Elle Fanning Gets the Money Shot
Last week, the actress Elle Fanning arrived in New York for the première of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”—a black comedy brightened by its colorfully tacky Orange County setting and by the sparkle in her performance as Margo, a nineteen-year-old single mother who begins making “camgirl” content on the adult-entertainment website OnlyFans to pay the bills. “I came from Budapest!” she exclaimed, in a faint Southern accent, when we met for a late lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria. The Georgia native had been in Hungary shooting “The Nightingale,” the story of two sisters in Nazi-occupied France, alongside her own sister, Dakota. It will be the pair’s first time onscreen together, though they’ve shared billing before: when Fanning was just two years old, she appeared as a younger version of Dakota’s character, Lucy, in the 2001 drama “I Am Sam.” Lucy, the daughter of a man with intellectual disabilities, was an originary role in more ways than one. Afterward, Fanning continued to play girls forced to inhabit a maturity beyond their years, including in two films by Sofia Coppola, the auteur of precisely that theme. In “Somewhere,” she was the daughter of a Hollywood star distracted by his own decadence; in “The Beguiled,” a hormonal teen-ager living in seclusion on a plantation in the postwar American South. More recently, in the Hulu series “The Great,” she portrayed Catherine the Great as a sixteen-year-old bride arriving at the Imperial Russian court. Fanning imbues her heroines with a wide-eyed, almost impulsive curiosity that never lets you forget they’re still essentially children; as much as life may try to smudge their youth, her blameless expression can’t be outright erased.
In “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” adapted from Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel of the same name, Fanning plays yet another young person saddled with a responsibility that none of the adults in the room seem to be able to handle. This time, it’s the ultimate one: a colicky baby who’s driven out Margo’s roommates (and their portion of rent). The father, Margo’s creative-writing professor, is out of the picture. Margo’s mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), won’t help babysit; she’s trying to outrun her past as a Hooter’s waitress ahead of her wedding to Kenny (Greg Kinnear), a devout Christian, and proximity to Margo’s “out of wedlock” pregnancy feels like a stumbling block. All she has is her baby—and her fans.
On OnlyFans, Margo cultivates a hot-girl alien persona known as “Hungry Ghost.” Hungry Ghost is ravenous for earthly experiences, unschooled in our ways, and might seem childlike, except that she’s fully in control. In short, it’s a quintessential Elle Fanning role. We discussed how she got the rights to Thorpe’s “hot book” (in the sense that it was hotly contested), the campus #MeToo plot, and what she hopes the show does for the public perception of OnlyFans creators. Our conversation below has been edited and condensed.
I cried at the end.
Oh, good.
I never thought I’d be emotional at someone covered in blue paint, dressed as an alien, getting ready to shoot a racy video; it was so empowering after all the shaming she endured. But I was laughing, too.
See, these are the shows that I like. Is it comedy? Is it drama? I like that tonal combination. Even during filming, we didn’t know which it was going to be. At some point, we had to decide. They want to put a label on it, you know. But it is a true “dramedy.” That word!
Right—like, “The Great” was a comedy, but it was also about, you know, serfdom. That show was a hit with everyone, but especially in my circles. Before I was a journalist, I taught Russian literature.
You were probably judging the historical inaccuracies!
No, I was jealous that I never succeeded in making my students laugh about the Nakaz. How did you think about balancing the humor with the history?
I came on early. It was kind of one of the first things I had produced. It was also one of the first things I’d ever pitched. So, I was really learning the ropes of it. It was all new to me. And just being in those pitch rooms—a young girl with a lot of men—it kind of mirrored how Catherine was feeling. She felt underestimated. I was also trying to hold my own. Honestly, I feel like she’s the character I’ve played who I felt most similar to. I don’t know if that’s because Tony [McNamara] had also started writing it with me in mind. I was filming that show between when I was twenty and twenty-five; it’s such a precious time. I felt like life was imitating art. Catherine’s personality was informing mine even when mine was informing her.
But as to the tone, I had never seen anything like that before. “The Favourite” hadn’t come out yet when I read the script for “The Great.” I think I learned comedy through playing that character. I learned to embarrass myself. There was so much physical comedy, and setting up jokes, and having to hit the rhythm, and then suddenly something totally tragic happens. But that’s life: you have both extremes at once.
