“I want them to like me.” I twist nervously in the desk chair as I wait to be called in for my interview with writer, performer, and Sex Worker Andrea Werhun, and director, photo-illustrator Nicole Bazuin. “I really want them to think I’m cool.”
Andrea Werhun and Nicole Bazuin are the creators behind the multiple iterations of Modern Whore: a written memoir, a short film, and now a full feature film exploring Werhun’s experiences as a Sex Worker. I’ve followed Werhun’s creative journey for a few years now. Beyond Modern Whore, Werhun can be found anchoring as a Political Correspondent on Stripper News, mobilizing for sex worker rights, and sitting as Bimbo-in-Chief at Literal Bimbos—a zine by and for sex workers.
Over the decade of Modern Whore, Bazuin has been a catalyst. As Werhun’s longtime friend and collaborator, Bazuin brings everything she touches to life with directorial vision that challenges the limits placed on how real stories are consumed. Her direction gives us visuals that complement Werhun’s vivacious performance. Joined by Werhun’s mother, her partner, her friends, and fellow sex workers, Bazuin and Werhun deliver a story that is playful and cheeky, but also poignant, educational, and deeply human.
After collaborating on Modern Whore the book and Modern Whore the short film, Werhun and Bazuin return with Modern Whore the full feature—a film for the modern Whores, written by, dare I say, the mother of modern Whores (phew, what a mouthful)!
During the film’s world premiere at this year’s TIFF50, I caught up with Werhun and Bazuin to talk the making of Modern Whore, the “Whorearchy”, and Modern Whore: The Musical.
“I love your shirt,” I say as we sit down together. “It is Fashion Brand, Company,” Andrea replies, laughing. “It sounds like a joke when I say it, which is the best part.” Much of Werhun’s personality mirrors the cadence she carries in her film. Bazuin and Werhun greet me with bright, wide smiles and fluttery giggles. Bazuin wears a black dress with cobalt-blue polka dots, her hair gathered to one side. Werhun wears a black dress with a sunflower cutout, right in the center. With all the references to Goddesses and Priestesses, and a film so rich in color, I half expected to meet them seated ethereally on billowing cushions—raised just slightly above me, unbound by gravity. But meeting in a standard office room, seated directly across from each other, feels somehow more intimidating. The fluorescent lights glower off the stiff office furniture, but their glow is unaffected. Where the ceiling lights glare, they illuminate. It’s as if they’ve found a way to pocket sunshine.
I loved the film so much. Oh my gosh, it was incredible. The film is visually stunning. The vibrant colors, the mix of animation and neo-noir reenactments with documentary-style interviews was so captivating. In turning this story from a memoir to a full feature, what was the process behind deciding which parts were going to be represented as they were?
Nicole: The thought was to combine the authenticity of documentary with the immersiveness and stylish artfulness of these scripted reenactment scenes. So within that, we wanted this to be a film where you’re actually seeing real people and real relationships, and that we are constantly aware that there is, like, this real Andrea Werhun at the center of this film, and this is her story. Then, we can sort of dive into the stylized story-world of the book from there, and within that, we have color that has this kind of immersive feel to it, which also hopefully underscores the idea that this is artfulness. This is part of how Andrea expresses herself and tells her own story. It’s meant to also match the vivaciousness of her personality and her sense of humor.
It felt really cohesive, even though there were so many different elements. Going back to your comment on seeing real people, the casting was so well done. The regulars and the clientele that were casted, I was like, Yep…I know them.
Andrea: Uhh yeah, haha. Very well casted.
So this began as a memoir and then became a short film and is now a full feature. You’re both multi-disciplinary artists. Was this the original vision, to go through all of these different stages? Or did this kind of grow with you?
Andrea: Because Nicole and I have this shared skill set where I’m a writer/performer and she’s a photographer/director, the book was sort of our first foray into collaborating on this project, obviously; it was kind of the most accessible way for us to make art together. It made sense to then move from the book to a short film, you know, to conceptualize it in a visual way where our skills could be expressed further. But even in the beginning, I think, a feature film was always sort of like off in the horizon as a possible thing. And it took ten years, but we got here!
