Ill be back at with newsday. At 1am with shara njit ill be back at with newsday. At 1am with sharanjit and newsday. Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. The human preoccupation with sex is nothing new, but the internet has made it so much easier to explore and exploit every shade of desire. The online porn industry makes billions of dollars in profit every year, but the big winners are corporate players, not the women and men performing the sex acts. My guest today is mia khalifa. She was briefly a porn actress, garnering worldwide notoriety when she appeared in a sex video wearing the islamic hijab. After years of threats and insecurity, shes speaking out. What does her story tell us about the porn industry and 21st century culture . Mia khalifa, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you for having me. By many measures, you are a very famous woman. For instance, you have, what, more than 16 million followers on instagram. But the origins of your fame lie in your brief involvement in the porn industry. Is that hard for you to deal with . Absolutely. After i left, i deleted my. Well, i didnt delete my instagram, it got hacked by isis sympathisers and propaganda was posted all over it, so instagram took it down and i didnt recreate one for another year until i decided to kind of accepted my fate as the infamous former porn star and try to change the narrative. So i recreated an Instagram Account and tried to, for lack of a better term, become an influencer. Because if you put your name, as indeed i have done researching this, put your name into google. 0n the work network . Yeah, well, it was work. But the point is you get these countless links to videos. The word porn star appears immediately. That is something that you will never, ever overcome, however much. First of all, thats rude. Im trying to. I understand that. I dont mean to say you want it to be but its the way technology, the internet, works. Yeah. Im not very google friendly and im trying to change that. One of the first things that comes up is the site that i dont own or control but where the home page is written in the first person like im the one running it. On my wikipedia its posted as my official website, and weve tried countless times to take it down, including taking legal action, but the company wont hear anything and weve made them countless offers. Lets go through this step by step. How did a girl who was brought by her parents to the United States from lebanon, your home country, schooled in the United States. Clearly smart, went to university in texas and read history. How did you get involved with the sex porn industry . I dont think low self esteem discriminates against anyone. Doesnt matter if you come from a great family or if you come from a not so great background. I struggled my entire childhood with weight and i never felt attractive or worthy of male attention, and suddenly my first year of college i start losing all this weight from making small changes. By the time i graduated, i was ready to make a bigger difference. I felt extremely self conscious about my breasts, because that was the first thing to go when i lost all the weight. I lost about 50lb, i dont know how many kilos that is, or stones. Well, its a considerable amount of weight. Its changed your physicality. Completely. My biggest insecurity was my breasts, i wanted to more or less go back to what they were. When i did that i started garnering all this attention from men and i was never used to it and ifelt like unless i held onto it and kind of did what was asked of me or what was expected of me it would go away. After feeling what it was like, that validation and the complements for the first time, i did not want that to go away. You were spotted, i think, there you were, a young graduate and wanting to find a job and you were spotted on a street by a guy who said, i can work with you, and clearly he opened up and said its the porn business. What was it in you that, far from running away, was drawn into it . It wasnt. Thats not how it was, it wasnt, hey, do you want to come and do porn . It was more, youre beautiful, would you like to do some modelling . You have a great body, i think you would be great with nude modelling, things like that. When i came into the studio, it was very respectable. A gorgeous location in miami doral, florida. It was clean, everyone who worked there was a nice. All of their cubicles were decorated with family photos. It was nothing dodgy or made me uncomfortable. The first time i went in wasnt the first time i filmed porn. A porn movie. It was the second time. The first time was more so do you want to do this, like, sign the paperwork, et cetera et cetera. You have since talked about people who prey on callow young women. Im wondering as we talk about it now whether you feel a sense of victimhood, whether you look back at your younger self, obviously now youre 26 but this is when you were 21, do you look at that 21 year old and feel she was used, she was very much a victim . I feel she didnt have the tools to identify she was being taken advantage of and what she was being told was lies. Maybe not so much lies, but trying to manipulate me into doing what they wanted me to do. I dont really see myself as a victim. I dont like that word. I did make my own decisions, even though they were terrible decisions. I think that something needs to change in the way women are approached, if even they are approached. It is an industry, and it is a multibillion dollar industry, but at the heart of it are young people, men and women, who are asked to and agree to perform sex acts in front of a camera. How much control, agency, did you have in the process of making