This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.We Asked Real OnlyFans Creators for Their Reactions to 'Euphoria' and 'Margo’s Got Money Troubles'

Samantha BergesonWed, April 29, 2026 at 6:13 PM UTC

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OnlyFans Creators React to Euphoria and MargoHBO/Apple TV

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Some spoilers below for Euphoria season 3 and Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

In the long-awaited third season of Euphoria, showrunner Sam Levinson has attempted to reinvent the Emmy-winning HBO series as a quasi-Western. But at least one thematic through line remains from the drama’s previous seasons (and from Levinson’s other projects, such as HBO’s controversial The Idol): an abiding fascination with sex and sex work.

In Euphoria season 3, several of the ensemble characters engage in some form of sexual (or otherwise adult) entertainment: Jules (Hunter Schafer) is supporting her art career as a sugar baby, while Rue (Zendaya) finds herself keen to join strip-club magnate Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) in “the business of pussy.” Then there’s Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney) transformation into an OnlyFans influencer: In the early episodes of season 3, she indicates she intends to use her income from the endeavor to pay for $50,000 worth of flowers at her wedding to Nate (Jacob Elordi), who deems her a “prostitute” in the season opener.

Sweeney’s Cassie might, perhaps, be the most buzzy OnlyFans influencer onscreen, but she certainly isn’t the only one. In the first half of 2026 alone, multiple TV and film projects are centering sex workers, cam girls and cam boys, and adult entertainers. The Apple TV adaptation of Rufi Thorpe’s novel Margo’s Got Money Troubles, streaming as of April 15, sees Oscar-nominated actress Elle Fanning as the titular Margo, who depends on OnlyFans to support her infant son as a newfound single mother. The 2025 Sundance breakout indie film Bunnylovr premiered in theaters on April 10, starring Katarina Zhu as a Chinese-American cam girl, while the Apple TV comedic thriller Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed—streaming May 20—hinges on a crime in the wake of a cam boy’s scam.

As OnlyFans has become a more dominant cultural presence, so has Hollywood finally begun to catch up with depicting creators’ professions—to varying degrees of accuracy. But what do actual OnlyFans stars think about the fictionalizations of their entrepreneurial work? ELLE decided to ask them. (Each creator quoted below is referenced by their screen names.)

OnlyFans creator Cheerleader Kait credits the rise in film and TV depictions to OF’s post-pandemic boom. The subscription-based social media platform, known for its volume of sexually explicit content, rapidly added both content creators and subscribers amid the COVID lockdown. “Although [creating content for OnlyFans] is more common now, it still doesn’t have a very positive connotation,” Kait says. “It’s more accepted but not necessarily respected.”

Kait, whose account with a “girl-next-door” aesthetic has made her one of the top 50 biggest OnlyFans creators in the world, was one of the thousands who joined the platform in 2021 during the pandemic. Kait charted her own path on OnlyFans, telling ELLE that, at first, she felt as though she had to hide her content career from friends and family offline. “It felt very hush-hush,” Kait says. “If people found out, word spread and it was a really big deal—at least that’s how it felt in my own life. Now, I feel like it’s so mainstream…It’s a relatable job, and [having an OnlyFans is] almost a societal norm even though it’s taboo. Everyone either has one, has tried it out, or has a friend who has done it.”

Adds trans OnlyFans model Vanniall, the platform itself has “become a cultural buzzword,” a sort of shorthand used to refer to a broad array of adult content. “It’s interesting that shows [such as Euphoria and Margo’s Got Money Troubles] are naming OnlyFans so specifically,” Vanniall, who uses she/they pronouns, says.

But OF’s newfound ubiquity doesn’t mean Hollywood understands it. Taylor Vixxen, a Jenny McCarthy lookalike who joined OnlyFans after a 20-plus-year career as a financial executive, says that inaccuracy seems to be the standard for recent onscreen depictions of the site. “I don’t watch those shows expecting accuracy,” she tells ELLE. “I watch them to see what narrative is being pushed and how close it gets to reality.”

OnlyFans creator Holly Randall, host of the podcast Holly Randall Unfiltered, agrees, saying that the “portrayal of sex work in mainstream media rarely is” accurate or flattering to the profession.

The problem with these inaccuracies, these creators say, is that they contribute to stigmas against them—and against sex work as a profession, perpetuating the patriarchal undermining of women entrepreneurs. Dehumanization and disrespect can lend themselves to real-life problems, such as the normalization of terms like “prostitute,” as Nate calls Cassie in Euphoria season 3. While not all creators have a problem with the term—as Noel says, “We are all prostitutes under capitalism, essentially”—the intended insult undermines and flattens the nuances of the business itself.