Writing can be such a solitary act, so I think it’s really interesting that you describe that as being the most accessible at the time. Do you mean in terms of how sex work was perceived ten years ago and what kind of art was allowed to portray it?
Andrea: Yeah, it’s interesting to think about. I think because I’d always wanted to be a writer, and with our shared connections—like Nicole’s dad used to run a pretty well-established bookstore called This Ain’t The Rosedale Library.
That’s so cool.
Andrea: Yeah. So, Nicole grew up in, like, a bookstore, and it was through her dad that we were able to sort of connect with this small art book publisher in Toronto, [Impulse B], when we were publishing the first edition of Modern Whore. And it just sort of felt like the easiest thing for us. But also, in the beginning when we decided to make this book, it wasn’t crystal clear yet whether I was going to come out of the closet. So in that way, [writing] is accessible for sex workers to be able to tell their story on the page, because they can do so without revealing their identity.
Something that I loved about this film was when you welcomed in your friends and fellow sex worker, and your mother, and your partner, everyone was sitting at tables where there was tea and food; it felt like everyone was kind of having “a seat at the table”, and I loved that. Why was it so important to have those different perspectives? And where did the idea for the physical table come from?
Nicole: I guess I’ll speak to the visuals, and Andrea can speak to her relationships. But, yeah, I love that you said that. When it came to the staging of the interviews, it was like this notion of: Can we do something that feels kind of femme, you know, with the details of the fruit and things like that on the table with Andrea and her friends? And so hopefully it does feel comfortable and conversational and warm. But also, I wanted it to feel iconic. I wanted it to feel elevated. I wanted to have those folks there, as kind of like these Goddess-type figures that were coming together in this iconic way. So I hope that came across.
Yes, definitely. A lot of the elements in the film balanced between this elevation—you actually mention this in the film, Andrea, like a Priestess in the strip club, and that kind of spiritual feel to it—but it also all felt very welcoming and open. Loved that.
Andrea: As far as including the others in the work, where the feature film goes beyond the book and the short film is that it expands the universe to include other perspectives and that was really, really important to us—to ensure that people don’t watch the film and go, that’s every sex worker’s journey. Impossible. Just not real. So bringing in my friends who have this experience, and bringing in my mom, and bringing in my partner, and bringing in a customer to talk about all the various ways that we our lives intersect, and that we do this work together, and love people who do this work. It was very important, as far as the goal of humanizing sex workers, to demonstrate that we have support networks and we are loved by people and we’re not isolated and alone in this universe.
When your regular was able to come in, that was such a wonderful part. Humanizing is such a great word to use. I believe it was your friend Kitoko who spoke in the film about how it’s really the stigma itself, and not sex work, that oppresses. So I think having your client come in felt like, this is what sex work is, and this is also what it looks like without stigma. In your years in the industry, do you feel like there has been any shift, any changes?
Andrea: The sex worker community and advocacy, at least in Toronto, is very strong, like the networks are strong. Sex workers are running events. They’re doing the things to get people in the sex work community involved together and socially engaged. Having worked in strip clubs, having done the agency work, being involved in the community now for many years, it does feel like we are at a different stage, at least for strippers specifically. I think strippers are leading the way when it comes to challenging stigma, because there is a little bit less stigma against strippers than there are against full-service sex workers—and that has to do with what we call the “Whorearchy”, which is basically your proximity to sex. It’s sort of what determines how safe you are in your work. I think there are different models of the Whorearchy, though, where, you know, an Onlyfans creator might be at the top because that person is the furthest away from physical contact, though there are definitely ways that Onlyfans creators and online content creators face dangers by virtue of being online. But I think strippers have an increased visibility and a safety in being visible that full-service sex workers don’t. So, many of them are on the front lines of trying to push for social change and acceptability when it comes to our labor and pushing for our labor rights. So yeah, I do think that things are changing, and I really do hope that they change for the better.
