From Bedrooms To Headlines: A&E Explores The World Of Celebrity Sex Tapes

When private moments go public, the fallout can change lives. This is especially true when the private moments include celebrities and sex. 

A provocative new A&E docuseries, “Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes,” is set to premiere on Monday, September 8 at 9pm ET/PT with back-to-back episodes. The series takes a deep dive into infamous sex tapes featuring well-known celebrities like Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, Kim Kardashian, Colin Farrell, Farrah Abraham, and Mimi Faust. 

Beyond the scandal, the series explores how these private moments reshaped pop culture, fueled controversy, and altered the lives of those at the center of it all, sometimes launching careers and other times causing lasting fallout.

Series contributor and celebrity sex tape broker, Kevin Blatt, sat down with The Blast ahead of the show’s premiere to share some insight into the world of celebrity sex tapes and how it’s evolved over the years because of the internet and OnlyFans.

Kevin Blatt knows a thing or two about celebrity sex tapes. In fact, his title as a celebrity sex tape broker says it all. When A&E approached him to see if he would share his expertise and stories for the new docuseries, "Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes," he was happy to oblige.

"I'm featured prominently, at least in the three screeners that they [A&E] sent me. It's funny because when I come on the screen, I feel like there's this dun-dun-dun moment, where it's like, here comes the bad guy dressed in black. It's more or less I'm the porn guy that comes out of nowhere, but really more of like the ringleader of this celebrity sex tape crazy," he told The Blast exclusively.

"Obviously, the familiarity being the celebrity sex tape broker as my moniker for many years, that's what made me sought after for A&E to have me be one of the talking heads."

Blatt said he was very impressed with the amount of people that A&E got to talk about the topic in this series. Some of the people featured in the series includes Dr. Drew, Shanna Moakler, Paul Fishbein, the founder of AVN Magazine, and many others.

When asked how he gained the title of celebrity sex tape broker years ago, Blatt shared his backstory, explaining that it all began when he was hired by a company in Seattle while doing PR for a website.

"At that point, I'd been on Howard Stern, and I'd done a bunch of PR stuff with a porn star named Houston. Houston was the gangbang queen. She had done 620 men in one day," he shared. "I became known as this PR person and these guys hit me up from Seattle and say, 'Hey, we have this video of Paris Hilton, and we want to put it out, but we're not really supposed to be in the internet business anymore because of some stuff that we did that we weren't supposed to do.' Turned out these guys had 900 numbers back in the day before there were porn websites, that's how people made a lot of money."

They had to settle with FCC so they hired Blatt to share the Hilton tape. Blatt got sued for $20 million, but it catapulted him into going from selling male enhancement products to his "defining moment" of being a celebrity sex tape broker.

"All of a sudden, this became the biggest news story of 2003 and made me a destination for more celebrity sex tapes," he continued. "As you'll see in the doc series on A&E, I talk about the fact that the first time I'd gotten any kind of traction with press after Howard Stern, I think it was either Vanity Fair or New York Times, they referred to me as the celebrity sex tape broker, which I thought was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But when life throws you lemons, you make porno lemonade."

The series debuts on Monday, Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on A&E with two back-to-back episodes. The series will feature eight episodes in total, two each of the four weeks it runs. Each week shares a different story about how a particular celebrity sex tape became an iconic moment that fueled public obsession and sparked outrage, altering the lives of those involved.

Some celebrity sex tapes that are featured include Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, Colin Farrell, Farrah Abraham, Kim Kardashian and others.

Viewers can expect to see exclusive interview and never-before-heard revelations throughout the series, as it uncovers shocking truths that reveal the darker side of our culture.

Blatt said viewers will get to see the "real truth being told by people who lived it, who were there when it happened."

"I make a big revelation, and I don't want to give it away, but I'm just going to tell you that the stuff that I saw in the original Kardashian tape is not what was the final cut and final edit," he told The Blast. "You'll have to tune in to find out what was included in the first."

The question still lingers as to why these celebrity sex tapes became such a cultural phenomenon and are still talked about to this day.

"At first, the allure of it was seeing something you weren't supposed to see, something that made you feel dirty," Blatt said. "That's what the original sex tapes were."

And now with the internet and OnlyFans, things may have shifted when it comes to the appeal of sex tapes. Blatt explained that it's made it easier to find content and cheaper, not to mention that if you wanted to upload a sex tape that's going to generate money, you really can't now because, "somebody can go rip your video in two seconds and put it on Pornhub for free."

"When we put out the Paris Hilton sex tape, we were getting thousands and thousands of joins a day on the website. At $29.99 a month, you can imagine the math and that would rebuild every single month, by the way," he said. "Not a lot of people know how the actual mechanics and actual calculations added up. It was way more than just hotel pay-per-view, which was another revenue stream in itself. But the remuneration and the amount of money that made in these adult movies were just stifling. I mean people were making $20 million a month."

Week 1 of "Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes" will focus on the "Birth of the Sex Tape" and "Pam & Tommy." Week 2 features "Kim Kardashian" and "Colin Farrell."

Moving into week 3, it's "Farrah Abraham" and "Love & Hip Hop's Mimi Faust." And the final week is "Revenge Porn" and "OnlyFans: The New Frontier."

Blatt had nothing but wonderful things to say about this docuseries.

"I think it's important to say that I do a lot of these docs on sex tapes. They're all lost leaders. They're just something to get that salacious interest and get your eyeballs to," Blatt said about the A&E docuseries.

"This is the best. This is the quintessential, this is the Encyclopedia Britannica of celebrity sex tapes. When you see this, I don't think they left any stone unturned. It's beautifully shot, wonderfully edited, and I'm blown away by how good it was."