Barely 24 hours after The Summer I Turned Pretty finale aired, Christopher Briney revealed his next project. No, not the hit show’s surprise movie, but his starring role in a three-part audio erotica, “Hidden Harbor,” from the app Quinn. “When River, voiced by Chris Briney, comes home for the summer, he doesn’t plan on falling for his brother’s ex,” the synopsis reads. Sound familiar?
Briney is the latest actor to embrace the world of soft-core audio porn. While romantasy series like A Court of Thorns and Roses helped legitimize smut, Quinn has been leading the charge on the audio front thanks to its growing star power. The app, founded in 2019 by CEO Caroline Spiegel, has tapped celebrities including Andrew Scott, Tom Blyth, Thomas Doherty, Jesse Williams, and Jamie Campbell Bower to narrate steamy original erotica stories.
While Briney’s character, River, sounds like an extension of his breakout role, the sensitive beach-town heartthrob Conrad Fisher, others have spanned the fantastical. Scott took on the role of Robb the Protector, a tyrannical queen’s chief guard who has a dalliance with a resistance leader, while Doherty’s Horatio, an inventor, is tasked with destroying a time machine and falls for his assistant along the way. It isn’t only aiming to appeal to straight women, either—Victoria Pedretti got in on the fun, narrating a sapphic, Killing Eve–esque spy tale.
Outside of sex scenes, Playboy and Playgirl dominated sex and nudity in media. Up until about 10 years ago, celebrities were leaving little to the imagination in print centerfolds. (Indeed, one of Keeping Up With the Kardashians’s richest cultural contributions—“Kim, you’re doing amazing, sweetie!”—was borne out of Kim Kardashian’s Playboy shoot.) Still, there was a sense of taboo around baring it all for the camera. Last week, Glee actor Chord Overstreet revealed that, during the height of the show, he shot a full-frontal spread in Playgirl. But, despite his reported $100,000 payday, Overstreet’s publicist pulled the shoot. There was similar trepidation around audio erotica in the early days of Quinn, which launched its app in 2021. “In the early days, pitching Quinn to talent wasn’t easy—we heard a lot of no,” Spiegel says.
Now, though, some celebrities are using it as a smart branding opportunity. After all, amidst constant fuss about how young people are having less sex than previous generations, puritanical handwringing over sex scenes, and the bygone days of print media, how’s a young actor supposed to become a sex symbol nowadays? For Briney, narrating erotica allows him to further his brand as a sexy, sensitive leading man, while freeing himself from the constraints of the young adult genre. Aligning with a brand like Quinn, which centers female sexuality, is an added plus. While “Hidden Harbor” has only published its first episode, its tags seem to lend a clue as to what kind of man Briney is interested in portraying: “Helping You Forget Your Cheating Ex,” “Walking You Home,” “Making Out,” and “Consent.”
Quinn is eager to work with its celebrity narrators, helping them find a story that fits their wants and needs as performers. “We’ll bring them scripts to choose from and talk through what excites them—sometimes they’re drawn to certain themes or already have a character in mind, and we’ll either tailor an existing story or even create one from scratch to bring their vision to life,” Spiegel explains.
Spiegel is hoping to subvert the visually arousing centerfolds into an aural experience that centers the female gaze. “A centerfold is about the male gaze—it’s external, it’s about how someone looks. Audio erotica flips that: it’s internal, it’s about how you feel when you’re listening. It leaves space for imagination, for a slow burn and anticipation, for subjectivity, for the listener to be the protagonist in a story that feels made for them,” she says. “Instead of scratching the same itch, it scratches a much deeper, more compelling one.”
And as for who Quinn’s next celebrity narrator might be? “Our most requested narrator right now is Pedro Pascal,” Spiegel says. “We’d also love to collaborate with Adam Brody, Jonathan Bailey, Idris Elba, Austin Butler, Hunter Schafer, and Oscar Isaac.” So for any actors out there looking to become a modern sex symbol…start practicing your moans and call your agent.