those videos, which we now know have been viewed hundreds of billions of times . None, very little, other than kind of saying, yes, no, to one outfit or the other. Very little say on what was filmed. The theme of it, content, where its filmed, its not really up to you. Consent would seem to me as an outsider would be a fundamental important principle. If they ask you to perform a particular kind of sex act you absolutely did not want to do. No, they cant force you, no, absolutely not. Youve talked interestingly in the recent past about the mindset you had when you were performing in the sex videos. You said that you sort of blacked out and now you look back you cant actually remember very clearly a lot of the things you did. Try and explain to me what was going on in your head as you got deeper into this industry . I think that the word i couldnt quite grasp when i said that would be adrenaline. I think my adrenaline was so high because i knew what i was doing was beyond anything i ever thought that i would do, or anything that i couldve imagined doing. So adrenaline was through the roof. Makes it hard to look back and remember exactly what happened and the things that transpired. Do you find it difficult talking about it now . A little bit, yeah. Yeah, i understand that. Do you think it made a difference . Im genuinely asking, youre of arab heritage, your parents are from lebanese. Im from lebanese, i was born and raised there. You are arab and arab culture is deeply conservative on the whole. Do you think that was an extra layer you had to peel away as you got involved in this business . Probably. I think a part of it was also rebellion and wanting to do something so out of bounds and so out of character that i shocked even myself. I guess this is a very stupid question but of course your family had no clue as to what you were doing . No, and they disowned me when they did, when they found out. Did they . Yes. That must have been terribly hard. It was. I felt completely alienated by not just the world but my family and the people around me. When i quit, when i was still alone, i left and i mean ijust realised some mistakes arent forgivable. But time heals all wounds and things are Getting Better now. Things are changing . Yes. I want to ask you about the mechanics of the industry in one other way and that is power, authority, money. First of all, weve talked about men and women being performers in this business, but were there any women in positions of authority and control that you worked with . Absolutely, one of the closest person that the talents worked with was a female. Very nice, respectful, professional. A lot of female employees in, you know, the back office like vps of sales and people on the tech side. So the offices are full of women. I asked her, how did you find this job, how do you apply for a job like this . Word of mouth, through a friend. The financial side of it is extraordinary too. After you made the video that i want to talk about in a moment, which involved you wearing the islamic dress, the hijab, you for a time where the number one most popular porn actress on pornhub, which is this aggregator site for porn that is wildly popular throughout the world it seems, and you were getting hundreds of millions of views. And yet despite that in the porn world stardom, you were paid a grand total for all the 12 sex videos you were made, you were paid a grand total of 12,000 us dollars, and yet you made millions and millions of dollars for both bang bros, the company you worked with, and pornhub, the aggregating site. How could that be . Thats how it is. Im not the only one singled out, its not like i had a terrible contract or a terrible manager. I didnt have a manager or an agent. No advisors at all . Nothing at all. And you were 21, barely out of childhood frankly. The human brain doesnt fully develop until the age of 25. The Decision Making part of my brain still needed forming. There was no one to tell me what to do or to say this is wrong. This is important about the nature of the porn business, you make a video and it lives forever online and the more popular it gets, the more hits it gets and this isntjust in the us, many of your videos were popular in the middle east. The most popular in the middle east. Which is interesting in itself. And they were the ones tweeting Death Threats at me. Well get to that in a moment but with the finances, however popular you became, number one star in the business, you had no residuals or rights whatsoever to get recompense for your popularity . None whatsoever. To this day is that the way porn contracts work for everyone . Everyone, male, female, everyone who comes in. I think we have to get through this one particular notorious video you were involved in that i mentioned at the beginning, which involved three young people, you were one of them, wearing the islamic headscarf, often known as the hijab, and then it developed into a sex scene. You must have known how provocative that was . I verbatim told them, you guys are going to get me killed. And they said . They just laughed. Why didnt you then say, im not doing it. Intimidation, i was scared. I knew that if i said no it would. You know, theyre not going to force you to do it. At that point thats rape. No ones going to force you to have sex. But i was still scared. Imean. Have you ever felt scared to. Not scared, but nervous to speak up and Say Something at a restaurant where the food isnt right and the waiter comes by and says, how is everything . I was intimidated, i was nervous. What youre saying is the concept of consent is sought of meaningless in the power dynamic between the men mostly who are controlling the porn industry and a young 