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The Porn Star
S1 Ep. 4 Mar 18, 2026

The Porn Star

Decades after a cringey stint hosting a show for Playboy, Jacob still can’t shake the shame. So he sets out to find a Jacob Reed who fully embraced the adult industry — a porn star. Hoping for redemption, or at least perspective, Jacob confronts living with a past you can’t erase.

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Today’s episode discusses adult themes. If that’s an issue, or if you’ve got kids around, maybe skip this one or throw on some headphones.

My brother called me one day to tell me his friend had seen me “in a porno.”

Not because my brother had sent it to him. He found it on his own, naturally, through whatever content he was consuming online.

To say this was the day I had feared would imply I thought it was possible. But I just kind of never thought this would come back into my life.

Yes, I really am in an adult video. Actually, I’m in three of them. I’m not having sex; I’m not naked — I’m just kind of there. How? Why? Well…my first job out of college involved some responsibilities I wasn’t fully expecting. Back then, I assumed no one would ever see these videos without the framing of the comedic reality show they were made for. Decades later, they’re on hundreds of sites for free.

“If you watch them outside the context of that show, I’m just some guy who’s in a porno.”

“Yeah.”

“Which I don’t love.”

“Okay. Yeah. I mean, you should have thought of that.”

Saying “You should have thought of that” is such a sibling thing to say. But, yes, looking back, I should have. So, on today’s show: I find out if you can put the porn genie back in the bottle.

Here in 2026, it seems obvious that hosting a show for Playboy would be fodder for future embarrassment. So, let me rewind to the summer of 2008.

It’s 2008. George W. Bush is president — we think he’s the worst president we’ll ever have. Kim Kardashian has just posed nude in Playboy… a magazine that still sells two to three million copies in print. Playboy is a cultural institution. Sex and the City, Entourage, and Curb Your Enthusiasm all build whole episodes around the Playboy Mansion. One of the top reality shows on TV is The Girls Next Door, a mainstream hit about Hugh Hefner and his three girlfriends. The parties at the mansion are covered by tabloids and mainstream news alike.

So when a friend and I got an email from a production company asking if we’d be interested in co-hosting a show for the Playboy Channel, it did not seem as obviously ill-advised as it might sound now. Crucially, the production company had just finished an award-winning PBS documentary series and specials for Disney and Warner Brothers. The new Playboy show, I was told, was going to be a comedic and journalistic look at the adult industry. Because it was Playboy, it would show nudity — but definitely no sex.

I’d just graduated into a huge recession. While my friends were struggling to find grunt work, I was being handed the chance to co-host a TV show. I said yes.

My first day on the job, I arrived at a large house in the Hollywood Hills. I walked inside, and the first thing I saw were two women my age, completely naked, each with a tattoo of a gun on their pelvis aimed directly at their vagina. I was given a script. It was on that first day of work that I learned each episode would have what the unscripted industry calls a ‘host try.’ This is when the host tries something in the world they’re visiting. A classic example is Grape Lady:

They do it on the news all the time. Or you might be more familiar with a ‘host try’ on shows like Dirty Jobs, Parts Unknown, or Somebody Feed Phil. The host try for this episode — my first day at my first job after college — was to be a non-nude extra in three different porn scenes.

I didn’t have an agent or manager to call and ask if this was normal. I remember feeling simultaneously like it was funny and weird and uncomfortable, but also that I’d better have fun with it because it didn’t feel like I had a choice.

The first scene involved a plot of some complexity: my character and his best friend, played by a pornstar named Mr. Pete, had traveled to Mexico for a wedding. Pete’s luggage had been lost by the airline. I wanted to go to the beach; he needed to stay behind and find his tuxedo. My mom — played by pornstar Joclyn Stone — would keep him company, which would lead to…things (read: sex).

The director told me to improvise. At this time in my life, I was doing seven or eight improv shows a week across Los Angeles at this point, so I went for it. I talked Pete into going to the beach by describing the sublime experience of snorkeling — the weightlessness, the tropical fish, the possibility of spotting a sea turtle. I had an answer for everything. He said he’d never been snorkeling. I made it sound genuinely transcendent.

