Maxine Knight-Steele
By: Karyn Locke
Maxine Knight-Steele. Founder, editor, producer, accountant, photographer…you name it, she does it. Ms. Steele is the magnificent genius behind the PlaySims brand, and for 14 years, she’s remained quiet…
…until now…
In this riveting expose/ interview, Ms. Steele speaks candidly on “touchy” subjects and about the future of PlaySims.
It began in 1962. Maxine Helena Knight was born to Jed and Lola Knight. Jed worked for a photography studio, and Lola was a stay-at-home-mom, yet, no matter what she wanted, Maxine (and later a brother Jake) would always get. She would not know the truth about her parents until her high school years. All in all, they were a happy family.
Jake Knight was born a few years later, and completed the Knight family.
Maxine and Jake had a wonderful childhood and spent much of their time together. Their parents, unfortunately, divorced when Maxine was 13, and Jake 8. But the divorce was not your conventional one. Maxine recalls: “My parents divorced, yes, in the sense that they were no longer married, but the situation was weird. They continued to live in the same house, so we could still be a “family.” It wasn’t easy to see my father bring home other women or hear my mother making love to a man other than my dad. It was just awkward…different…unstable…”
The bizarre living arrangement was further hindered by boarding school. Both Maxine and Jake were sent away to Simsworth School for Young Men and Women.
Maxine was a very shy and, according to her, “nerdy” teenager. “I went through my first three years of high school never having a boyfriend, not really having many friends, always with my head in a book. I wore glasses and a uniform and that was the epitome of nerdiness,” she laughs.
But Maxine had secrets…secrets only a select few knew about.
“I found out some stuff about my parents when I was a junior in high school. A boy who sat a few tables away from me at lunch told me he thought he saw my mother in a porno magazine. I thought he was just teasing me like a lot of the other kids did, but I still got very angry. He swore he wasn’t lying and the next day brought in the magazine. Sure enough when I opened to the centerfold, there was my mother in all her naked glory. Of course she was wearing a wig and a ton of makeup, and her name was the ridiculous “Nelly Nailem.” I was horrified, but entranced at the same time. In a weird way, I respected my mother for what she did.” And when Maxine read the magazine further, she saw her father’s real name, Jed Knight, listed in the credits of production.
And that began Maxine’s love affair with pornography.
“I never posed. I only organized and shot film. David Steele, the boy from the cafeteria, had a brilliant idea…we were going to take our own pictures and put together a local magazine that would be easily accessible to boys under 18 who couldn’t legally buy the ones at the newsstands. I had the brains for it…I was awesome in math, knew how to work those cumbersome computers, and had access to all my father’s photography equipment. Dave knew all the slutty cheerleader type girls who would pose for free just for him. You have to understand, Dave was a very handsome and charming football player who bedded almost the whole cheerleading squad by 10th grade.”
So they had their plan. Their first issue took 5 months to make, and they sold it for 1 Simolean per copy. “It was madness. Every guy in high school wanted a copy.” Their magazine, “Looksey,” continued throughout senior year and totaled 7 issues. Dave and Maxine fell in love while producing the rag, and left town after highschool. “We went to the city and eloped. We thought we were going to take “Looksey” to a higher level.
Such was not the case. David began using cocaine and drank all the time. Money was tight. There wasn’t a buyer for the magazine, and Maxine wanted to take business classes at the community college. Dave went out and began pimping girls for money, but that still didn’t help them because of his substance abuse problems. He soon wanted Maxine to work the streets, but she refused. Maxine then got an internship for a male magazine “Suite.” “Suite wasn’t a pornographic magazine at all, it was just a mag for guys to see really hot chics wearing next to nothing. It was so silly…guys didn’t want to see that, they wanted the real thing!”
“Dave resented me working late hours for very little money. Then one night, the shit hit the proverbial fan, and he raised his hand to me. That was it. I walked.”
After 5 years of marriage and struggle, Maxine and David Steele divorced. Maxine packed her bags, left the failing “Suite,” and went to Las Vegas with a stolen model. “Suzi Washington was a model at “Suite” and she and I had become good friends. That girl was a freak. She hated the type of work she was doing and wanted a more risqué assignment. When I decided to jump ship, Suzi wanted in. I took some disturbing shots of her, and we both went to Vegas. The first printer we went to loved it. We were in…simple as that.”
In 1987, Maxine launched the first issue of “PlaySims.” “I had three girls and one guy in the beginning, and boy did we have fun! I always knew “PlaySims” would do well.”
“We eliminate virtually all competition that comes our way: Where’s “Suite?” Where’s “Simskank?” Where’s “Hustle Her” Ask me how “SHM” is doing? And so far, 2002 has been our strongest year yet.”
When asked about the future of “PlaySims,” Maxine wasn’t too chatty. “That remains to be seen. We will definitely be branching out…taking the brand name beyond our magazine. There’s a clothing line in progress, a line of bath and body products on the way, as well as other avenues that I’m not at liberty to speak about. But trust me, you won’t be disappointed.”
And how could we be? Maxine is on top of her world, and her world keeps getting bigger and bigger.
