.
“The stigmatisation of sex work is what hurts sex workers, not the sex work itself,” she says.
“My goal is to tear down the walls between porn and mainstream.”
Maitland’s experience echoes that of other online sex workers, who have previously told Yahoo Lifestyle that the lockdown has seen the regard for intimate services shift immeasurably, even as in-person services have had to stop.
Not all workers have been lucky enough to see their profit and demand soar however, with experts concerned many ran the risk of ‘slipping through the cracks’ as coronavirus left clients out of work, and workers out of demand.
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