The director yelled cut and berated me. Stop talking about snorkeling. Just say you want to go to the beach, then shut up and leave so they can have sex.

When the camera stopped rolling, Mr. Pete came up to me and earnestly asked: “Hey, is all that real about snorkeling? I’ve never been. It sounds sick.”

Let me rewind to the summer of 2008, because that context matters.

It’s 2008. George W. Bush is president — we think he’s the worst president we’ll ever have. Kim Kardashian has just posed nude in a Playboy issue that sells two to three million copies in print. Playboy is a cultural institution. Sex and the City, Entourage, and Curb Your Enthusiasm all build whole episodes around the Playboy Mansion. One of the top reality shows on TV is The Girls Next Door, a mainstream hit about Hugh Hefner and his three girlfriends. The parties at the mansion are covered by tabloids and mainstream news alike.

So when a friend and I got an email from a production company asking if we’d be interested in co-hosting a show for the Playboy Channel, it did not seem as obviously ill-advised as it might sound now. Crucially: the production company had just finished an award-winning PBS documentary series and specials for Disney and Warner Brothers. The new Playboy show, I was told, was going to be a comedic and journalistic look at the adult industry. Because it was Playboy, it would show nudity — but definitely no sex. Think: Dirty Jobs with boobs.

I’d just graduated into a huge recession. While my friends were struggling to find grunt work, I was being handed the chance to co-host a TV show. I said yes.

My first day on the job, I arrived at a large house in the Hollywood Hills. I walked inside, and the first thing I saw were two women my age, completely naked, each with a tattoo of a gun on their pelvis aimed directly at their vagina. I was given a script. The host try for this episode — my first day at my first job after college — was to be a non-nude extra in three different porn scenes.

I didn’t have an agent or manager to call. I remember feeling simultaneously like it was funny and weird and uncomfortable, but also that I better have fun with it because it didn’t feel like I had a choice.

The first scene involved a plot of some complexity: my character and his best friend, played by a pornstar named Mr. Pete, had traveled to Mexico for a wedding. Pete’s luggage had been lost by the airline. I wanted to go to the beach; he needed to stay behind and find his tuxedo. My mom — played by a pornstar named Joclyn Stone — would keep him company, which would lead to…things.

The director told me to improvise. I was doing seven or eight improv shows a week across Los Angeles at this point, so I went for it. I talked Pete into going to the beach by describing the sublime experience of snorkeling — the weightlessness, the tropical fish, the possibility of spotting a sea turtle. I had an answer for everything. He said he’d never been snorkeling. I made it sound genuinely transcendent.

The director yelled cut and berated me. Stop talking about snorkeling. Just say you want to go to the beach, then shut up and leave so they can have sex.

When the camera stopped rolling, Mr. Pete came up to me and earnestly asked: “Hey, is all that real about snorkeling? I’ve never been. It sounds sick.”

While the crew set up the next take, I sat at the kitchenette reflecting on my performance and how brilliant and hilarious I was. How the porn director probably didn’t get it, but it wasn’t for them. It was for the comedy show I was about to be the star on that was about to launch my career. I was really on an ego trip — until I became aware of some movement just over my shoulder, and turned to find Mr. Pete, less than a foot from my head, sweats pulled down, dick pulled out, dribbling water from a Kirkland Signature water bottle onto… himself… to lubricate things so he could get himself to a more engorged state for the next scene.

I remember thinking: this isn’t what I signed up for.

When the show aired, I learned that maybe that was what I signed up for — because the entire snorkeling scene was cut. And Playboy, facing the growing competition of online porn, rolled out a formatting change beginning with our show: instead of blurring the explicit footage the cameraman had captured for b-roll, they just showed it. All of it.

The snorkeling footage has never surfaced. I’ve been trying to get it for my reel for years. But, per my brother’s phone call, the regular porn scenes I was in are absolutely available. And if his friend saw them, how many other people had seen them but never said anything?

I did an internet search for my name and the word “porn.” The good news: as a non-nude extra, my name doesn’t seem to be attached to the videos. The bad news: there are hundreds of results for “Jacob Reed porn” — and they all point to someone else.

