SPOILER ALERT: This post incorporates details from Episode 6 of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” now streaming on Apple TV.
Margo’s got an OnlyFans account — and that was at all times the plan.
While the titular character Margo (Elle Fanning) on the David E. Kelley-created dramedy “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” began an OnlyFans once she began running out of options to generate income as a single mother, her creator went in regards to the process in reverse.
Rufi Thorpe, who wrote the 2024 novel of the identical name that the Apple TV show is customized from, tells Variety that she “began with the thought of wanting to put in writing a few mother who was a sex employee.” Thorpe says that she felt drawn to exploring the stigma around sex work and motherhood, each which have haunted Margo throughout the season coming to a head in Episode 6, when her real-life identity is doxxed online. One-by-one, viewers have seen Margo’s family and friends upset by her selections: whether it’s her mothering techniques, or her decision to start out posting on OnlyFans, the subscription-based platform that permits creators to monetize their work directly from fans through suggestions and pay-per-view content, most of which is usually explicit in nature.
Writing about an OnlyFans creator was an idea Thorpe had for a few years, yet when the time got here to put in writing the novel, there was one key problem: OnlyFans is a confusing, complex website, and one which Thorpe needed insider information to completely understand. She eventually made a customer account for research purposes, a move that Eva Anderson, an executive producer on”Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” would replicate while developing the series.
Thorpe had an inventory of creators she’d followed while writing the book, a mix of “cool, funny girls, pregnant women, realistic OnlyFans models” that she omitted to Anderson and the show’s other writers, who followed the creators on their newly made accounts.
“We might have these circular conversations,” says Anderson, who explains that the writers’ room was initially hesitant about pulling up specific photos or references, not wanting to cross any boundaries. “There was sooner or later where all of us were like, ‘That is getting ridiculous. We’re all going to start out putting the photos within the [group] chat, so we don’t must do that.’”
All sources of inspiration made their way into Anderson’s list of followed accounts. Later, once they began shooting, she was capable of show Fanning a mood board of sorts. Fanning, who went through the accounts immediately, told Anderson: “OK, I understand this on a level that I didn’t before.”
Margo’s brand of OnlyFans content (think: alien cosplay, neon paint, comparing penis pictures to different Pokémon) is probably not what involves mind when one typically thinks of the web site. While there are many creators without gimmicks –“classical,” as Thorpe refers to them–– those with a novel shtick stood out to the author from the ocean of risqué bedroom photos.
Certain creators like TooTurntTony, BigHonkinCaboose and HarperTheFox helped Thorpe realize there have been ways to include humor and personality into the career. “A part of what makes OnlyFans sexy is when it feels authentic and real, versus hyper-produced pornography that makes it feel less intimate,” says Thorpe, who can also be an executive producer on the show. “That humor being something that makes a lady sexy to a man was definitely a part of what I used to be considering.”
Similarly, there have been elements of videos that Anderson and the writing team took inspiration from, whether it was an individual’s mannerisms, costumes, or language getting used.
“Something we realized, once we were within the strategy of making the show, is that the typical Apple TV audience is loads older than the typical person that may pick up Rufi’s book,” says Anderson. While Thorpe’s readership tended to skew toward a younger demographic (those aware of OnlyFans, and who had the bottom knowledge of the way it worked), the show needed to walk its viewers through the location “step-by-step,” just like the best way Margo slowly begins to learn the ins-and-outs of the platform.
The production team brought in an OnlyFans creator who goes by HankSirStinki to function a consultant; warning production in regards to the language Margo can be unable to make use of when captioning a promotional Instagram post and advising them at different points within the story what number of followers she’d have and the way much money she’d be making realistically.
Adding to the accuracy of the show, the OnlyFans interface was graphically recreated to make use of on-screen, right down to the chatboxes Margo opens when DMing creators, in search of tips about how one can expand her fanbase.
“The OnlyFans search algorithm is bizarre. It’s really hard to search out an account unless you already know their exact account name,” Thorpe says. “If you must be found within the OnlyFans ecosystem, the simplest solution to try this is by collabing with any person in order that their followers get exposed to you, and also you they usually get exposed to your followers.”
“Collaborating is obligatory for Margo to maneuver forward, but Rose [Lindsey Normington] and KC [Rico Nasty] are so vital to her as friends, each creatively and as people she just needs on the planet,” adds Anderson in regards to the creators Margo begins making content with. “It could just be about capitalism, however it finally ends up becoming about community and friendship and collective art making.”
Understandably, closed off to requests from strangers asking to speak, the OnlyFans creators that Thorpe reached out to via social media when writing were unresponsive. Eventually, Thorpe found a solution to get in contact, via her own OnlyFans account: “I might send a $50 tip and say, ‘Hey, I’m a novelist. These are the books I published. I’m writing a book a few character who’s starting an OnlyFans. I need to portray sex work as work. The book has no moral agenda. I can’t make it good unless the research is nice. And I can’t do good research unless a few of you confer with me. Please let me interview you. I’ll pay you by the query.”
Thorpe’s real-life method was written into the show by Anderson, having Margo send models a $50 tip along with her questions. It wasn’t at all times the smoothest process, recalls Thorpe, saying, “Quite a lot of girls have their chat function automated, in order that anything you send, they’re like, ‘Ooh, I’m enthusiastic about you.’ After which it’s just [explicit] pics. I might must be like, ‘No, earnestly, I want to converse with you.’”
The questions Thorpe asked the creators were varied, depending on which stage of her writing process she was in. Most focused on the weather of the web site that she had no way of answering herself.
“Say I’m a creator’s account, I can’t see what other persons are saying,” says Thorpe. “An enormous amount of what I used to be asking was: ‘What do men name their profiles? What’s their handle? What photos do they use? How do you get your money out? What does your screen appear like while you’re your earnings?’”
While the creators were less more likely to open up in regards to the emotional or psychological fallout of doing OnlyFans, Thorpe read several think pieces written by models who had been doxxed or stalked, together with the hate messages they received.
“There may be a reason why I made a decision to put in writing and keep the frame of just starting out, because I knew that I could authentically think my way into that,” says Thorpe, who feels she wouldn’t have the non-public experience to depict someone who’d been within the industry for years.
Having Margo be a author, too, was a way for Thorpe to attach along with her character. She crafted Margo’s story with the identical careful and detail-oriented consideration she’d set out to realize, right down to the “HungryGhost” username the young mom chooses to go by.
“There’s a way wherein Margo’s watching the world and feels barely separated from it that’s a part of her identity as a author, and in addition as an individual. It made sense to me that she would consider herself as an alien visiting this beautiful land,” says Thorpe. Her complicated relationship along with her parents and being an only child adds to it, as does becoming a mother for the primary time. “All these items made the alien make sense for Margo from the very starting, but possibly [her baby] Bodhi form of hypercharged that feeling, and it made sense for her to lean into it.”
As Episode 6 ends with Margo being challenged for custody, it becomes clear to viewers the repercussions a controversial job like OnlyFans can have. Despite wanting to portray the negative side of the platform, each Thorpe and Anderson were intent on not having Margo’s story be “misery porn,” as Anderson puts it.
“We didn’t want to evaluate Margo,” says Anderson. “That’s for the assholes within the book and the show to do.”