I live in Montreal right now, and the stripper community is always at the front lines. Not even just in regards to sex worker advocacy, but, like, they’re doing cake sittings for Palestine. Like, they are there.
Andrea: And they’re often there, right? Sex workers are involved in all sorts of social advocacy, but often we’re pushed to the margins within different leftist social activist spaces. And I think what people are starting to understand is that sex workers have always been there and have always been on the front lines of social change, and we’re always pushing for more, because we’ve always been oppressed by the state, and so we’re in solidarity with everyone who is oppressed by the state.
Andrea, you’ve spoken about how in stories about sex work, by sex workers they’re often not a victim or villain, but often the heroes have their own stories. At one point, you offered a writing class for sex workers?
Andrea: Yes, well, I’m the Bimbo-in-Chief of Literal Bimbos, which is a by-sex-workers, for-sex-workers literary zine, and so that is an ongoing project. Many of the sex workers who are in Modern Whore are also in Literal Bimbos. So we’ve been longtime collaborators on that literary journey of getting sex worker stories out. My goal with Literal Bimbos is to give sex workers the opportunity to see their name in print for the first time, and to get maybe addicted to that feeling of like, whoa, I could put my story out there and people read it and want more, and I want to tell more of my story—but it can be fiction too. You know, it doesn’t have to be your own personal story. All sex workers have stories to tell, whether they’re about themselves or otherwise. So yeah, Literal Bimbos is an ongoing thing that will be going on for probably years to come.
The use of the critique that stories are exploitative or voyeuristic when they’re made by sex workers is often used to discredit and silence a lot of art that is produced by sex workers. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on why that persists?
Andrea: I would say that it is a frequent critique that when sex workers tell their own stories, that somehow we’re glamorizing the work, or we’re trying to recruit people into sexual labor, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I think we just want the same opportunity that everybody else has to talk about work. In a cultural landscape where sex workers have never truly been given the opportunity to speak for themselves, when we do, I think for some ears, it reads as a threat. I think that some people are truly scared of what sex workers actually have to say. And I suspect it may have something to do with a worry that we actually have a lot more in common than we don’t. I think some people have built identities that have put themselves diametrically opposed to sex workers—especially women, especially femmes. You know, when you’re expected to be either a virgin or a wife, the whore sort of exists outside of that, and the whore has always had a sort of sexual freedom that is at once envied and also punished. We’re not allowed to be sexy and joyful. If we’re gonna be sexy, we have to be exploited. We have to be victims. I don’t like the fact that the onus is on sex workers to come out and take that risk, because there is so much stigma and so much harm that we face in coming out and telling our own stories. I think it takes two to tango. We need clients to come out and be like, I pay for sex. I’m also not a villain. I fully support sex worker rights…while ensuring that they don’t take up too much space.
Haha, because once they start talking…they’ll keep talking!
Andrea: They love the spotlight, haha! So we gotta tamper them a little bit, but I still think it’s admirable. We need those people to speak up on our behalf and support us, because it is incredibly dangerous for us to constantly be on the front lines demanding our own rights when there’s so many people who benefit from our labor.
This film felt relieving in a lot of ways. The approach that you took, of it being hyper-feminine and glamorous and wonderful, but also allowed room for harder parts of the work to be shown, and allowed room for discussion around things that are no longer wanted by sex workers. When a memoir becomes a film—I actually don’t know, because I’ve never written a memoir, but I can assume! This is your story and your artistic vision, and now it’s becoming public for people to consume and to interpret as they may. Were there things that were hard to let go of and release into public perception?
Nicole: I don’t know; I feel like I was dying to get this out. I hold dear Andrea and my loving feelings towards this movie we’ve made together, but I also feel ready to release it into the world and have it find its audiences and have that journey. Yeah, it’s very exciting.
