Bella Thorne’s Pornhub Video, Explained for Anyone Clicking This Link Expecting Actual Porn

At just 21, former Disney star Bella Thorne is one of our greatest multi-hyphenates. The pansexual actress has a career in TV and film; she’s also an author, occasional singer, model and revenge-porn activist (basically, Gen Z’s stoned Gwyneth Paltrow).

Now we can add porn director to that list.

As part of Pornhub’s Visionaries Director’s Series, which has featured guest directors like rappers Young M.A. and Brooke Candy, the former Disney Channel star will release her directorial debut, Her & Him, on Pornhub’s premium service in September. It chronicles the “out-of-control sexually charged encounter” of a twentysomething guy and his girlfriend.

For those familiar with the sex-positive Thorne, her latest career move should come as no surprise. Then again, few seem to truly understand her. So who is she? And what do we need to know?

Bella Thorne Is That Sweet Girl From the Disney Channel

Though Thorne had a brief arc on HBO’s Big Love, her big break came in 2010 starring alongside fellow Gen Z queen Zendaya on the Disney Channel show Shake It Up. They played grade schoolers with careers as background dancers on a local Chicago TV show.

Marketed as the successors to Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, the two co-stars played their parts well. Meanwhile, they also appeared as co-leads in the 2012 Disney Channel movie Frenemies and walked endless red carpets together.

No, Bella Thorne Is Not on Euphoria

When Shake It Up ended in 2013, Thorne and Zendaya also ended their TV partnership. (Don’t worry, they’re still close friends!) Zendaya went on Dancing With the Stars (losing to Kellie Pickler — literally, how?), starred solo on Disney Channel’s K.C. Undercover and recorded an underrated eponymous album. Her 2013 song “Replay” still bops. Today, Zendaya is the latest cinematic M.J. in the Spider-Man franchise, and you can find her on HBO’s underrated prestige teen drama Euphoria. No one is doing what Zendaya is doing.

Not even Thorne, whose rebranding wasn’t so smooth. As she told Vogue, her agents wanted to position her as the new Rachel McAdams, so she appeared in a series of family films like Blended and The DUFF and played rom-com roles in You Get Me and Midnight Sun. Her biggest hit came in the teen soap Famous in Love, but Freeform canceled it last year after just two seasons. She was also supposed to release her debut album in 2015, but it was scrapped.

The two stars’ diverging paths largely contribute to the perception that Zendaya “won” as Hollywood’s newest star while Thorne “lost” as a failed child star.

Know That Horror Film? Yeah, Bella Thorne’s in That

Still, what constitutes a celebrity today has changed drastically. If you ask infallible celebrity reporters Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber of the Who? Weekly podcast, Thorne is at the center of 2019 celebrity culture. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Honey, it’s time for a rebrand. 2019 is all about six degrees of Bella Thorne.

There are two basic paths for a former Disney actress to shed her good-girl image. 1) act in a controversial project; or 2) become an overtly sexual singer. Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens starred in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, while Zendaya went with Euphoria and Debby Ryan opted for Netflix’s much-criticized Insatiable. Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato and Aly & AJ all went for sexy songstresses.

But you don’t become the epicenter of pop culture by following others. Thorne blazed her own trail. After her stint emulating Rachel McAdams, she starred in horror films like Amityville: The Awakening and Assassination Nation. As she told Vogue, “I like the darker things. I like the movies that make you feel uncomfortable because that’s what life is. That’s why I go out of my way to do the shit that I do that people are like, oh, that’s crazy or that’s this. Well, that’s me. So here I am right in front of you. Like it or leave it.”

Bella Thorne Is Extremely Online

Thorne didn’t just scare away her good-girl image; she smoked it out. By 2017, Thorne started garnering more attention for her internet presence than her acting. She was one of the first celebrities to Juul, and she started dating Kourtney Kardashian’s baby daddy, Scott Disick, when she was 20 and he was 34.

