How Pleasure director Ninja Thyberg delivered a balanced look at the porn industry
The Swedish filmmaker recounts her years of research, the casting of Sofia Kappel, and her ambitious American plans

Swedish director Ninja Thyberg is earning rave reviews for Pleasure, the full-length feature that expands on her award-winning 2013 short of the same name. At once an intense coming-of-age drama, a dark study of unbridled youthful ambition, and an insightful look at the relationship between abusers and victims, the indie film tells the story of a newcomer to the adult film industry.
In the film, Sofia Kappel plays 19-year-old Linnéa, who arrives in Los Angeles, takes the name Bella Cherry, and dives into hardcore sex work. Her choices bring career success, but they come at a cost. The A.V. Club spoke with Thyberg about how she researched the industry, the reasons she cast Kappel for this unique role, and the ways that cinema can bring some corrective balance to a warped culture.
The A.V. Club: You’ve talked about having an academic or intellectual interest in pornography when you were in school, studying gender studies. When did that translate into the idea for a film?
Ninja Thyberg: I had already started [at] one film school, and all my films were about gender issues and sexuality. And then I went to another film school, to study script writing for a year, and parallel with that I also studied gender studies, where I wrote a thesis about porn online. I did a study analyzing different clips, and then I became so curious about the people making porn. Because I was a filmmaker already, I was so curious of the interactions in between takes. For example, I could tell that they have moved the camera here [for a different shot], so what do they say to each other? And what do they say before they start? Or, like, after? And also there was a lot of porn where they’re obviously playing a role—like, super-stereotypical gender roles that a lot of the time can be very problematic. I was curious what they think about that. So that’s how I got the idea of the short film. And I did a lot of research for that, but I had never been to a real porn set. So I felt a little bit like a hypocrite when I was saying in interviews that I wanted to portray the real people behind the porn stereotypes. I think when I started the short film I had in my head already the idea that it could maybe be this stepping stone to make a longer version. And then when it got a lot of attention and won an award [at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival] and it was at Sundance, it just felt like I needed to continue it—but to do it the proper way, and do more research.
AVC: So you spent four or five years shuttling back and forth, visiting adult film shoots in Los Angeles, and building relationships in the industry. The idea of using four big sex scenes to track Linnéa’s story and career, did that narrative arc come directly from what you witnessed on sets?
NT: Yeah. I mean, it started as just in the beginning writing down things that fascinated me, just different scenes that had no connection. It was just things I thought about. Then, slowly, it was just putting it together, and after a while, it just tells me [what works]—everything just fell into place, because in a way I was also telling my story of coming to L.A. and getting to know the industry step by step. But I also thought that it was a very good way to bring the audience along on that journey, slowly unfolding. I knew I wanted to capture as many different types of shoots as I could, because through that we’re representing a very common journey too. That’s how you start, and then you have to build yourself up, and then you do more and more advanced stuff. So it just felt like the natural way to show it.
AVC: How quickly were you able to gain entry into that world and earn the trust of the adult film community?
NT: Since I had made the short film already, I could send that around. And that helped a lot because then they could see and understand what my intention was, and what I really needed and wanted to know. They saw I was focusing more on human relationships rather than saying that porn is bad or something like that. I was so genuine in wanting to learn, too. So, for example, I met [porn agent] Mark Spiegler I think on my first day in L.A., and he was just very open and willing to talk. And so I started to do interviews, and every person I talked to just increased that networking. It took me maybe 10 days until I was on actual porn sets. And people were much more open than I thought. They are so stigmatized, and people have so many weird ideas about what the job is, but the thing you notice when you come to a porn set is that it’s just a job and they are just normal people. It’s a different job, yes, but as soon as you get over that first really weird feeling of people being naked, it’s more the same than you’d think. In the beginning, you project your own thoughts and ideas on it. So that took a long time, but I remember when I all of a sudden started to stop projecting my own ideas and really started to listen and understand, and that’s when I think we were able to find the keys to really do this properly.