Andy Lee may identify as straight, but when it comes to the people who helped him through one of the lowest points of his life, he has plenty of love for gay men.
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The OnlyFans creator has opened up about his relationship with his largely gay audience, his frustration with homophobic adult creators and his concerns about increasingly extreme stunts in the adult industry. Speaking to PinkNews alongside the release of his new OUTflix series The Porn Academy, Lee made it clear that the people behind his success aren’t simply subscribers.
For him, they’re people who showed up when he needed them.
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From lockdown low to OnlyFans success
Lee says OnlyFans began as a financial lifeline after lockdown left him without work and dealing with an injury.
“I was in such a low place,” he says. “I had no job. I had torn my bicep, so I couldn’t get a job. All I’d known was plumbing and the building industry, so I didn’t really have any other choice.”
A friend who knew Lee had previously worked in the adult industry suggested he give OnlyFans a try. He would make the content while his friend handled the page. It didn’t exactly stay a side hustle.
“I fell in love with it,” he tells us. “The ball just kept rolling and rolling, and here we are today.”
Lee now charges $9.99 a month for his X-rated page, which features more than 600 videos. His reach extends well beyond OnlyFans, with a substantial following across Instagram and TikTok, including more than 684,000 followers on the latter.
His social media presence mixes saucy previews designed to attract subscribers with safer glimpses into his life, including trips around the world with friends and fellow creators.
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“When I first started OnlyFans, it was just a way of making money – but then it literally changed my life,” he tells us. “I stopped worrying about money. It’s given me so many opportunities to help other people.
“I’ve met so many amazing people. I’ve met people who have come out of prison with no futures, and now they’re thriving, doing so well. They’ve turned their life around, and it just makes me so happy.”
Gay men became more than an audience
Lee’s career has also included an appearance on Channel 4’s My Massive C**, and much of his audience has been gay. That doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. In fact, he’s unusually open about just how important that audience became to him.
“I never really went down the straight audience route because I’d never done full sex scenes,” he explains. “It was always just me doing solos or with my friends.”
More importantly, He credits gay fans with helping him through a period when he was struggling emotionally.
“When things went really bad for me – I didn’t believe in depression or anything like that. But when lockdown happened and I lost my job, I sat there and I was in a hole. I woke up every day and I was just unhappy, just sad.
“Then I had these people on the internet, strangers, primarily gay men, lifting me up every single day.”
That support clearly stayed with him. He says he owes the gay community a lot, adding:
“It’s not for the monetary value of buying my content, it’s for being there for me when no one else was.”
It’s one thing to have a loyal audience. It’s another to remember who was there when things were falling apart.
Lee has no time for homophobia
Lee is equally direct when discussing adult creators who use their platforms to attack gay people.
“Those performers are poisonous for the industry,” Lee tells us. “They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re using and taking advantage of people, and it’s not fair.
@andyleex who would you approach..
“Back when I was in a dark place, the people who helped me out were strangers who didn’t owe me anything, and they were there for me. I look at my following as friends, as family, people I speak to every day.”
For Lee, that makes homophobia from creators particularly frustrating. His own career has been helped enormously by gay men, and he wants people to understand that straight creators who make adult content with men don’t have to treat the people watching them with contempt.
“It’s not every day you meet a straight guy who looks like me and my friends who do stuff with men and be so open about it. I think it’s very important for people to see and know we’re not all like that guy Jake on the internet, who’s attacking the gay community and using people. We’re not like that.
“We make content, and if you want to watch it, enjoy it, great. We don’t judge anybody. Anyone that comes through my door, no matter what they are, they’re treated with respect and love and kindness.”
For someone whose career has been supported so heavily by gay fans, Lee’s position is pretty simple: make the content, respect the audience and leave the hostility at the door.
When adult-industry stunts go too far
Lee also has concerns about the increasingly outrageous stunts being used to promote adult content. He points to creators including Bonnie Blue, Lily Phillips and Drake Von’s “1000 bottoms” challenge as examples of publicity tactics that, in his view, can ultimately make things harder for creators who are trying to work responsibly.
“They are not good for the industry,” he says, while accepting that he understands why they do them.
Lee argues that adult creators already face restrictions across social media and financial services, making attention particularly valuable.
“Sex workers are being attacked every single day by social media, by banks. We don’t do anything illegal, but banks shut us down, social media shuts us down. Same with OnlyFans, you can get banned on these websites so easy by AI bots or whatever.
“So I understand why these guys are doing these crazy stunts to market themselves, because they know if people are getting rage-baited then it will get shared and people sign up to their page, but these people do go too far.
“You have these creators in the industry who are ‘ethical’ – they do everything the right way and the safe way, and they get painted with the same brush.”
It’s a tricky balance for an industry where attention can translate directly into subscribers. The bigger the stunt, the bigger the conversation — but Lee worries that the fallout can land on creators who aren’t taking the same approach.
The Porn Academy isn’t promising overnight riches
Lee has also turned his experience into The Porn Academy, where he helps aspiring creators learn what they’re actually getting themselves into. Because despite the endless parade of social media posts making adult content look like an instant route to easy money, Lee says the reality is considerably less glamorous.
“People come to me and think, ‘I need to go to the gym, I need to have a six pack, I need to look a certain way,’ but you don’t,” he says. “I think there’s something for everybody out there.
“If you let your personality shine and you build a rapport with your audience and give them the type of content they want, it ill always be successful.
“But a lot of people come into the industry trying to get rich quick, selling feet pics, and that’s not the reality of it. It’s a really difficult job, and not everybody is successful.”
Lee also wants people considering the industry to think beyond their first paycheck.
“That’s why when people come here [to his academy], I really drill into them to think about this stuff, because not only will your friends, family and future employers see this stuff, but you have to deal with the criticism online. You could save the Pope and people will still find something to talk about.”
Which, honestly, may be the most universal warning about putting anything online.
‘I’m just a little fella from Dublin’
For all the attention Lee has received through OnlyFans, television and his OUTflix series, he’s increasingly thinking about what comes next.
He’s already fronted his own Prime Video documentary, and he sees documentaries as a possible second act once his time in front of the adult camera eventually comes to an end.
“I’m just a little fella from Dublin who has grown up and grown into this world, but I’m loving it,” he tells us.
“I found a new passion for the future. When I retire from porn, I want to go into making documentaries. I love telling the story, because I’d love the general public to look at sex workers in a different light, understand where they come from and why people turn to sex work.”
Lee also sees himself moving into more of a mentor role within the industry.
“I much prefer the mentor role because it’s what I’m good at. I’ve done the porn. I’ve been the character in the scenes. Now, what my goal would be in the porn industry is to step behind the camera and hopefully just guide these guys in the right way.
“But, at the moment, I’m the stunt d***, so sort of have to be in front of the camera.”
For now, Lee is still very much part of the action. But his longer-term ambitions suggest that he wants to use what he’s learned — including the support he received from his gay audience — to help shape what comes next.
And for a man who originally turned to OnlyFans because he didn’t know where else to go, becoming a mentor and documentary maker is a pretty interesting next chapter.
The Porn Academy is now available on OUTflix.
Source: PinkNews