What’s the History of the Celebrity Sex Tape? Find Out on A&E’s New Series ‘Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes’
Today, celebrity sex tapes are a dime a dozen — but there was a time when that wasn’t so. A&E digs into the roots of our celebrity sex tape era on their new eight-part series, Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes, which premieres on Monday, September 8 at 9pm & 10:01pm ET/PT. The first episode will take a look at the earliest celebrity sex tapes to ever become major news — those of television personality Jayne Kennedy and actor Robe Lowe.
Hollywood stars have been the subject of sex tape rumors for as long as there has been a Hollywood; in the late 1920s and ’30s, Joan Crawford was dogged by whispers that she had appeared in several “blue movies” before striking it big. But actor Rob Lowe was one of the first stars unlucky enough to actually have their sex tapes actually released to the public.
In 1988, the then-24-year-old allegedly picked up two women at an Atlanta nightclub, bringing them back to his hotel for an evening of erotic shenanigans, which he recorded onto two tapes. One of the women was later revealed to be only 16 years old; Lowe maintained that he didn’t know her age at the time, as the club where he met the women was 21 and over. He later settled a lawsuit out of court with her family (Georgia’s age of consent is 16).
In 1989, The L.A. Times reported that the tapes were being screened at private parties, and had appeared on a public access show, where porno impresario Al Goldstein offered copies to viewers for $29.95.
The tapes became a massive public scandal that temporarily damaged the rising star’s career. But in the decades since, he’s expressed gratitude for how low the experience brought him, saying that it helped push him to embrace sobriety, and become the family man he is today.
In a 2011 appearance on Oprah, Lowe said that the release of the tapes “ends up being the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Because what it ends up doing is accelerating my alcohol [addiction] to where I finally get sober. I have been able to have the rest of my life that I’m so blessed with, which is now 20 years of sobriety.”
In a 2019 appearance on Sirius XM’s The Jesse Cagle Show, Lowe continued to tout the humiliation of the tape as an experience that helped him turn his life around. “It’s one of the reasons why I got sober,” he said. “I woke up one day and I was like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ I’m 29 years in and like people talk, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Honestly, I do because it got me sober, sober got me married. I’ve been married 29 years and I have two great sons. I don’t think any of that happens without going through that scandal.”