‘We don’t want to leave people shocked and trembling’: inside the graphic new play tackling violent porn addiction

<p>In the Royal Court’s Porn Play, Ambika Mod stars as an academic hiding a damaging addiction. She and the drama’s creators discuss the challenges of staging masturbation, and getting audiences to relate to its troubled lead</p><p>In Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play, which has just opened at London’s Royal Court, Ani is a 30-year-old academic at the frontier of intellectual discovery: she’s winning awards for her radical revision of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, effortlessly earning the admiration of her mentor and her students alike. She’s also addicted to violent pornography and is masturbating constantly. She can’t stay in a real-life sexual moment, but she can’t stay in a real-life conversation, either – constantly reaching for her phone, watching porn and wanking, often in situations just about believable yet so outlandishly wrong that reading the play, and observing Ani’s career and relationships unravel, is like being trapped in someone’s anxiety dream.</p><p>So it’s quite a bold choice of role for the person playing Ani, Ambika Mod. Since starring in This Is Going to Hurt in 2022, but even more so since One Day last year, she has become known, in her words, “for playing very noble characters who die”. Mod has the world of romantic leads at her feet – a beautiful, relatable everywoman, who could tell you the truth of the human heart with one raised eyebrow. Starring in a play whose opening scene has her on all fours atop a mirror, in a frenzy of narcissistic delight, whose every action is centred on her body … well, it feels like it must have been a decision to wrestle with?</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/nov/09/ambika-mod-porn-play-interview-josie-rourke-sophia-chetin-leuner">Continue reading...</a>