She told the L.A. Times that tabloids like the Daily Mail love to connect her shifting style (going makeup-free and wearing exposed bras) with being a drug-addicted former child star: “They’re like, ‘She looks really tired out. Maybe the drugs are really wearing on her skin.’ … I get so mad. So are you telling every kid with cystic acne that they must be a heroin addict? I think they think I take serious drugs, and I’m just smoking weed.”

The thing about Thorne is she isn’t using a film or song to make us believe she’s a sexual, pot-smoking twentysomething like the rest of us. She’s actually living that life. Thorne and I are both 1997 babies. When I open Instagram, I see no difference in the nearly nude, Juul-smoking selfies Thorne posts and the ones my friends put up. Hell, you millennials are also Juuling now. Don’t judge.

Bella Thorne Is a Bona Fide Influencer

One of the biggest critiques leveraged at Thorne is her friendship with controversial, racist internet personalities. Her ex-girlfriend YouTuber Tana Mongeau is behind the TanaCon disaster, aka the “YouTuber Fyre Fest.” She’s also known to hang out with Logan Paul who famously videotaped himself in Japan’s Aokigahara “suicide forest.” Both have been called out for some racist shit, and I won’t defend her friendship with them. Neither one is worth our time.

Fortunately, Bella’s also explored the good side of being online. She’s come out as both pansexual and dyslexic, connecting a lot more with her fans along the way. “A lot of people come up to me on the street and tell me I’ve changed their life in some way,” Thorne told Complex in 2017. “It is so fucking dope when somebody’s like, ‘Hey, I have dyslexia, you make me feel comfortable.’ The hatred online is worth this — because on the other side of the hatred is the positive side, and it is so fucking awesome.”

Plus, being online is good business. “Instagram is 100 percent a job to me,” she told Vogue, claiming that at 18 she had only $200 in her bank account. A year and a half later, Thorne bought a $2 million L.A. home with her Instagram money. She charges $65,000 to blast an Instagram ad to 21 million followers. On Snapchat, she settles for $10,000 to $20,000.

Bella Thorne Is the Celebrity Whoopi Goldberg Slut-Shamed

Thorne has used her social media power to dunk on her critics. In June, she released her own nude photos after being blackmailed by Twitter hackers. On The View, Whoopi Goldberg chastised Thorne for taking the photos in the first place. “If you’re famous, I don’t care how old you are. You don’t take nude pictures of yourself,” Goldberg said. “Once you take that picture, it goes into the cloud and it’s available to any hacker who wants it, and if you don’t know that in 2019 that is an issue, I’m sorry. You don’t get to do that.”

Thorne promptly responded in a tearful Instagram Story, expressing her love for Goldberg but displeasure with her regressive comments. “Ur view on this matter is honestly awful and I hope u change ur mind set as u are on a show talking to young girls,” she wrote. She garnered support from her peers Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, Dove Cameron and Zendaya.

Bella Thorne Is a Poet and Memoirist

Her new collection of memoir poetry is titled The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray. Her A-list endorsement quotes come courtesy of Jessica Chastain, Jared Leto, Snoop Dogg, Zendaya, Lena Dunham and Diplo (though most admit they haven’t actually read the book).

Let Bella Thorne Live

I’ll admit I get defensive when people criticize her. I grew up watching Shake It Up with my little cousins. I tried to get into Famous in Love just for her. But when I hear Thorne critics, I don’t see concerns for her well-being — what I see is fear. Gen Z — extremely online, relentlessly sex-positive and no-bullshit — confuses people, and haters shoot down what they can’t relate to.

“I’m tired of people not perceiving me as myself,” she said recently in a BUILD Series interview while promoting her book. “They thought the worst of me. And I’m just like, who am I to you guys? Because I’m pretty authentic.”

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Joseph Longo

Joseph Longo is a culture and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly and more. He's still trying to understand what it means to be a Gemini Rising.