On the Set: Bree Mills Returns to Feature Directing With ‘Birth’

Something dark claws its way through a dimly lit birth canal, scrabbling toward the light until finally, gasping its first breath, it is pulled free by the midwife — Adult Time Chief Creative Officer Bree Mills.

The birth canal is the labyrinthine corridors in the belly of a multi-set warehouse, and the diabolical narrative Mills is bringing forth into the world is the new Adult Time psychological thriller shooting there: “Birth.” The feature is aptly named, not only because of the bulging pregnancy prosthetic Casey Calvert cradles beneath her hospital gown as she pads down the hall to practice her lines, but also because for Mills, the project represents a directorial rebirth of sorts.

It is the first original feature written and directed by the CCO since 2019, and for the occasion, Mills has summoned an all-star cast of Adult Time ambassadors to assist in delivering a somewhat twisted narrative.

“When I wrote ‘Birth,’ I didn’t want to think about it like a ‘comeback’ movie; I just wrote it because I had a story to tell,” Mills explains, chatting with XBIZ in between staccato bursts of direction, which she calls out with her trademark precise, concise — yet very nice — field marshal manner.

The transgressive plot of “Birth” involves the unwitting surrogacy impregnation of Calvert’s character, courtesy of some scheming between husband Matthew (Seth Gamble) and au pair Grace (Leana Lovings). For Mills, who has spawned more than a few extra-spicy series in her time — most notably the highly popular Pure Taboo channel — “Birth” may not be the most unhinged project she has ever worked on, but she says it is definitely the most “visceral.”

Breeding fetishists, of course, will rejoice, but “Birth” goes far beyond that label, uncovering new layers and depths as it examines all the myriad directions in which Calvert’s Laura is pulled, inside and out.

“It’s about the duality of decisions and what happens on the inside of a relationship,” Mills notes. “And it’s about a couple that is distant for their own reasons. Each makes decisions to try to save the situation and to repair their dynamic. It’s told over the course of a woman’s pregnancy, from conception up until the moment of birth, so the story plays out over the course of nine months. And we brought in the best of the best to really bring in the hyperrealism of that experience.”

Indeed, not far away, prosthetics artist Gabe Acero plies his craft, ensuring Calvert’s belly goes through a variety of growth phases akin to an actual pregnancy throughout the shoot. When XBIZ last encountered Acero, he was supervising the hyperrealistic giant penises on the set of Adult Time’s “Futa World.”

“I’m very excited to see it cut together,” says Mills. “I think that for people who like the style of storytelling that I do, it will be a ‘return to form.’ That’s kind of cool because I always have that imposter syndrome. And for the last few years, I’ve been very focused on helping other people tell their stories — from the crews that we’ve built up to working with a lot of talent in helping bring their stories to life.”

Today, the production crew is capturing the finale, including the film’s final shot: a close-up of Calvert’s face. It is a reverse version of the shot that opens the movie, bookending it and bringing everything full circle. The version at the beginning occurs while she and her husband engage in disconnected sex, while the final one… well, revealing that would constitute a major spoiler. Even the title of the movie, “Birth,” is not shown until the end, further reinforcing what everything has been leading up to.

The movie also exemplifies the kinds of rich acting opportunities that Mills has long strived to make Adult Time known for, as a platform through which rising talent can forge multifaceted career success.

“What do we have that is interesting and attractive as a proposition to talent?” she ruminates. “Because these days, talent doesn’t have to work for anybody — and they certainly don’t need to prioritize studio work. So for us, it’s really important to create pathways for talent that have the skills and the dedication and want to grow within the industry.

“We want to be the go-to platform when you give a shit,” she continues. “When you care about studio work, industry advocacy and bettering your career within the community, we’re the place you want to come to. The ambassadors are a great representation of what level you can get to when you have those desires.”

As Mills marches off to help set up an intense hospital scene in which Calvert is wheeled in frantically for surgery, Calvert herself waddles over, fresh from her prosthetic procedure, holding the now-even-more-sizable bump under her gown. We adjourn to the parking lot, where she explains how she approached portraying her character.

