Linda Lovelace’s Later Claim That Deep Throat Was Made Under Threat

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Linda Lovelace’s Later Claim That Deep Throat Was Made Under Threat

Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat / 1970s-1980s

Linda Boreman, who performed as Linda Lovelace, initially described making Deep Throat as liberating in her first two biographies. Later, after leaving the pornography business, she gave a radically different account, alleging that her then-husband Chuck Traynor coerced and assaulted her, threatened her with firearms, and forced her to perform sexual acts for the camera. In a 1981 interview she said there had been “a gun to my head the entire time,” and in 1986 testimony before the Meese Commission she declared, “Virtually every time someone watches that movie, they’re watching me being raped.” Other people on the set did not corroborate the specific gun allegation, but both Traynor and director Gerard Damiano acknowledged that Traynor was controlling and had physically struck Boreman. The allegations transformed the film’s legacy: what had been marketed as a playful emblem of sexual liberation became a central example in later debates about exploitation, consent, and the pornography industry.