Ex-Porn Star Mia Khalifa Gets Candid About Right After Controversial Hijab Scene, Porn Exit

Mia Khalifa got candid about her experience after leaving the porn industry in 2015.

Khalifa came to widespread attention in 2014 following the release of a scene in which she is wearing a hijab. After receiving death threats from many religious groups, including ISIS, for the scene and being disowned by her family, she left the professional porn industry just three months after she had joined.

In her recent interview with Alexandra Cooper on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, the porn star turned influencer revisited the "hardest time of her life" and how she "overcame global shaming, death threats and ISIS." Khalifa admitted she refused to talk about the career she left behind after she quit porn.

"I don't know where I was because that is around the time that I started dissociating," Khalifa explained. "And just compartmentalizing everything and pretending like things never happened to the point where I didn't even talk about porn for the first like three years after. I just went quiet, never spoke about it."

Khalifa went on to reveal that in past interviews, she would tell the interviewers to never ask her anything about her previous job. She refused to even acknowledge her stint in the adult entertainment industry, something she thought was helping her.

However, Khalifa said she realized after starting therapy that it was not helpful at all because she could not just sweep those issues under the rug and expect them to go away. She realized that she had to face them head-on, had to acknowledge them and talk about them.

"I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to bring attention to it," Khalifa explained. "But I need to talk about it because I need to explain myself because everyone is just misinterpreting the whole thing."

She continued, "So it's that catch-22 of not wanting to bring it up and needing to bring it up because it's the, it's like the elephant in the room everywhere you go."

Due to her controversial hijab scene, Khalifa was banned from traveling to her home country of Lebanon. However, she remains supportive of her fellow countrymen and used her platform to raise awareness and funds of the crises happening in the nation following the Beirut blast in August 2020.

In a previous interview, she said she never hesitated in reaching out and helping the people from her country.

"Absolutely, not," Khalifa responded. "I think the tumultuousness of the relationship has been one-sided. I have never stopped loving Lebanon. I've never stopped identifying as Lebanese."

In November, she did not forget to wish Lebanon a happy Independence Day on social media.

"Happy Independence Day to my broken, beautiful country that will one day be truly independent from corruption and itself. Kilun ya’ane kilun," she wrote on Instagram.