21 year old actress such as yourself . Absolutely. When theres four white male producers in the room and you Say Something like that to them and they all just laugh. I mean, its kind of devastating and it makes you not want to speak up and say anything again. Its the same way when you sign your contracts. You have the president and the ceo of the company sitting in the room with you waiting for you to read it and when youre reading it youre not comprehending everything thats happening because youre so nervous because people are staring at you. When you walked out of that filming area at the end of that particular video film, did you in your heart know this is going to be a disaster for you . It didnt hit until i think the next day because the adrenaline was still very high, but immediately after it was released it shattered my entire world. The reason i thought it was ok for me to do porn was because i thought no one would ever find out about it. Theres millions of girls found themselves having sex and do things like that and no one knows the name. No one knows as they are, no one recognises them so, i wanted to do it as my dirty little secret but it blew up in my face. It really did. From the point of view of the filmmakers and the aggregators, it was a triumph. They got hundreds of millions of views straight away. They called me lightning and a bottle. But the reality was your face is now known throughout the world as the porn star who wore hijab. And you got threats. Oh, yes. Im not going to say isis because i dont think anyone heavily involved in isis has a twitter account is in isis. They photoshopped a picture of me on to someone getting beheaded and they said. I dont know exactly what they said but they said something along the lines of, youre next. I cannot imagine how alone you must have felt at that point because you couldnt discuss that with your family. Of course you couldnt. No, it was terrifying but my defence mechanism is humour so my response was, as long as you dont cut off my boobs, they were expensive. But youre 21 years old. You just said to me my life was sort of ruined. But here you see it, were five years later. How much personal responsibility do you feel you have to take what you did . 100 . I made the decision. Granted, the industry is flawed and we need to do something to protect other girls from falling into the same trap that i did, but at the end of the day, it was my choice. In terms of getting out of the business, when that went viral, that video, and yourface was just so well known and associated with something so provocative, and you were receiving threats, was a very quick decision for you to say, no more i wouldnt say very quick because i was still nervous, i didnt know how they would react to it. I actually called them all in to a meeting about a month later and sat them down and i had a Resignation Letter waiting in front of every single one of their chairs, and i spoke to them about my feelings and they tried to convince me to stay and they told me this would all blow over and that im overreacting and that im exaggerating about the level of peril that im in. At that point did you have to have some sort of security, had you had to move out of your own apartment . I did have to move out of my apartment already but thats because someone had taken a screenshot of the google maps location of my apartment was. So these guys, they saw you as a money machine . Absolutely. But you still had no advisors, you had no lawyer, you had nothing. What 21 year old has a lawyer on retainer . Im just trying to get my head around how stressful this would have been and because even now, you sit here so poised and time has passed, but do you think there is some sort of post Traumatic Stress that is in you from this experience . Yes. And i think it kicks in mostly when i go out in public because the stares i get, i feel like people can see through my clothes and it brings me deep shame. It makes me feel like. It makes me feel like i lost all right to my privacy, which i did because im one Google Search away. Yes, and those images, you cannot expunge. You have no right, even though its deeply personal to you, you have no right to remove them from anybodys view around the world. Yeah. It is very hard. It is. But im thinking, this story is your story but frankly its also the story of other porn actors and actresses. Im seeing that recently after the interview came out and people started reaching out and all the e mails, my manager checks them, and when he gets stuff like that, he filters them and sends them to me. And reading the words of some of these girls who have been sex trafficked and forced into porn, and all of these stories of girls whose lives have been ruined by men who have taken advantage of them, and by contracts that they didnt even understand the jargon of, it makes me feel like, ok, maybe it was good that i started talking and that i posted this interview and that im speaking out now, because other people feel the same way and even though they dont relate on as deep a level as doing porn, they can relate on the level of being insecure and being pressured into doing something they didnt want to do. You have chosen to speak out in a way that very few people in the porn industry ever do, for all sorts of reasons, which i guess many of them are fairly obvious, but you have a platform now in a way because youve leveraged what was, shall we say, notoriety, into a different form of fame, youre trying to move into different businesses as well. But in terms of looking back and wanting to be a campaigner and activist, if you do, is it part of your mission to change the way society sees pornography and deals with it, and treats people