“Mainstream media often frames [OnlyFans] as either a quick-money fantasy or a cautionary tale,” Vixxen says. “The reality is much more nuanced—it’s entrepreneurship, performance, marketing, and emotional labor all rolled into one.”

The “quick-money fantasy” Vixxen mentions is indeed an illusion: According to the OnlyFans management agency Aroa, only 1 percent of users earn 33 percent of all OnlyFans revenue. (OnlyFans declined to comment on creator earnings.)

“I think too many people are led to believe it is easy money, and it’s actually an incredible amount of work, and people should have realistic expectations getting into it,” Randall says. “I think the fact that OnlyFans has become part of the pop-culture vernacular is a step in the right direction, but I still see so much pushback against it, with people calling OnlyFans ‘evil’ and saying it ‘corrupts young women.’”

Many of the creators interviewed for this piece expressed criticisms with the depiction of OnlyFans in Euphoria season 3, in particular. Thus far, the season has depicted Sweeney’s Cassie using OnlyFans to avoid having a “ghetto wedding” (her words): In episode 2, she enlists the help of her former best friend Maddy (Alexa Demie) to guide her through what Maddy, a burgeoning talent manager, correctly identifies as a “booming industry.” But Levinson’s framing of Cassie’s cam work is blatantly provocative and sensationalized, creators indicate. Take a controversial scene from episode 2, for example: In one vignette, Cassie dresses up as a baby, complete with a diaper and pacifier, and spreads her legs for the camera. Clips of this scene went viral, prompting OnlyFans creator Sophie Rain to tell TMZ that Cassie’s infant look “should almost be illegal.”

Sydney Sweeney as Cassie in Euphoria season 3.HBO

In reality, such content would violate OnlyFans content rules: The platform states that it does not allow age-related content that portrays under-18 roleplay. Says Vanniall, depicting such content in such a cavalier manner—even as part of a fictional TV show—is not simply inflammatory; it’s dangerous. “There’s a serious problem with portraying content already against a site’s terms of service as common [content], since you are exposing that site and all the workers on it to a degree of undeserved liability,” she says. “Law creation and legal proceedings are highly influenced by public presentation in fiction.”

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Noel notes that this misrepresentation is a trend with Levinson’s projects: Instead of de-stigmatizing sex work, his shows come off “voyeuristic.” Noel adds, “Though he gave [adult entertainment star] Chloe Cherry her break, I don’t believe Euphoria is positive for sex work or women in general. The show is very male gaze-y at this point, even though it started out great.”

Lest we forget, Euphoria already featured another problematic cam-work arc: In season 1, Barbie Ferreira’s character, Kat, explores her sexuality by working as an online dominatrix. Noel credited the series for having a “pretty good and accurate representation of sex work” with that early storyline. But, per Noel, Levinson added an unnecessarily more salacious aspect to the cam-work plot: The character Kat was underage. Noel deemed this portrayal a form of fictional “child sex trafficking” that was wrongfully “depicted as a fun, empowering hustle.” (Because of that, Noel doesn’t count Euphoria as a beacon of sex work onscreen as she does projects such as Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Anora, Cam, and Zola.)

By contrast, Margo’s Got Money Troubles seems to present a less sensationalized version of cam work. In Margo, Fanning’s titular protagonist assumes the identity of an alien character named “Hungry Ghost” as her OnlyFans persona, and she pours hours of effort into creating storylines, costumes, and sets for her videos, which she films with other OnlyFans influencers. Real-life creators agree: This—the entrepreneurial effort—is an accurate depiction of what it’s really like working on the platform. Says Canaan, “Most people don’t realize that OnlyFans is a business that requires grit, strategy, and consistency. I think a lot of people would be surprised at the level-headedness and business savvy of a lot of OnlyFans creators.”

Noel agrees, telling ELLE that the “day-to-day work of OF is really not glamorous at all,” adding, “You shoot photos and you upload; you shoot videos and upload. It’s a lot of clerical work, and realistically, I don’t know if it will be as ‘cool’ or ‘different’ as people think it is when it’s actually depicted on film.”

While Margo’s Got Money Troubles does portray some of that realism, Noel doesn’t appreciate how the series presents Margo’s career move. “The title alone throws me off,” she says. “It basically depicts sex work as a last-resort type job, when it is in fact running a serious business.”

Yet the series did resonate with Canaan, who tells ELLE that her own path to the platform mirrors Margo’s. After graduating from art school with “pretty crippling student loans,” she says, she wanted to pursue a career in comedy but knew “I’d need to make a significant dent in my debt in order to give myself breathing room to be able to do that.” She found herself “juggling” bartending and freelance design jobs with her full-time corporate role—and burning out as a result.

