With her luscious lips, comedic timing and pivotal character arc on HBO’s Euphoria, Chloe Cherry has gone from pornstar to breakout mainstream celebrity. But what’s her personal story? Fans will get to find out as Simon & Schuster just announced a deal with the actress to publish her first memoir, Somewhere Dark and Hot.
With a release date scheduled for February 23, 2027, the book will cover her porn career, her troubled family life and how everything seemingly changed overnight after she emerged on the second season of Euphoria, playing lovable drug addict Faye Valentine.
The book will trace how at 18, she ran away from an emotionally abusive home in suburban Pennsylvania and entered the adult entertainment industry in 2016, a period she describes as “a blur” of porn sets and model houses, eating disorders and insomnia, OnlyFans and unemployment. Psychotic episodes and drug abuse followed, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The announcement touts the book as being in the tradition of Julia Fox’s Down the Drain and Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, describing it as “a raw and fearless memoir about girlhood, survival, desire, performance, and the power of owning your story” that dismantles “the myths we tell about ‘good girls’ and ‘bad choices.’”
Cherry told Rolling Stone she’s most excited to give people “an honest look” into the inner workings of her mind and a chance to have people draw conclusions from real facts and stories, rather than snap judgments made while scrolling. “The book is asking how far are you willing to go to get what you want?” she says. “How far are you willing to go to start over?”
She initially started her porn career in 2015 with Hussie Models, then moved to Los Angeles, signing with Spiegler Girls. Four years later, she had starred in over 200 adult films and became popular on Pornhub before moving to OnlyFans during the pandemic. On the subject of sex work stigma, Cherry told the magazine: “I don’t understand why, whenever any character or real-life human is a sex worker, that suddenly becomes just all they are to people.”
Though viewers might note parallels between Sydney Sweeney’s season three storyline —which sees her character Cassie turn to OnlyFans for money and attention— it wasn’t inspired by Cherry. In fact, Cherry, like many in the adult industry, has been critical of writer/director Sam Levinson’s depiction of sex work. In an interview with Refinery 29, she called the storyline “crazy as fuck” given Cassie’s privileged life and said that,“people have the weirdest ideas and fantasies of sex work…”
In most interviews Cherry —who has appeared in fashion campaigns from Versace to MAC Cosmetics and walked runways at London and Paris fashion weeks— downplays her sex work years for obvious reasons. She’s moved on and is pursuing mainstream roles these days. But the book promises to dive into it all, and providing an honest look at her acting journey filled with struggle and success.
