depicted in the film. After witnessing a young woman have sex with a man on the floor of a crowded room for single dollar bills, he was shocked and asked her if she was okay. She told him that she had a two-year-old daughter and that this was what she had to do to survive. Jarred by what he witnessed and the understanding that her predicament was not unique, Gillis began to more seriously study U.S. history and its bearings on present-day socioeconomics. Upon realizing the scope of the problem - what he perceived to be gross societal inequities - and feeling that that "reality" had not been adequately documented, Gillis set out to make a film that he hoped would shed light on some of the struggles endured by women in poverty in the United States. In January, 2014, Gillis revisited a similar event for the purpose of getting in touch with the women affected and begin the project. At a blacked-out barbershop in Queens that served as a brothel at night, Gillis met Unique Adams, a young woman then pregnant with her first child. Over the course of the next several months, Gillis and Adams met regularly to talk about her life, the struggles that she faced, and what she hoped that the film would convey. She invited Gillis to the events she worked and taped dressing room conversations for him to study. Throughout the process of writing, Gillis would read aloud for Adams to confirm the authenticity of the depiction. Pre-Production When the screenplay was completed, Adams introduced Gillis to Prince Combs, a Bronx resident familiar to the "after-hours" circuit. Impressed by the authenticity of the screenplay and what he perceived to be an important subject, Combs came on board as Associate Producer in the summer of 2014 and would remain Gillis' closest collaborator for the next several years. Feeling that it would be important that each role be played by women who had real-life experience of the struggles depicted, Gillis, Combs and friends handed out 10,000 flyers in the streets of the Bronx, and put up hundreds of posters in the public housing projects in the area, advertising the castings. In Combs' studio, the two interviewed hundreds of women survivors of sexual abuse, violence, and prostitution. Over the course of nine months, the cast was assembled through the process of auditions, callbacks, screen tests, and rehearsals.