And the humor does fit into the actual history, too. Like that peeing-on-wheat thing. [In Season 2, Catherine uses wheat to prove she’s carrying an heir.] That’s something Tony found in his research. You would pee on wheat, and if it bloomed, that meant you’re pregnant. Even though there was some absurd stuff on the show, people did legitimately do things that were outrageous back then.
You’re also an executive producer on this show. How did this project come together?
It was a very—you know—hot book. A lot of people were circling this to try to adapt it. Rufi Thorpe, the author, was a fan of “The Great,” and she wanted to meet with me and Dakota. We have our company, Lewellen Pictures. We had produced “The Great.” The book hadn’t come out yet, but I read the story and thought, Wow, this could be an amazing TV show. The characters are so rich and bold. I love Margo. She’s fearless but real. She has this optimism and positivity toward life even when so many hard things are thrown at her, and she takes the tougher decision at almost every turn. It was also something I hadn’t really seen before. I mean, I knew what OnlyFans was, but in a very general sense, like I think a lot of people.
But David Kelley was also circling it. So was A24. Nicole Kidman was, too, with her production company, Blossom Films. And I’m, like—wait, I know all of these people. We banded together and went to Rufi with our take.
You had worked with Nicole on “The Beguiled.” How was it reuniting it with her?
Nicole’s always inspired me. Maybe because we’re both two tall blondes in the business, but she is so daring with her choices. Technically, we did another movie together before “The Beguiled.” It was called “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” It was directed by John Cameron Mitchell. I played an alien there, too. Nicole plays a seventies-era, punk-Vivienne Westwood type who mentors my character. So that was the first time I met her. “The Beguiled” was also the first movie I did when I was eighteen, so it was the first movie I did parent-less. I got to be on my own in New Orleans!
You said that you all went to Thorpe with your take. What was your take?
We picked up on how every character in the series is judged by what they do, their outward appearance. Like, at first glance, they’re completely written off. Then you see that happen within a mother-daughter relationship. There’s this cycle of disapproving; Shyanne had a dream for Margo, and now she’s going down a different path. But that element is in the book, too. We stayed pretty true to it, even though Rufi was so open. She was so involved, but she understood that a book and a TV show are different forms, and you’re going to have to make choices.
Shyanne is not in the book as much as she is in the series. But David, he had never worked with Michelle [Pfeiffer, his wife of more than thirty years] before. She was in one small scene from “Picket Fences,” but she’s, like, “I don’t count it.” We were all wondering—how do we get Michelle to be in this? And David really saw something in the dynamic between Shyanne and Margo. Also, I love watching mother-daughter dynamics onscreen. I was also excited about getting to play a mother myself.
Why was that?
I want to be a mom! I was that girl growing up who wanted baby dolls for Christmas. But I was also excited to show this messy, authentic look at someone who’s thrust into motherhood, who doesn’t have all the answers. In the same way, I’m not a mom myself, so I relied on the mothers around me on set for advice when preparing for my scenes with the baby, Bodhi. I’d ask them, “So how does it feel when you’re breast-feeding?” and they’d go, “Whatever you think, it’s worse. It’s harder to get them to latch. It’s more painful than whatever you’re thinking.”
I love when Jinx, Margo’s father, sees her getting ready to breast-feed and tells her, “Oh, you should probably switch to the other so you don’t get lopsided.”
Quite helpful! Thanks, Dad.
There’s also really great parenting body horror in the show, like when Bodhi has explosive diarrhea into your mouth.
Yeah, and I was informed that, because the baby was not eating solid foods or baby formula, the poo wouldn’t have smelled. Because I wasn’t sure—I was asking, “Do I need to act like it smells?” And they’re, like, No, no, no, because Bodhi is breast-fed. The things you learn!
What was your research to play Margo like? I read that when Rufi Thorpe was doing her research for the novel, she D.M.’d a bunch of OnlyFans creators, but they get so many D.M.s, she had to start sending them tips through OnlyFans to get a response.
Production had an OnlyFans account. We could all log in, and production covered the fees, because you have to pay to see the content. I just wanted to look at how it was formatted, and I watched some of the accounts that Rufi and Eva [Anderson], another writer on the show, had suggested. I had a preconceived notion of what it was, and then I realized, gosh, this is very vast.