Andrea: I’m really excited too. I think it’s definitely scary to be so out there—legal name, face, out.
Mother, partner, out.
Andrea: Yeah, SUPER vulnerable. Everything is out there, you know, and it will likely define me for the rest of my life. And that’s a risk I’m willing to take to tell this story, because I know it’s really important, and frankly, I will measure the success of this film based on its ability to invoke social change. And so my goal in putting myself out there so nakedly—literally—is to see those laws change.
It’s nice to see a film that is about sex workers set in Canada, because when you’re talking about the laws in the film, it’s like, this is how it is right here. This is for right here. A lot, in popular media and film, it’s like “strippers in Atlanta”, “escorts in Amsterdam”, but it’s also here. It is here. And decriminalization needs to happen here too, and it’s so important to have Canadian films, period, but also Canadian films about sex work. I do want to ask about working with Sean Baker, how that came about. I know that you [Andrea] got to consult on Anora, which was a film I really loved. It was one of those films that I watched, and was like, Oh my gosh, this is like my early 20s, creepy. So, yeah, how did his participation in this film come about? If you want to, like, talk about a man…I don’t know.
Andrea: No, of course, haha! Basically, Sean Baker read Modern Whore and reached out to me via sliding into my DMs on Instagram, and was like, I’m working on yet another film about a sex worker. Do you do consulting? And I was like, Hell yeah, I do. The film was Anora, in its early script form, and my role as a consultant, as a sex work consultant, was to survey the script at its various forms for its sex work representation, to ensure the most authentic portrayal possible. Of course, as a consultant, my opinion can be taken or left. So not everything that I suggested made it into the film, but a lot that I suggested did, so that was really exciting. And then once I was done the consulting gig, we were finishing up the Modern Whore script at the same time, and we were like, we should just shoot our shot. What’s the worst that can happen? He says, no? Like, maybe it could be a little, you know, tit for tat. You know, I scratch your back, you scratch ours. And luckily, when we pitched him, we went down to LA, we met him on a cafe patio—
Nicole: —in West Hollywood.
Andrea: In West Hollywood—it was very glamorous—before he got famous enough that he might be swarmed at the exact same place, and pitched to him. And he said, yes. So that was really exciting.
Nicole: Yeah, it was a very surreal year to work with Sean Baker as our EP, because, obviously, Anora had a whirlwind year, starting with winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and culminating with winning five Oscars, including Best Picture. So Sean actually, generously, made time to meet with us throughout the course of that whirlwind year, and we thought that was pretty extraordinary. What was really important was that he was supporting the film that we wanted to make, and to have his name on it, someone who’s just so well respected and such a champion of indie filmmakers, it really means the world to us, and we hope it kind of helps to add legitimacy to the project, and hopefully draw more audiences to the project as well.
In terms of next creative projects, are you hoping to continue to work together? And is there a Modern Whore version 4…? Your play? A musical? What’s going on?
Nicole: Oh my gosh, you’re so on our wavelength! I was just saying the other day that this is such a tour de force performance for Andrea, and the only thing that she doesn’t do in this film is sing, which feels like a missed opportunity.
You need to open the theater curtains.
Andrea: Exactly, Modern Whore the musical.
I mean, that actually sounds good.
Nicole: Hello, Broadway.
Andrea: Our joke is that we want to do Modern Whore 3 in space.
Okay, yeah, I can see it.
Andrea: Taking decriminalization to the universe.
You have to beat…what’s his name? The bald man who’s like, always trying to go there. What’s his name? Elon?
Nicole: Jeff Bezos?
That’s him.
Nicole: Hmmm, the wheels are turning.
Andrea: The wheels are turning!
Nicole: I mean, yeah, we’d love to reach further frontiers together and, yeah. Stay tuned.
Andrea: Stay tuned. And watch the space!
Hannah Verina White is a Montreal and Toronto-based writer. She has a deep love for the melodramatic and nostalgic, both of which influence the way she writes and the subjects she chooses to write about.