Maitland Ward is forging her own path. The actress who starred as Rachel on Boy Meets World is opening up about her career as an adult film performer in her forthcoming book Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me From Hollywood, out September 6.
“I’m unapologetic about sex…but I think it’s me in my truth and everything,” she told Yahoo Life. “When I was young, I was so apologetic for so many years. I will never apologize anymore.”
Ward got her start as a child actress on The Bold and the Beautiful before getting cast in the ABC sitcom Boy Meets World, opposite Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel. In the book, Ward shares her struggles in Hollywood. “I was always looked at, in my view, as the more provocative one—people were fascinated by my long legs, and that I’m so tall and I have fiery red hair, and it was like it almost made that okay,” Ward told Yahoo. “People would come up and like pat you on the ass or like give you a little pinch or say, ‘Oh, look how hot you are. Look at your tits.’”
Ward described her time on Boy Meets World as “very confusing” due to conflicting messages she received from the producers about appealing to male viewers while also seeming chaste. “If I was on a show, like Boy Meets World, I could be sexy. I could wear a sheet with little feathers on it in nude pictures that I had for my boyfriend—that’s fine,” she said, describing the plot from an episode in which Rachel’s friends share a racy photo of her as a prank. “If I ever wore anything like that, or did anything suggestive like that in real life, Disney and producers and Hollywood would’ve come down on me. Especially the [cocreator], Michael Jacobs—he was very adamant about me being chaste and the good girl.”
“It was just very confusing,” she said. “It hindered my sexual exploration and finding out who I was for a very long time.”
Ward has worked in the porn industry since 2006, becoming the number one adult creator on Patreon soon after launching her account and going on to star in professional porn productions a year and a half later. Ward said that transitioning from Hollywood to the adult entertainment industry has freed her from the pressure women face as they age. “That was a scary prospect back in the early 2000s, to think, ‘Oh, my God, you’re done. You’re going to be done very soon.’ So it was also kind of like a race, but men could stay around forever…and they did. And they still do…. Hollywood is very hard on aging, but I have felt less of that stigma in porn.”
Ward hopes her journey inspires others to live their truth, whatever that may be. “It’s scary to forge your own path, but it’s the only way that you’re going to be happy. It doesn’t have to be porn. That’s my more scandalous side,” she said. “I didn’t just switch overnight. It’s about making conscious efforts and decisions over time to get to a place that you want to be, embracing your truth. I want people to embrace their truth and just live how they want to live and be who they want to be. People are attracted to that.”