in that industry . Everyone watches porn. Have you ever watched porn in your entire life . In my entire life, i have watched porn. See, what is your change is the way women are brought into porn. With the change and being able to approach them, only women can seek it instead of being pressured into it, or make it so you cant force them to sign a contract right in front of you, right there on the spot. It has to be looked over by a lawyer, and if thats too extreme, maybe they have to take a few days to think about it and read it over at home in their own time before they sign it. But we interview a lot of people, and many of them are middle aged or older, its great to have someone in the studio whos only 26 years old, there is a school of thought which says that our culture as a whole, notjust the United States or the uk, but in many, many countries, is being pornified, and young people in particular are so exposed to pornography so young in the lives that it is materially changing the way males and females relate to each other, the way they think about relationships, in a potentially very corrosive, damaging way. Whats your take on that . Of course it affects relationships. Porn addiction is very prevalent in america and im sure here too. The things that men see in videos they expect from the women in their lives, and thats not reality. No one is going to be that perfect, no one is going to do those acts on a wednesday night with the person they love. Weve talked a lot, and i know its been difficult for you, obviously its difficult for you, to accept that still online there are so many images of you engaged in your brief porn career. But has it proved possible for you to move on from that, to forge a different kind of career, and indeed to forge relationships with people far beyond the notion that you were once involved in porn . Yeah, i was lucky to meet a man who had never even heard of me, which was fantastic. I ended up having to tell him about it but he told me after we started talking, i googled you because you have five million followers and id be crazy not to google you. But it was very hard for me to date after, and i dont think it was hard for me to date because it was hard to find a man, it was hard to find somebody who wasnt into it. Does that make sense . It does make sense. I suppose the bottom line is you never really wanted to be famous when you were a porn star, it was the last thing you wanted. You wanted it to be a secret, but now it seems youre embracing being famous. Yes, and i get a lot of hate from female performers who say that im ungrateful for it, but it was never what i asked for. And if you could speak to the 21 year old mia khalifa walking down the street in florida, stopped by the guy who said, youre beautiful, youre lovely, i can work with you, what would you tell her to do today . Theres mace in your purse for a reason, use it. Run. Mia khalifa, its been a pleasure having you on hardtalk. Thank you for having me. Hello once again. In some areas of the British Isles the Late August Bank Holiday has been marked by unseasonably high temperatures and the records have been tumbling through sunday and indeed into the bank holiday on monday. On both of the holidays, 30 celsius was exceeded in the south east corner of the British Isles. Come the middle to end of the week, you will be looking at something closer to 23 or 24. Perhaps that suits you a good deal better. And its there, waiting in the wings behind this particular weather front bringing fresh, atlantic air across the British Isles. But even before that arrives, but from the word go into the south west across wales and then eventually through tuesday up into the north of england, perhaps eventually come the evening into lincolnshire, we might find some pretty heavy showers and thunderstorms. Temperatures still in the 32 33 degrees mark or so. So the change is not quite in hand for tuesday but certainly as we go through wednesday, some thunderstorms quit the scene, then we push that weather front further east. A lot of cloud around but a brighter into the day. There you see the temperatures no longer 33, closer to 23 or 24. And that whats marks the middle and indeed the end of the week where we go into a period of atlantic derived air, thejet stream kinking a trough there quite a marked one too, just to the western side of the British Isles and then gradually tumbling its way of a further towards the east and no longer do we sit on the warm side of the jet stream, we are very much in the firing line of a succession of low pressure areas firing their way, particularly towards the North Western quarter of the British Isles. The High Pressure for the second half of the week very much confined to the southern counties. Showers get on through, well find yet more wet and windy fair driving its way across the British Isles, some brighter skies following on behind, but everybody just about at risk of a sharper burst of rain at some stage. Temperatures in the low teens. Certainly, i think well find the rain at this stage is largely confined to parts of scotland and northern ireland, perhaps just getting across the border later on into the north west of both england and wales. The driest weather at that stage further south. Im Sharanjit Leyl in singapore. The headlines the g7 summit ends with the possibility of a meeting between President Trump and the iranian leader. Drug companyjohnson and johnson is fined over 500 million for its part in americas opioid addiction crisis. Im rico hizon in london. Also in the programme indonesia is to have a new capital built on the island of borneo as the land around jakarta sinks. And dancing the days away seouls seniors disco tackles loneliness