Lily Phillips: ‘I Love My Job But I’m Also A Person’

Lily Phillips has fast become a household name for perhaps one of the most controversial of reasons. The OnlyFans star filmed herself sleeping with 101 men in 14 hours in October, and in a bid to make a world record, plans to sleep with 1000 in a similar time frame in February 2025. Her notoriety has been met with concern, derision and curiosity – so why has she set out to do this?

The first question I ask her the morning we meet is what she’s been up to, whether she’s been working – which involves performing explicit sexual acts on camera, bringing all manner of male sexual fantasies to the screen – but Lily jokes to me she’s spent the morning ‘strapped to the table and answering questions’ as part of a series of interviews, mine being one of them. There’s a knowing joke at her own expense that runs through our conversation.

YouTuber Josh Pieters’ documentary followed the events leading up to, during and after Lily’s 14-hour sex session with 101 men in a London Airbnb. Crucially, it captured a rare moment of vulnerability for Lily. ‘It’s not for the weak,’ we see her say through tears, describing the experience as ‘intense’ adding ‘I don’t know if I’d recommend it.’

Almost two months on from when the documentary was filmed, it’s clear that Lily wants to reclaim the narrative around those tears, as well as the shaming, outrage and sympathy that has been thrown her way. She tells me that she looks back on the experience with ‘fond memories’, likening her approach to that of running a marathon. ‘This is what I’ve trained for,’ Lily says.

When I ask her about the emotional response we see in the documentary, she explains this was partially due to her feeling added pressure and awkwardness having to ask men to stop due to time constraints. Some complained if she didn’t help them finish.

‘I felt extremely bad, some people travelled across the pond and [I felt] they’re not getting what they signed up for,’ she tells me, reflecting that capturing her raw response to this on camera was perhaps a mistake. ‘I wish now I had set a boundary and given myself an hour or two to recover before I started answering questions.’

That said, she acknowledges that she was ‘guilt tripped’ by some of the men, for not being able to give them the time promised. It could be argued that sexual dynamics like this, where men see fit to complain about not getting their allotted time with Lily – and the emotional impact on her due to that – are murky at best when it comes to consent.

She assures me that all acts were consensual, but it feels more complicated than that. The pressure she felt, emotionally and physically, to perform is surely problematic. She confirms to me that not one man out of the 101 she slept with that day gave her an orgasm.

Many have said that the entire premise of this kind of extreme OnlyFans content feeds into a male-centric, misogynistic and exploitative expectation on Lily – and a real-time example of how porn exacerbates the gender orgasm gap – even if she insists the experience was empowering, and that the physical impact on her was quite minimal. ‘It wasn’t actually that taxing, although a lot of the guys got me to go on top, which I think, I think was a little bit a little bit cheeky,’ she jokes, adding that the ‘dissociation’ she confessed to feeling (in Pieters documentary) was due to some ‘samey’ experiences. ‘Obviously, with there being so many guys, I’m not just going to remember them all, sorry to break it to them,’ she quips. ‘They weren’t all memorable.’

Online, the reaction to Lily’s OnlyFans stunt has been divisive. She’s been slut-shamed, called every insulting name under the sun, while other critics have demanded that OnlyFans is taken down as a result. Some have approached her plight with sympathy, suggesting that she is the victim of  a larger patriarchal problem and seems ‘traumatised’ in the footage Pieters released.

While making it clear she wanted to thank those who reached out with concern, noting she has ‘never got this influx of nice people messaging me before’, Lily is adamant that actually, she doesn’t really need it. ‘I hope to God, they direct this energy somewhere else,’ she says. ‘If they put this into someone who was an actual victim, that would be amazing. And to all people criticising me, agree to disagree. You do what you want, I’ll do what I want.’

She does hope, however, that this concern will translate towards more kindness shown towards women in the sex work industry.’It’s really lovely to see that, especially because I think girls in the adult industry sometimes don’t get enough love. They don’t get heard.’

Lily adds that she felt the documentary humanised her. ‘I love sex, and I love my job, but I’m also a person,’ she says. ‘I’m hoping it helped many more girls in the industry, to humanise them as well.’