This Jacob Reed is in his late twenties, jacked, lives in Los Angeles, identifies as straight, and appears in a video with his name in the title doing something I will let you imagine. If anyone could help me come to terms with something I’m not proud of being on the Internet it was Porn Jacob. But I couldn’t find him anywhere. All I could find were websites with his videos. I called them all, but found that with porn — it’s really hard to find the person behind the video. It was a lot of third-party billing or tech support companies based in countries halfway around the world.

If I was going to track down Porn Jacob, I needed to talk to someone who knows that world. My comedian friend Jimmy is a very accomplished comedy performer and writer. He currently writes on SNL. But, around the time that I first found out about Porn Jacob, Jimmy had just wrapped a web series for Grindr that featured gay pornstar cameos. So, I asked him if he could loop me in with someone on the Grindr team that might know how to find Porn Jacob.

Instead, Jimmy did something way better: he tracked down a porn wiki and found Porn Jacob’s real name in about thirty seconds flat. It is — and I want to prepare you for this — the most British name I have ever heard. Like a name you’d invent in an improv scene for a stodgy lord that would make Benedict Cumberbatch sound like Joe Smith. Since we’re protecting his anonymity, we’ll refer to him the way we do in the episode: with a version of Benedict Cumberbatch.

Jimmy also found his real Benderforth Cumberbun’s Instagram. His porn career and his real identity are easily connected online, which is almost certainly why Benderforth appeared to have scrubbed everything he could. Jimmy suggested that type of background can haunt people.

This was not what I wanted to hear. And by doing this podcast, was I digging up metaphorical graves in a metaphorical porn graveyard and raising the specter on myself? And now that I knew Porn Jacob was really Bendylegs Cinderbonk — would reaching out to him make me the haunter?

Since I didn’t want to haunt him by having his alter ego’s name show up in messages, I asked my producer, Danny, to reach out on my behalf. But… the messages didn’t even show as read.

Finding him through the companies that hosted or produced his videos wasn’t going any better. The adult industry turns out to be a labyrinth of shell companies: each production house redirecting to a holding company, each holding company registered in a different country, every phone number routing to a third-party billing or tech support line staffed by people who would only say they worked for “some websites.”

One guy I found who’d built a company, sold it to a porn mega-corporation, and talked about it openly on LinkedIn seemed like a good person to reach out to. He hung up the moment I said the words “documentary” and “information.”

Another company did have an audition form that would go directly to the producers. I briefly considered whether a creative submission might get me a contact. Then I kept reading. A “cum shot” was required from all performers. As a comedian and director, I’ve sent many samples of my work to people, but I was not sending that kind of sample. Moving on.

Hitting dead ends with Blemington Covingham, I started looking for the tape of me and Mr. Pete talking about snorkeling. I actually walked into the downtown San Diego building listed in the legal disclaimer of one of the films — dressed, I should note, in slippers, two different-colored socks, ripped shorts, a toddler-stained shirt, and an oversized Disneyland sweatshirt. After making it past an empty lobby with a disconnected phone sitting upside down on the reception desk, I turned a corner, looking for someone to talk to, and accidentally made eye contact with a conference room full of people through a glass wall. A woman came barreling out, got in my face, and started reciting recording consent statutes from memory. A very large man in a three-piece suit and two fists full of rings materialized behind me, blocking the exit, and asked in a scarily calm voice why I was there and who I was with. I did my best to explain, and eventually they let me leave.

My smart watch later showed my heart rate surging from 71 to 146 BPM.

I later found news articles about this company that mentioned, among other things: the DOJ, $16 million in investor fraud, offshore tax havens, Evangelical Christian victims, Teamsters money, the Mafia, the CIA, and George Bush.

Some rocks are better left unturned.

The pattern I kept hitting with companies stood in contrast to every individual person in the industry I’d spoken to. Which made me remember something: I’d been so focused on finding someone who could connect me to porn stars, I’d forgotten that I already knew some. I’d interviewed them for the Playboy show.