“That’s when I decided to look into dancing at a lap-dance club, which turned out to be incredibly liberating both for my finances and my confidence,” says Canaan, who is now also the co-host of the Audible Original podcast OnlyFantasy, releasing May 21. “A few years later, when these clubs were dying out post-COVID, I looked into OnlyFans as a side hustle to fund creative projects and bolster my savings. I found that my experience as a dancer translated to the digital world. Because of my comedy following, I was lucky enough to see results pretty instantly. I think the main driver [of joining] is the uncertainty of the current economic climate, especially felt by Gen Z. Job security doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s something really appealing about the promise of wealth and autonomy that OnlyFans can provide.”

As Margo’s star Fanning described to Deadline, there’s a large discrepancy between audiences’ cultural understanding of OnlyFans and the reality of the platform, as she discovered when she made her own account as research for her role. “I think people hear [‘OnlyFans’] and think, ‘Oh, it must just be this hardcore [thing],’” Fanning said. “But then, looking at the pages, and talking about the women that are on there, it’s [about] their imagination. They’re creating characters. It’s not just this one thing.”

Elle Fanning as Margo Millet, filming a scene as Hungry Ghost for OnlyFans, in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.Allyson Riggs

Explains Noel, “You can post anything on there; it doesn’t have to be nudes.” She adds that, in this sense, OnlyFans is just like any other subscription-based social media site. “OnlyFans itself is neutral. It’s literally just a website you can post anything on. But [people] act like it’s a porn company or site when it’s not.”

And it is, in fact, the creativity of being an OnlyFans personality that’s a big draw for artists such as Canaan. “As a creator, it’s not just about taking it all off,” Canaan says. “You have to get creative, which is what really builds a connection between you and your subscribers. More than anything, subscribers love an emotional connection—they want to see all different sides of you, whether it’s sexy, silly, outrageous, spicy. The most fun I’ve had on there is when I come up with a new concept or a new way to interact with my fans…I’ve done livestreams where I end up doing a handstand with a wig on, speaking in a British accent, all while fully clothed. They love it because it’s authentically me.”

Canaan can, however, relate to Noel’s misgivings about how OnlyFans is depicted in Margo’s Got Money Troubles. “While Margo’s storyline depicts a certain type of creator, viewers should understand that women don’t just get on OnlyFans out of desperation or as a last resort,” Canaan says. “It’s often a strategic business move that comes from a place of security.”

It’s worth noting that Rufi Thorpe, the author of the book the series is based upon, worked with multiple OnlyFans models to help make the Apple TV adaptation more authentic. Thorpe told The Hollywood Reporter that her interactions with these creators later led her to remove one of the novel’s more unrealistic storylines from scripts for the series. In Thorpe’s book, Fanning’s titular character falls in love with one of her customers, and later—in an effort to “prove” her feelings for him—reimburses him. “Pretty universally, sex workers were like, ‘No,’” Thorpe told THR. “‘That’s implying it was wrong to take the money. She earned that money. She did a good job; she created the fantasy. That is an admission of fault that is not right.’ And I was like, ‘OK, you are correct, and I hadn’t thought about it.’”

Thorpe additionally pointed to the outpouring of support for the adaptation, citing to THR, “I was really stunned by the variety of people who were willing to root for Margo, who had empathy and sympathy for her.”

Yet that perhaps wasn’t the best way to put it. All of the OF creators ELLE spoke with took issue with terms like “sympathy” when discussing their livelihoods. The same goes for “depressing,” which is a word Levinson recently used to describe Cassie’s scenes filming OnlyFans content in her massive mansion: As he told The Hollywood Reporter, “We wanted to capture what she’s trying to show the audience and be inside of it, but then also pull back wider and see how depressing it is.”

Asked about her reaction to Thorpe’s characterization, Canaan replied, “I’m wary of the word ‘sympathy,’ because that implies that all creators are operating from a place of hardship—though, as depicted in Margo, some are. I do think increasing mainstream exposure to the world of OnlyFans creators will definitely foster empathy—even though it’s centered around spicy content, there are so many relatable aspects to people outside of this world.”

Canaan feels that being on OnlyFans is one of the most empowering entrepreneurial decisions a woman could make. She’s proud to be part of the push to destigmatize OnlyFans—whether in onscreen depictions or in real life. “We’re now at a point where [the platform has] been diluted enough to be palatable for mainstream media,” she says. “I hope that these shows can challenge people outside of this world to see creators as people with their own unique personalities and talents. Because, ultimately, that’s what makes OnlyFans feel real.”

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