Lucien Laviscount knows what it's like to play a leading man. The Emily in Paris star has spent the past four years playing suave British CFO Alfie in the hit Netflix series, a character that's seen him matchup against seemingly every eligible bachelor in this fictional Paris — and continually win. But playing love interests isn't as easy as simply having a nice face. It takes a combination of charm and the dedicated force of an actor who knows how to thread the needle between enticing fantasy, and realistic enough that a viewer can imagine themselves in the main character's shoes.
But with his latest project, “The Regent,” an original story on the Gen-Z-favorite app Quinn, Laviscount is using his leading man expertise to take his first step into the fast-growing world of audio erotica.
“When I first saw the phrase in my email, I was a little taken aback,” Laviscount tells Rolling Stone. “It's easy to imagine how something like this could go wrong — that was my initial hesitation — but once I immersed myself in it, I thought it'd be great to try something a little different.
Audio erotica combines the sensual stories of a romance novel with some of the SFX (heavy breaths and moans) of a porn video. It's scripted NSFW content — but for your ears. The audience for most erotica apps is highly skewed towards women, Quinn's listenership is around 77 percent female, but it appeals to a wide variety of listeners, and is part of a growing trend of alternative porn.
The online audio erotica space has existed online as a community since as early as 2010. But on platforms like Reddit and Tumblr, fans have often had to search by creator, rather than easily find stories that appeal to them. Audio erotica apps like Quinn, Dipsea, and Bloom place scripted scenes in apps that make the scenarios easier to search. “The Regent” is the newest addition to Quinn Originals, a series that casts celebrities in erotic stories. Premiering Nov. 25, it stars Laviscount as Peter Kelly, a sexy cat burglar finding love, pleasure, and treasure during the golden age of Hollywood. For the past four weeks, in what has become a tradition on TikTok, the Quinn account has soft-launched Laviscount's appearance, having viewers guess potential actors with quick shots of his hands, rings, and even snippets of his brogue shoes. But while the promotions, with hundreds of thousands of comments and guesses, show an established fanbase for the audio app, they're also a prominent example of how younger generations are combining steadfast ideas about consent with their growing desire to destigmatize erotic material.
Caroline Spiegel, 27, founded Quinn in 2019 at a time when she was struggling with female sexual dysfunction. In an effort to find a solution, she explored the sexual wellness space and ended up stumbling onto Tumblr and Reddit's audio erotica communities, places where creators post their own versions of audio porn tailored to listeners who want to imagine themselves in the scenes. “It's these audio episodes that are immersive, and it feels like you're having sex with someone, honestly,” Spiegel tells Rolling Stone. “These very spicy scenes are voiced by a voice actor and they have all different types of premises. Some might be you're a princess in a medieval castle, or you're in a library with the nerdy person in your biology class, whatever it is. I was like, 'Oh my God, wait, we've gotten porn all wrong.'”
NSFW spaces like audio erotica are constantly pushing the boundaries to legitimize and destigmatize their industries. However, their mainstream presence means the audio erotica industry also has to contend with the biggest concerns of the moment. Right now, that's AI technology advancements and the ever-growing concern of nonconsensual AI porn, for both lawmakers and people in the public eye. But Spiegel tells Rolling Stone that at a time when it seems like actors would be less interested in joining this type of project, they're actually excited by the freedom it gives them.
“It's like Uno reverse. It's taking ownership and a really self-aware choice for an actor to be like, 'We're going to do this on my terms. Here's how I want it to be presented and I don't want you to make these, like, weird AI edits,'” Spiegel says. “AI can't replace this type of thing. We don't see it as a real threat to our business, because the real thing will always be superior. Lucien really did this and really thought about this and was in character and did a performance. You can't recreate that.”
Laviscount joins a cohort of Quinn Original actors that includes Thomas Doherty, Jesse Williams, Victoria Pedretti, Katherine Moennig, and Fleabag Star Andrew Scott. He's still busy with his traditional endeavors like the upcoming season of Emily in Paris (“I'm still rooting for Alfie,” he says) and the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Emily Henry's best-selling novel People We Meet On Vacation. But he hasn't written off his experience in the recording booth. “On a film set, there are so many moving parts — you're reacting to your scene partner and constrained by the physical world around you. In audio, you create the world entirely with your voice, building the tension and atmosphere. I really enjoyed that aspect of it,” Lavisount says. “I'd definitely love to do more projects like this.”