I reached out to dozens of them. A few got back to me — and they actually remembered me warmly. Catalina Cruz, who ran her own members-only site that had been the subject of one of our episodes. Goddess Severa, the dominatrix who had put me in a headlock for the host try. And Joclyn Stone, who had played my mom in the scene with Mr. Pete.

When I’d interviewed them for the show, I’d had points to hit and wasn’t really asking what I was curious about. Talking to them now, I learned that Catalina is a grandmother of five. Severa has a graduate degree, got her black belt in jiu jitsu, traveled the world, and runs an art studio in Los Angeles. Joclyn had run a podcast for almost seven years — and before any of this, was a mortgage funder for seventeen years until the 2008 market crash made her look for other options.

They led rich, full lives. Porn was just their day job.

When I told Joclyn about the snorkeling scene, she remembered it. And she had a way of framing what that day had actually been:

“You were being human. You weren’t being a perv. You’re just a normal person coming into something where all the things that are inappropriate, all the things you should not say — are all accepted. It’s a culture shock.”

They also helped me understand why performers disappear. People leave the industry when they meet someone who says “if you love me, you’ll stop.” Or when they find out — as Catalina hadn’t thought about before she started — that the content doesn’t go away, and that Uncle Joe might find it someday.

“There could be consequences that you have to deal with.”

I asked whether I should even be looking for Blemperblem Campervan. Maybe I should just leave him alone.

“There’s no harm in reaching out to someone. He doesn’t have to talk to you. Just be straightforward. And then see what happens from there.”

Goddess Severa told me to keep trying until I got a firm no from Jacob himself. Joclyn said: anything’s a good idea — try it and find out.

With every company being a dead end, I made a spreadsheet of every individual person who appeared in or worked on Blenderbutton Crumpleduct’s films — actors, directors, crew. One name stood out: Jess, a French director who ran a small amateur site called Crunch Boy.

There was no contact information on his site, but there was a technical support form. I filled it out. He replied within minutes. His English was enthusiastic but approximate, and after a long back-and-forth involving Google Translate, he gave me his phone number while simultaneously explaining he couldn’t do a phone call. I needed a French translator.

My first candidate was an ex-girlfriend. My wife vetoed that immediately. My grandma’s cousin learned fluent French hiding with a French family during the Holocaust and would absolutely be down — but I imagined the gossip radiating through my extended family and hung up before the call connected. A French-Canadian producer from a Whiskas cat food commercial I once directed seemed promising until he decided it wasn’t the right fit.

So, I tested the built-in AI translator on my video conferencing app by calling a restaurant in Paris. The maître d’ could hear the AI translating in real time, became confused and then irritated, and eventually asked me to please turn it off. This whole episode is really way better in the audio — but this part especially is bonkers.

I eventually found Dalya, a born-and-raised Parisian living in Los Angeles, through a message board for French speakers. I told her the whole story. She was in.

Jess answered on the first ring. Dalya handled introductions. After a minute, he confirmed: yes, he knew Basketball Caravan.

He’d met him once, in England, twelve or thirteen years ago. They’d made one video together — an amateur scene, about fifteen minutes. He hadn’t heard from Jacob in over a decade. He didn’t have contact information. And, unprompted, he offered the clearest explanation I’d gotten yet for why this search kept hitting walls:

“Once you are done and you want to move on, you don’t appreciate going back and being reminded of the fact that you did work as an actor.”

He’d only known Jacob for a day, fifteen years ago. How would he know what Jacob wanted now? But as Dalya tried to keep him on the line, he got shorter and shorter:

“You are wasting my time for nothing. I saw him once in my life, twelve years ago. I have no news of him. It is too confidential. I cannot help you more. I am really sorry.”

After almost a year of searching, I had finally spoken to someone who knew Bellatrix Cumberbund — and he was telling me Bellatrix didn’t want to be found.

But I still hadn’t heard that from Jacob himself.

There was one thing I hadn’t tried. Remember that website where you could send an audition to get connected directly with producers?

That’s coming up in Part II.

Jacob Reed and Me releases new episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Support the show and get early episodes at Patreon.

And if anyone at Kirkland Signature wants to reach out about sponsorship after hearing our story about one of the several uses for their water bottles — we are definitely interested.