“Laura is relatively traditional and relatively conservative,” Calvert says, brushing a light-brown strand of hair back over her ear as the afternoon breeze picks up, nearly billowing her hospital dress fully open for a bit of public flashing. “She loves her husband and he loves her. But their relationship isn’t great. I don’t really think it ever was. I think it’s a marriage of, ‘Well, OK, this is good enough.’”

While Matthew is not abusive physically, Calvert notes, he is also not exactly nice to Laura, who thinks that having a baby will fix their relationship.

“She is unaware of his infidelity,” she teases. “She starts to get suspicious as the story goes on, and she gets more pregnant and more hormonal — and things start to get weirder around the house. But she thinks that the baby in her belly is hers. And yet, there were some shenanigans.”

Calvert notes that her movie pregnancy has required her to transform, shooting a few days without the fake belly before equipping herself with a second-trimester belly and finally, the nine-months belly she is wearing now.

“It takes an hour and a half to two hours to put on,” Calvert shares. “Then it takes 45 minutes to an hour to take off. Taking it off is awful. It’s so slimy. The solvent to dissolve the glue just coagulates into slime. It’s goopy. And then I drive home in an oversize T-shirt, after which I take a long shower.”

She leans forward, underscoring, “I’ve taken a lot of showers.”

Nonetheless, she enjoys rising to the challenge, and not just because of her real-life and onscreen “pain slut” proclivities.

“It’s definitely been a super-interesting experience doing the belly,” she explains. “When Bree first approached me about doing this, one of the first things I said to her was, ‘If we’re going to do it, I need a good prosthetic. I need it to have weight to it, I need to really feel like it’s attached to my body. I don’t just want a buckle-around kind of prosthetic — I want a real prosthetic.’ And Bree was like, ‘Oh, no. No worries. I gotcha.’”

Reaching one arm behind her, Calvert admits that her back hurts and her hips hurt too, with moving around generally proving a tricky affair. The prosthetic makes it especially difficult to reach down; her arms feel inadequately long to fulfill basic tasks.

“It has absolutely been very much a physical challenge,” she says. “This whole movie has been. On the first day, for example, I had to fake-puke. There was lots of crying, lots of puking and lots of being very ill. So even without the pregnancy belly, this has been a physical ordeal, and then the prosthetic is just taking that physicality to a whole other level.”

When it comes to the sex, Calvert already performed a girl-girl scene with Lovings, though wearing the second-trimester belly made for more of a hand-job scene. Soon, however, we are walking to the next set: a grimy basement-like room where a few orderlies will be performing a gangbang with Calvert’s biggest prosthetic belly attached, upping the stakes.

After setting up the mic and cameras to be unobtrusive, Mills has the performers run through the choreography a few times. Calvert is wheeled in, then manhandled by Codey Steele, Tommy Pistol and Robbie Apples in a series of decidedly acrobatic positions. Mills checks in frequently to make sure she is as comfortable as possible.

Stalwart and unfazed, Calvert affirms she is golden, then starts off another take with the camera close in on her depraved eyes as her husky voice declares her desperate craving for sex of the fiercest and most passionate variety. The men comply, ravishing her this way and that, sweat-slicked bodies grinding and pumping and undulating, rough hands seizing her just how she likes, turning her and bending her and making her submit.

Once they nail the shots Mills wants, she applauds the carnal finesse and checks in with Calvert, who is whisked away for prosthetic belly upkeep. A lunch break later, the newly hydrated and relaxed star is ready to share what it was like filming the scene.

“I’ve done more gangbangs than I can count,” she notes, “but none quite like that. Still, my body knew what to do, even wearing this massive prosthetic — which is why I think my hips hurt so much right now. I wasn’t super aware of ‘being pregnant.’ I was just performing.”

In a decidedly less sweaty state is Lovings, looking uptight and low-key sinister in a prudish outfit.

“My character, Grace, is deeply religious but infertile,” she explains. “I’m taking care of Laura, which is Casey Calvert, and she is very pregnant. Her husband impregnated her because I want his baby. We’re using his wife for that.”

She reflects that it has been an intense shoot, with frequent high-intensity scenes and a variety of intertwining themes.

