Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Jewish Porn Star Joanna Angel Calls James Deen a ‘Scary Person’

Jewish porn star Joanna Angel said she feared for her safety during her six-year relationship with fellow porn actor James Deen.

Angel called Deen a “scary person” in an interview Wednesday on the Jason Ellis SiriusXM radio show, the Daily Beast reported.

Angel’s allegations come less than a week after another of Deen’s ex-girlfriends, the porn actress Stoya, accused him of raping her. Two other adult film actresses have also alleged Deen sexually assaulted them.

Deen has denounced the claims against him on Twitter.

Angel, who grew up religiously observant and attended Jewish day schools and summer camps, runs the alternative porn website BurningAngel.com.

She told Ellis that Deen once kept her head underwater so long that she thought she would die, and that she woke up on several occasions to find him choking her in his sleep.

She tweeted to Stoya after her accusations: “You have my support @stoya. I’m here for you.”

Angel said Wednesday that Deen’s behavior does not represent the porn industry. “I do not want people to blame porn. I think he is a bad egg. Please don’t blame the industry,” she said.

Deen, 29, born Bryan Sevilla, had been called a “feminist hero” and the “boy next door” of the porn industry for his average stature and boyish looks. An often-cited magazine profile describes him as “polite,” “self-deprecating” and someone who “speaks well of everyone,” in contrast to other male porn stars who sport “neck chains,” “unreasonable biceps” and “tribal tattoos.”

In the same article, Deen calls himself someone who cracks Jewish jokes and has an “overanalytical Jewish brain.” He has also elsewhere called himself a feminist.

Deen also has a history of joking about rape on Twitter.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version