Margo has to research it, too. I love when she logs on and sees these accounts like “Jen Rides an ATV” and “Bethany Bakes” and “Mariel99 Learn Italian with Me.” They’re just like regular influencers, but in low-cut tops and bathing suits. Everyone on OnlyFans has to have a sort of gimmick.
There was one girl who licked doorknobs. And that’s all she did. There’s one person who steps in butter, steps in cakes—you know, you can imagine. Margo starts off rating people’s dicks. I did really love those lines. Like, “If you want to find out what Pokémon your dick most resembles and what attacks it might have, tip me twenty dollars.”
The need for all these gimmicks is something that Margo didn’t initially realize. That’s where the TikToks come in. She needs to tease her Hungry Ghost content on TikTok so she can direct people to her OnlyFans page.
It’s so crazy because OnlyFans is already a side hustle, but then it requires you to have this other side hustle to drum up followers whom you can hopefully convert to fans. Because OnlyFans itself isn’t really searchable; you need a creator’s direct URL to find them.
It’s a lot of work. It’s a full-time job.
Awkwardly enough, her father, Jinx—played by Nick Offerman—becomes a coach of sorts.
Completely, because he was in this W.W.E.-style wrestling scene. He teaches her to have a persona, how to develop plotlines, how to collaborate with other performers.
In many ways, this show is also about art forms that aren’t really considered art forms, that don’t command the same kind of respect, even though there are so many overlapping elements with more celebrated genres.
Rufi is a huge, huge W.W.E. fan. She knows all the wrestlers. She, like, goes to WrestleMania. I was so upset because David, Rufi, and Nick—they all went to this wrestling convention, and I couldn’t go. I was out of town. Nick trained hard. He immersed himself in that world. I think he saw how much pride these wrestlers take in creating their performances. It’s just like acting.
Yes, there’s that moment where Nicole Kidman’s character, Linda—a wrestling star who’s also a lawyer by day—and Jinx are preparing to do a knockdown in the ring, and they’re blocking the scene, like, I’m going to go here and then you do this, but then you think, Wait, that’s also what Nicole and Nick are doing.
It’s getting meta, I know. I think also that’s something I could relate to with Margo. I didn’t have to research playing another person and feeling nourished by that. Margo finds agency in creating her character, Hungry Ghost. It becomes a creative outlet.
It strikes me that just recently, in “Sentimental Value,” you also played an actress—a movie star named Rachel Kemp. There’s a scene where you’re reading for Stellan Skarsgård, who’s playing a director, and it’s not clicking. How did you make that clear to audiences? Because most moviegoers aren’t necessarily familiar with the technical aspects of getting inside a character.
That was the challenge of that part. She’s this girl who’s stumbled into this gritty film and kind of pushes herself in ways that she hadn’t before, and then she lands in this family drama. Rachel was probably too young for that role. I was trying to convey that Rachel is experiencing in real time an emotion that she’s never felt before. She had never been moved by a text before. She’s almost excited that she’s crying. Rachel had been more of a technical actress; she learns her lines, she shows up, she does her stunt training. That scene was also hard because Renate is going to have to say the same monologue later in the film, in Norwegian, but in her case, she’s trying to hold all of her emotion back because it’s authentic to her character. I think in Rachel’s case, you see the performance, you feel the façade. That’s something that was in my head. I hope it translated.
Well, it obviously did. You were nominated for an Oscar! To return to “Margo”: There have been a lot of shows about campus MeToo scandals, but this portrayal felt so different. There are no deans or Title IX officers intervening. The setting is an underfunded community college. Margo is working-class. Perhaps relatedly, the professor who gets her pregnant doesn’t lose his job—and then his mother makes Margo sign an N.D.A.
Margo doesn’t feel like she has much ground to stand on in this situation.
And she doesn’t believe that there are these institutions that are going to come in and rescue her.
She’s self-reliant. And that was something that really struck me in the book. She’s, like, “Well, I have to get out of this myself.”
As an actress, I was also trying to figure out how naïve Margo is in the beginning about his advances. Maybe she sensed what he was after. He tells her she’s a great writer, that she should be at Harvard. But it’s true that she is a great writer. It’s complicated.
