When Antonia Murphy moved to New Zealand 16 years ago, she never anticipated that she would find herself running an ethical brothel in Whangārei – or that her life story would form the basis for a TV show. But, as she details in her new memoir, Madam , after getting divorced and needing money to continue raising her three children, Murphy thought back on her prior interest in sex work. “Years previously, I had gone to a brothel in Auckland and interviewed some of the sex workers and came away thinking, my gosh, these are just young women trying to work.
“They’re just at their job. It’s not a whole thing. It’s not scary.
It’s not sleazy, at least that one where I visited was not. And I sort of filed that in the back of my memory banks. And then when it came time to start making an income and building a business, I thought, wow, maybe this is something I could actually do.
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