“There’s one scene where I’m giving Laura a yoni massage,” she says, with a mischievous gleam in her eye. “While it’s not super sexual per se, I’m still massaging her vagina and fingering her.”

There is also a boy-girl between Lovings and Gamble; when Calvert catches them together, her water breaks.

Lovings says she loves twisted storylines, but adds that half the magic of filming “Birth” is getting to work with Mills.

“There are no words to describe it,” she says. “It’s just fucking awesome every single time. Bree has a very powerful, creative vision. She knows exactly what she wants and how to execute it. She has been very masterful with decision-making. I really respect her process.”

As Matthew, the nefarious and conspiring husband, Gamble looks every bit the conservative suburbanite, but channels a hint of menace.

“My character has a lot of turmoil,” he says. “There’s a lot of layers to why he’s doing it and what he wants. But I’m definitely a villain in this situation.”

Gamble expresses confidence in the production, in part due to the close working relationship he shares with Mills.

“We’ve created really great things together,” he affirms. “It’s really great to dig into a very deep, traumatizing role again.”

A curious-looking medical device sits nearby. Gamble says it is meant to go inside the cervix to inseminate a woman.

“In the film, you will actually get a graphic shot of the inside of Laura, aka Casey Calvert,” Gamble reveals with a smirk. “And I had to be the one to stick the utensil inside her.”

He describes the process as uncomfortable and weird, but says it went so smoothly that they were able to accomplish it in one take.

“I’m just super honored to be here,” Gamble says. “I’m honored to continue on with Gamma and Adult Time and be an ambassador and be part of something. This project, there’s a lot of backstory to it. It is personal to me, and to Bree. There is stuff in it that resonates, especially with a lot of things that are going on right now in the world.

“I feel like Bree’s strong suit is really telling stories of the dynamics in relationships,” he adds. “This might be the deepest we’ve gone with that — in a different way.”

Even before shooting the intensely dramatic finale, Mills already has postproduction on her mind. To really nail the right aesthetic, tone and pacing for “Birth,” she says, she has been working closely with Gamma’s crack team of editors in a very proactive way.

“Every single sequence in this film, we have a game plan for how it starts and how it transitions to the next sequence,” she notes. “We’ve pre-planned all that, between myself and the editor. Just being able to sandbox all of your sequences with that knowledge — in our industry, we often don’t have the luxury or the capability to do that. A lot of people have to hand their footage off to somebody else that may or may not know to edit their stuff. So it’s really nice to be able to bring the editor’s voice into it.”

She observes that editors are often frustrated because they receive footage without prior knowledge of the director’s perspective, and end up having to simply work with whatever they get. Being able to bridge that gap was a huge eye-opener for Mills.

“I’ll never not work that way again, because it allowed us to be so efficient,” she says.

Between that process and surrounding herself with the cream of the crop from Adult Time’s roster, Mills feels that she has a winning formula. Adult Time will also be following the same distribution strategy used on previous features, releasing a full-length, uncensored version of “Birth” while submitting a “mainstream” cut to festivals.

“We’re going to do a screening this fall, and follow the appropriate rules to not be censored when we put it up on public platforms,” she says. “But they’ll inevitably take it down.”

Mills cites the SFW cut of Adult Time’s XBIZ Award-winning “Teenage Lesbian,” which amassed 20 million views on YouTube before being taken down.

At last, it is time to shoot the frantic finale. After a few takes of orderlies racing wheelchair-bound Calvert down the hospital hall, then hastily wheeling her into a room for surgery, only essential cast and crew members squeeze into a cramped hospital room set, as everyone else waits outside.

Calvert howls with agony during the shocking birth scene, her ululating cries and despairing moans sending shivers up the spine, a profound contrast to the sighs and groans of ecstasy a few hours earlier during the gangbang.

Mainstream films routinely require days or even weeks to achieve the range of performance and production that Mills and her A-team of switchblade crew members and seasoned stars somehow manage to cram into half a day. Multiple scenes, dozens of takes — and all so carefully orchestrated as to come across with an illusion of effortless grace, belying the intensity and rigors required to execute such a feat. Indeed, many a big-budget production could be put to shame by the cinematic magic and midwifery executed by Mills and her Adult Time cast and crew in giving birth to “Birth.”