Apple Graceffa was a cheerlebrity, but after high school, he was aging out of his sport. So he took his social media fame all the way to the adult entertainment industry, and changed his name to Liam Riley. The 19-year-old former all-star cheerleader is now a model with Helix Studios, and he debuted his first gay porn scene on February 2. Helix found him on Twitter. Riley tells The Wire that cheer did not lead him to porn. But it did bring him fame to leverage into an adult career.
On Tuesday, The Wire reported on the economics of cheerlebrity: how famous teen cheerleaders make money by endorsing products like bows to their hundreds of thousands of fans on social media. But what does a cheerlebrity do with that fame when he’s done with cheer? Riley’s decision has been, obviously, controversial in the cheer community.
“It was kind of a mutual thing,” Riley tells The Wire of the scouting process. “[Helix] noticed me on Twitter, but I was already following the directors and producers and a few of the models. We kind of went back and forth via Twitter DMs. … You know, this was something I had an interest in, and we set up a lunch meeting.”
Riley changed his Twitter handle to reflect his showbiz name (@LiamRileyXXX), bringing along thousands of followers. Now, he says, “being a high-social cheerleader, it’s given me an advantage that most models probably don’t have. With the high following, of course people are like ‘Who’s that?’ So it’s definitely attracted a lot more attention, because people are like ‘Who’s this newcomer who already has 20,000 followers?'”
Riley first met with Helix, which focuses on male “teen” and “American college” models, around Thanksgiving 2013. He quit cheerleading for good in December. “I wouldn’t say it led me to it,” he says of cheerleading and porn. “I wanted to make the decision for myself.” Things were quiet for a couple months, but when his first scene debuted in February, cheer fans freaked.
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