{"id":386345,"date":"2026-04-11T07:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T07:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/386345\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T07:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T07:24:14","slug":"margos-got-money-troubles-elle-fanning-and-michelle-pfeiffer-ace-this-taboo-onlyfans-comedy-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/386345\/","title":{"rendered":"Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles: Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer ace this taboo OnlyFans comedy | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

I promise, it\u2019s the title that drew me in. Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles is a new Apple TV show (out Wednesday), starring Elle Fanning<\/a> as a single mum who becomes an OnlyFans model. It joins a niche canon of similarly blunt titles about generic obstacles. To wit: Fleishman Is in Trouble; Big Trouble in Little China. Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles is better, though. Check out the assonance, the rhythm. It has great mouthfeel, to borrow a word from food reviewing, one I instantly regret.<\/p>\n

Our hero, Margo Millet, is a first-year college student who falls pregnant by her professor. The married academic tells her to get an abortion; her friends agree with him. She has the baby. She drops out of college, falls into money troubles. She attempts to fall out of them by joining the notorious content creation platform. She does nude video shoots, in the character of a sexy alien. If none of this inflames you, can I interest you in Nick Offerman as Margo\u2019s pro-wrestler, drug-addicted father? Or Michelle Pfeiffer as her blue collar, ex-Hooters-waitress mother? No?\u00a0Are you dead?<\/p>\n

OnlyFans represents the mainstreamification of sex work, which puts us in a new (yet also extremely old) moment of cultural reckoning. Is Margo a sex worker? Unfit mother? Is she pitiable? OnlyFans creators might make pocket change or millions depending on how savvy they are. (Has Lily Allen revealed the feet receipts?) Creators face a choice: keep their job secret or face difficult conversations. The show is too smart to resort to pat narratives, or assume judgment is easily assuaged. But it\u2019s refreshingly pro-sex. \u201cAll sex work is art,\u201d as one creator, played by rapper Rico\u00a0Nasty, sermonises.<\/p>\n

If the online world is a wild west, Margo is a prospector. The mechanics of how she gets ahead, what she has to show, are clearly a draw. And it is sexy; but the raunch is just the dressing. The show is at its best in its first trimester, broiling\u00a0in the stigma of being a young, single mother. Friends can\u2019t hide their frustration at Margo\u2019s choice. Job interviews are sunk when the stroller rolls in. Margo\u2019s college roommates have limited empathy for a crying baby keeping them up before exams. Especially as their lease won\u2019t even permit them to own a dog.<\/p>\n

As the show peels away layers, it reveals a grownup theme: respectability. Margo\u2019s new career exposes the internet as a dangerous two-way portal, opening up money, fame and shame. The professor\u2019s family are wealthy yet morally bankrupt. Offerman\u2019s Jinx is a brittle addict who desperately needs the world to see he has reformed. Meanwhile Margo\u2019s mother, Shyanne, former good time gal, has got engaged to a stultifyingly boring, respectable churchman. She writhes with ick, as he proposes with the words \u201cI want to be the serious to your silly\u201d. They\u2019re all wrestling with something.<\/p>\n

Alien environment \u2026 Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles. Photograph: Allyson Riggs\/Apple<\/p>\n

Come for the alien boobs, stay for the craft. Elle Fanning is an emotionally translucent performer, Oscar-nominated for Sentimental Value. (I enjoyed her most in Predator: Badlands. Underrated!) Offerman is heartbreaking here, acting in Lycra and against type. Greg Kinnear, as Shyanne\u2019s fiance Kenny, once again cuts against his corn-fed, JFK handsomeness to play a milquetoast doofus with hidden depths. Is his career a private joke with himself? Then there\u2019s Pfeiffer, who\u2019s simply not human. Who looks like that?<\/p>\n

She\u2019s hilarious as Shyanne, the unwilling grandma who spends $400 a month on face cream and won\u2019t hide her disappointment in her daughter. She\u2019s unable to hold a baby without it screaming, and probably her too. \u201cHe\u2019s deliberately quiet when you\u2019re holding him, just to make me feel worse about myself,\u201d she rails. Really, Shyanne wants her daughter to achieve things she herself was unable to. \u201cI ruined your life,\u201d says Margo tentatively, addressing her mother\u2019s own one-night stand that led to her birth. \u201cYou ruined my life so pretty,\u201d her mother replies, with\u00a0a tender kiss.<\/p>\n

This is a rugged frontier within feminism: the acceptance of deep ambivalence about motherhood. The show is as bold about such taboos as it is nuanced about women\u2019s choices. And who doesn\u2019t love that title \u2013 deliciously dry, while the show is anything but. I\u2019m\u00a0a fan. I won\u2019t be the only one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I promise, it\u2019s the title that drew me in. Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles is a new Apple TV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-386345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}