SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from Episode 6 of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” now streaming on Apple TV.
Margo’s got an OnlyFans account — and that was always the plan.
While the titular character Margo (Elle Fanning) on the David E. Kelley-created dramedy “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” started an OnlyFans once she began running out of options to make money as a single mother, her creator went about the process in reverse.
Rufi Thorpe, who wrote the 2024 novel of the same name that the Apple TV show is adapted from, tells Variety that she “started with the idea of wanting to write about a mother who was a sex worker.” Thorpe says that she felt drawn to exploring the stigma around sex work and motherhood, both 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 friends and family disappointed by her choices: whether it’s her mothering techniques, or her decision to start posting on OnlyFans, the subscription-based platform that allows creators to monetize their work directly from fans through tips and pay-per-view content, most of which is typically explicit in nature.
Writing about an OnlyFans creator was an idea Thorpe had for many years, yet when the time came to write the novel, there was one key problem: OnlyFans is a confusing, complex website, and one that Thorpe needed insider information to fully 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 a list of creators she’d followed while writing the book, a mixture of “cool, funny girls, pregnant women, realistic OnlyFans models” that she passed over to Anderson and the show’s other writers, who followed the creators on their newly made accounts.
“We would 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 one day where we all were like, ‘This is getting ridiculous. We’re all going to start putting the photos in the [group] chat, so we don’t have to do this.’”
All sources of inspiration made their way into Anderson’s list of followed accounts. Later, when they began shooting, she was able to 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) may not be what comes to mind when one typically thinks of the website. While there are plenty of creators without gimmicks –“classical,” as Thorpe refers to them–– the ones with a unique shtick stood out to the writer from the sea of risqué bedroom photos.
Certain creators like TooTurntTony, BigHonkinCaboose and HarperTheFox helped Thorpe realize there were ways to incorporate humor and personality into the profession. “Part of what makes OnlyFans sexy is when it feels authentic and real, as opposed to hyper-produced pornography that makes it feel less intimate,” says Thorpe, who is also an executive producer on the show. “That humor being something that makes a girl sexy to a guy was definitely part of what I was thinking.”
Similarly, there were elements of videos that Anderson and the writing team took inspiration from, whether it was a person’s mannerisms, costumes, or language being used.
“Something we realized, once we were in the process of making the show, is that the average Apple TV audience is a lot older than the average person that would 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 base knowledge of how it worked), the show needed to walk its viewers through the site “step by step,” similar to the 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 serve as a consultant; warning production about the language Margo would be unable to use when captioning a promotional Instagram post and advising them at different points in the story how many followers she’d have and how much money she’d be making realistically.
Adding to the accuracy of the show, the OnlyFans interface was graphically recreated to use on-screen, down to the chatboxes Margo opens when DMing creators, looking for tips on how to expand her fanbase.
“The OnlyFans search algorithm is bizarre. It’s really hard to find an account unless you know their exact account name,” Thorpe says. “If you want to be found inside of the OnlyFans ecosystem, the easiest way to do that is by collabing with somebody so that their followers get exposed to you, and you and they get exposed to your followers.”
“Collaborating is necessary for Margo to move forward, but Rose [Lindsey Normington] and KC [Rico Nasty] are so vital to her as friends, both creatively and as people she just needs in the world,” adds Anderson about the creators Margo begins making content with. “It could just be about capitalism, but it ends up becoming about community and friendship and collective art making.”
Understandably, closed off to requests from strangers asking to talk, the OnlyFans creators that Thorpe reached out to via social media when writing were unresponsive. Eventually, Thorpe found a way to get in touch, via her own OnlyFans account: “I would send a $50 tip and say, ‘Hey, I’m a novelist. These are the books I published. I’m writing a book about a character who’s starting an OnlyFans. I want to portray sex work as work. The book has no moral agenda. I can’t make it good unless the research is good. And I can’t do good research unless some of you talk to me. Please let me interview you. I’ll pay you by the question.”
Thorpe’s real-life method was written into the show by Anderson, having Margo send models a $50 tip with her questions. It wasn’t always the smoothest process, recalls Thorpe, saying, “A lot of girls have their chat function automated, so that anything you send, they’re like, ‘Ooh, I’m thinking about you.’ And then it’s just [explicit] pics. I would have to be like, ‘No, earnestly, I wish 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 elements of the website that she had no way of answering herself.
“Say I’m looking at a creator’s account, I can’t see what other people are saying,” says Thorpe. “A huge amount of what I was asking was: ‘What do men name their profiles? What is their handle? What photos do they use? How do you get your money out? What does your screen look like when you’re looking at your earnings?’”
While the creators were less likely to open up about the emotional or psychological fallout of doing OnlyFans, Thorpe read several think pieces written by models who had been doxxed or stalked, along with the hate messages they received.
“There is a reason why I decided to write 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 personal experience to depict someone who’d been in the industry for years.
Having Margo be a writer, too, was a way for Thorpe to connect with her character. She crafted Margo’s story with the same careful and detail-oriented consideration she’d set out to achieve, down to the “HungryGhost” username the young mom chooses to go by.
“There’s a way in which Margo’s watching the world and feels slightly separated from it that’s part of her identity as a writer, and also as a person. It made sense to me that she would think of herself as an alien visiting this beautiful land,” says Thorpe. Her complicated relationship with her parents and being an only child adds to it, as does becoming a mother for the first time. “All these things made the alien make sense for Margo from the very beginning, but maybe [her baby] Bodhi kind 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, both Thorpe and Anderson were intent on not having Margo’s story be “misery porn,” as Anderson puts it.
“We didn’t want to judge Margo,” says Anderson. “That’s for the assholes in the book and the show to do.”