He was her first fan.
Hey, he’d probably be watching her on OnlyFans.
You’ve been in so many movies about parenting. I guess it’s just a virtue of starting off as a child actor. I’m thinking of early roles in movies like “Daddy Day Care” and “Somewhere,” but even more recently with “Sentimental Value.” As in that film, in this show, you have adults with adult children, and they’re still learning to be parents. Shyanne doesn’t know how to be there for Margo because she’s still carrying all of this shame from being a Hooter’s waitress. Jinx wasn’t in her life for most of it and now he’s back, struggling with addiction. How did you, Michelle, and Nick talk about how you wanted to portray that dynamic?
Who’s the mother and who’s the child is a switch that flips a lot from episode to episode. Then, at times, they feel more like best friends. Michelle and I are very close. She’s known me since I was two. I played a younger Dakota in “I Am Sam,” and she played Dakota’s mother. So that chemistry was there.
And I mean, everyone has a mother. I’m aware of the grittiness, that short fuse that everyone has with their mom. That was something that we wanted to show. Margo’s not as forgiving with her mother as she is her father. She sees him as a broken bird. This aggravates Shyanne, because she’s, like, He left you, he wasn’t there, you know. But I think the show is also about second chances. Margo’s certainly gotten one. And Shyanne is trying to have one with Kenny.
I really love how David wrote into the script that Shyanne is very glamorous and out of Kenny’s league. Then, later on, when Mark takes Margo to court for custody, the judge can’t believe someone who looks like her is a grandmother. I mean, it’s true, but I also thought—outstanding husbanding.
Yeah, I love when she says, “I’m not good at anything but being pretty.” Only Michelle can say that line and you go “aww.” It doesn’t come off nasty at all.
The show feels very explicitly against there being any kind of shame around the body, be it a mother’s body or an OnlyFans model’s. There’s even a scene where you’re lying in bed all maternal and pregnant, and then there’s a quick flashback to your body in that same bed, conceiving Bodhi. I think my favorite line of the show is when you’re in the mirror and you squeeze your breast and milk squirts out; you turn to baby Bodhi and go, “People would pay to see that.” Also, you’re nude quite a lot in this.
I am!
Why was that important?
It was important. It was important for the story. All three directors were women. I’m not a modest person in terms of my body, and I did nude scenes in “The Great.” When it services the story, it should be there, and, in this case, it’s saying something. It’s never shown in a sexualized way. It’s more utilitarian: I have to feed my child. I have to whip out my boob. That’s what my child needs. And then it just so happens to be a show about OnlyFans and there’s sexy aspects, but I think motherhood marries nicely with it. I’m really proud of how it’s portrayed in the show. Nudity is just there, because that’s how it would be.
I was reading about a teacher in Scotland who worked part time on OnlyFans. She was fired after the school found out. The country’s teaching council said that “her behavior lacked integrity.” There’s so much shame around the body. This thing that brings us into the world can so quickly be deemed indecent.
And it shouldn’t be. In the birth scene, we had this contraption. So, we got the money shot, as they say, but it’s a fake vagina, and it works—you can push the baby through. It’s real movie magic, but it’s also informing the audience: We’re going to go to these places. This is what we’re doing.
Something I found remarkable about the novel was that it wasn’t just about OnlyFans models. It almost felt like a manual on how to become one. And it’s also a bit of a guide on how to fight for custody as a sex worker and how to challenge illegal searches from Child Protective Services.
That’s what David E. Kelley does best: legal. That’s part of why Nicole wanted to be involved. She was, like, “I want to be a lawyer in a David E. Kelley series.” She’s also a lawyer on “Big Little Lies.” She’s, like, “He’s the best.”
That’s funny. I grew up watching “Ally McBeal,” which, now that I think about it, is also sort of about babies.
You know Dakota played young Ally McBeal.
I didn’t know that!
It was an eyeball flashback. She always talks about that. Our show does become a bit of a courtroom drama, though. When you’re pitching shows, they ask for “comps.”
“Juno” meets “Pretty Woman.”
There you go. I think I said “Little Miss Sunshine.” To me, it’s this story of found family, of misfits.