I point out the lack of backlash against the men who were part of the 101 – their identities were protected in the documentary, and we see one express anxiety at being found out – compared to the huge amount of abuse she has shouldered. ‘I mean, that just tells you a lot about society,’ Lily says. ‘You never hear about male porn stars saying they’re never going to have kids or find a wife or anything like that. There’s still such huge gender inequality in the industry that needs to change. I remember talking to one male porn star and he told me he was getting high fived at the school gates.’

Lily has raised eyebrows with her self–proclaimed ‘feminist’ status, but she argues back that she is empowered to do what she likes with her body, and earn money from it if she so chooses. ‘I would never have anything to say about what other people are doing with their bodies or with their time unless, obviously, they’re harming people,’ she says. ‘So it’s funny that these “feminist ladies” are saying that what I’m doing is not empowering… we shouldn’t be putting people down for having a lot of sex. Is that not what we’re trying to get away from?’

One could argue that she is, in fact, harming people. At least, that’s what many online are arguing – that the example she’s setting in promoting her work glamourises sex work in a way that doesn’t accurately reflect how difficult and dangerous the industry is for the majority of women involved in it. Some fear young women will be influenced by Lily’s notoriety and be drawn into an industry that is notorious for exploitation.

Her responsibility to, and impact on, young women is something she can’t escape, even if she’d like to. While she is keen to support women entering the industry, her response to being something of a role model is more complicated.

‘I’m not an influencer,’ she says. ‘My target audience is not young girls at all. They’re not the people I want to be promoting my work to. You know, it’s the males. So I find that tricky when, like, people are like, “What are you putting out to these young girls?”’

That said, the promotion of her content is primarily on TikTok – that’s where she first went viral for talking about this particular OnlyFans stunt. Alas, she can’t avoid young women on the app from seeing her videos.

Unfortunately, sex work and social media do go hand in hand nowadays – to get enough of the former, you have to promote on the latter. ‘If I could do sex work and not be on social media, I would love that,’ she says. ‘I could do what I love without all the backlash and without all the comments.’

Lily is, sometimes, candid about the reality of sex work – in particular, the mental impact it can have, and the need for young women to be supported. ‘People don’t realise that being in the adult industry is as much mental as it is physical. I think sex work is definitely sensitive mentally – it’s not easy,’ she says.

‘When you get into the adult industry, there’s no handbook, it’s the only job in the world that you don’t really get trained for. One thing that I would love to do for girls, is protect them a little bit more and educate people on what it’s like going into the industry, realistically, and just being completely honest.’

OnlyFans’ increasing popularity has seen stars such as Lily Allen and Kate Nash recently speaking out about using the platform to boost their income. Critics have suggested that Lily Phillip’s decision to sleep with 101, then 1000 men was at least partially due to an effort to remain competitive in this overly saturated market.

She disagrees. ‘I think some girls are pointing out the narrative that they feel like they have to do this, or they have to do this to compete which is just not all true, because there’s always levels to it. One of my best friends in the industry, she only does hand bras, so she doesn’t even show her nipples. And trust me, she is making great money.’

Plans for Lily’s 24-hour 1000-partner sex session are under way. Lessons have been learned from the 101-man ‘dry run’ – there’ll be more stringent STI testing (after Pieters documentary, viewers were shocked when Lily didn’t appear to realise she could catch HIV through oral sex).

‘We’re going to have rapid HIV testing,’ Lily tells me, adding that the sex will be ‘purely penetrative’ with no oral sex allowed due to the time crunch. ‘We’re very explicit about the fact that it’s not going to be a five minute love-making session.’

It begs the question, will there be any time for her sexual pleasure this time around, either? ‘It’s one penetration in and out,’ she tells me. ‘We’re basically just gonna have a conveyor belt.’

She’s also adamant that the sex she has on camera is for entertainment (I also have questions about who exactly finds it entertaining – or rather, arousing – and what that says about them, but that’s a question for the men who pay for her OnlyFans) and therefore does contrast to her own personal sex life. ‘The sex I have on camera is different to the sex that we have in real life with a loved one,’ Lily explains. ‘They’re two different things. So just because you enjoy that, maybe you wouldn’t enjoy doing what I do.’

I ask her what she feels it takes to be successful and safe as a sex worker. She says that above the money and attention, you need to truly love sex as a performance.

‘You need to love it, to be able to do what I do,’ she says. ‘You need to fully love it. This was a hobby before it was work. If you’re doing it for any other reason other than the fact that you enjoy it, please don’t do it.’

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