December 4, 2021December 23, 2021 by dallas

Podcast: Dante Colle Interview

If porn had a “Most Likable Pornstar” award each year, Dante Colle would be a perennial nominee. His charm, affability, and versatility in straight and gay porn alike have scored him roles in an impressive breadth of movies. We caught up with Dante for a video podcast interview shortly after the release of his bestselling Casey: A True Story. Check out some text highlights below, and watch or listen to the full-length interview for more!

Download and listen to Dante Colle’s full Adult Empire interview here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn

On Twitter, you describe yourself as a “hippie in the sheets, GQ in the streets.” Elaborate on that!

It was just kind of a passing thought when I first kind of pulled the name Dante Colle. Because there was like, four years prior to that where I was going by something else. And it was just kind of like made sense. I’m kind of like “raggedy” and I don’t wear dress clothes. I just wear, like, bullshit stuff. And I’m kind of more relaxed in my personal life. But when I’m on camera, it’s like looking nice and doing whatever they want me to be, as far as like, you know, the [sheets part of the quotation], like having sex and whatnot. It’s just very different than how I would have sex in my personal life. So it’s just kind of like, it all looks good on camera, but not necessarily [reflective of] me in real life.

Why aren’t there more crossover stars in the industry?

As far as the industry goes, from what I understand, pretty much the entire history of porn up until recently, the gay side — or let’s just say the LGBT side — and then the straight side have always stayed separate. And it was easy for someone from the straight side to go on to the LGBT side, but to go back and forth, or at the same time, or at one point, starting again, then going to straight — you don’t do that kind of thing. It’s looked very down upon, and people will talk shit about you and judge you and make all these weird assumptions, mostly surrounding around the idea of HIV. And whether or not they actually believe that, they’ll use it as justification to talk shit to you, essentially.

[ . . . ] I don’t see why there should be like this kind of separation, or why I should ever have to feel like this going from one side to the other, doing it at the same time. So I was just like, “Well, I’m just going to try doing both.” And I think I got in at the right time, right place kind of situation and never gave studios or directors producers an excuse to not hire me. Putting that pressure on myself [helped me]. Meaning, you cannot let yourself fuck up. You always have to be on time. You always have to be personable on set. You have to be the absolute best you can be. So those directors can never say, “Oh, well, he had a bad scene. He was five minutes late, you know, so you know, fuck him. We’re done. And we don’t ever need to hire him again.” So if you don’t give them the opportunity, then it makes it a little easier for you to accomplish that goal.

Talk about your time in the Navy.

So basically, I started doing porn the end of June of 2013. And I was scheduled to go to boot camp, the beginning of that following August. I had done five scenes. So I did [some scenes in] June, a couple scenes in July. And then the beginning of that next August, I was off to boot camp. I was signed up for a special forces program. And I did the whole boot camp, did all that, did all the training, most of the training. And as time went on, basically, I told somebody that I had done porn going into it. Didn’t tell him it was gay porn., I told them about the one straight scene I did, and you know, [this was] a team, of you know, 20-something-year-old dudes. I was just like, don’t tell anybody. And then they fucking of course, [he] told everybody and then one thing led to another. Some people went a little too far, dug a little too far, and found out that there was more than just that [one scene].And then being that it was a very exclusive program, they kind of like put some pressure on me, and they dug deep into my medical records, because they couldn’t kick me out for doing a gay, essentially. They took away my security clearance, but it wasn’t enough to kick me out of training. But they basically found out that I had asthma that I was hiding from them and kicked me out.

Did your time in the armed forces teach you discipline?

I give most of the credit to the military doing that. I wasn’t a rebellious kid or anything growing up. I had reasonably strict parents and that helped a lot. But I think it was just when I went into the Navy, you were put in situations where you just needed to be an adult. So you just learned how to be an adult and learned how to be organized and respectful and good work ethic and all that shit. So I think that did the vast majority of the work. And I think a lot of that reflects into my current work, so I think it’s great. I learned a lot of cool stuff, a lot of morals and stuff from that, but I would have if I finished that [military] contract, I’ll only would have gotten out a year ago or something like that. I love where I’m at now, I love my life. And if I were to [have finished the military contract], I would be a completely different person if I was still doing that. So I’m very grateful that I did what I did. But I’m also glad that I my I found my way out of there.

You once said the porn industry can be a little bit like high school. Could you explain what you mean?

It’s the biggest “small world” there is! The porn industry takes up thousands of people. There’s tons of people! But [say] you start dating somebody — everybody knows in about five minutes. And then people make rumors and assumptions and shit like that. And then it’s like a game of telephone! I’m like “Hey, yada yada yada” and then all of a sudden it turns into [something completely different]. It’s like no, that’s not what happened.