This show didn’t feel like it was just designed to help people outside the sex-work community feel sympathy for OnlyFans models or understand their lives, though it’s that, too. But it also felt directed at people within the sex-work community.
I hope so.
I’m referring to some really interesting conversations and debates that happen between Margo and the two other OnlyFans creators, KC and Rose, whom she collaborates with to make content. (Rose is played by Lindsey Normington, an actress and stripper who also starred in “Anora.”) At one point, Margo goes, “I don’t do porn. I make art.” Rose calls her out on her “internalized whorephobia.”
I think that’s something Lindsey came up with. She’s in that world; she knows it well. I’m just so glad we had her there.
There’s been some pushback to actors playing sex workers, and some critique on social media of how many actresses have won Best Actress at the Oscars for playing sex workers. My personal feeling is that people don’t realize how common sex work is or are in denial about how woven it is into the fabric of daily life. Some surveys put the number of American men who’ve paid for sex at around fifteen per cent. Nearly a fifth of all web searches are for pornography. How are you hoping that this show, and your portrayal of Margo, contributes to or expands the conversation around sex workers and how they’re represented onscreen?
It’s a part of life. I also just felt like I’m playing this girl—she’s complicated. This is what she’s doing to survive in the world. I think there are also a lot of shows about very wealthy people; we see that side of things. Margo’s not completely down and out, but she’s definitely lower middle class, and so it’s also a representation of someone who went to college for a job that she couldn’t get. I hope that people see themselves reflected in these characters, even though they are quite specific. I always find that the more detailed and specific characters are, the more universally they resonate.
To that point, I’ve been thinking about how OnlyFans really blew up during the pandemic. It makes sense to me. We all had to become camgirls, in a sense. And looking good on video has started feeling like a bigger part of everyday jobs. In that sense, yes, she’s very relatable.
Margo’s a different type of sex worker from what we’ve seen onscreen; she’s definitely of the modern age, in terms of having to work through social media and using these different avenues. A lot of people don’t even know exactly what OnlyFans is. It’s new. Rufi was definitely ahead of the pulse.
It’s true—there haven’t been that many representations of OnlyFans in popular culture, despite the fact it has more subscribers now than Netflix. It was a subplot in Season 3 of “Industry,” and more so in Season 4, but that only just came out.
Oh, yes!
I’m curious what the reaction to “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” will be from the OnlyFans community. Did you-all have a screening for sex workers or anything like that?
We have a screening planned in Los Angeles for content creators and OnlyFans models. I hope they feel represented properly—though of course Margo’s story is just one version of being a sex worker.
What are you working on next?
“The Nightingale,” with Dakota. It’s our first time working together. We were wondering if it was going to be awkward, but we’ve just finished the first week of shooting, and it was so the opposite.
That’s also through Lewellen Pictures. You guys produce a lot of true crime, am I right?
We do! Dakota loves true crime. That’s, like, her forte.
Speaking of, I binged her show “All Her Fault” on a flight from London.
That was a great flight, then! She didn’t tell me the twist or anything. I would have never been able to guess what happened. And I pride myself on being able to know which direction shows are going to go in. But when I was watching, I was, like—what?!
But yes, we’ve done two true-crime series: “Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer,” about Dr. Ann Burgess, who trained the F.B.I. to profile serial killers, and then “Death in Apartment 603,” the Ellen Greenberg story. [Ellen Greenberg was a Philadelphia schoolteacher whose death was ultimately ruled a suicide despite her body being found with twenty stab wounds.] But with our production company, we don’t ever want to limit ourselves. It’s kind of why we created it—so we could feel limitless.
And you’re going to be in “The Hunger Games.”
Yes, I’m playing young Effie Trinket. Elizabeth Banks really created that character, with her costumes and comedic timing, so I feel honored to play her. I feel like the fans cast me. The studio called and was, like, We just keep getting these fans saying that you should play young Effie. Would you do it? I said yes, of course!
Nicole and I are also doing another project together. It’s called “Discretion.” And that’s a real two-hander. Everything we’ve done so far has been more of an ensemble piece, so we haven’t gotten to go completely head to head like we will in this.
That’s about N.D.A.s, too, right?
Yes. It’s kind of a thriller, a mystery—very sexy. And it’s set at a law firm in Dallas, so, lawyers again! ♦