Life comes fast for OnlyFans creator and pro wrestler offspring Margo.
The title character’s financial challenges are only a small part of what’s making her life difficult in the alternately frustrating and endearing Apple TV dramedy Margo’s Got Money Troubles, but the way that she chooses to solve those money troubles is the most interesting thing about the show. Margo Millet (Elle Fanning) is a single mother and recent college dropout who turns to OnlyFans in order to make money and provide for her child while working from home. Margo’s escapades on the adult-entertainment platform are creative and fun, without ignoring the realities of modern-day sex work.
Everything else in Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a bit shakier, although there are plenty of affecting moments in Margo’s dysfunctional relationships with her parents, former Hooters waitress Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and former pro wrestler Jinx (Nick Offerman). Fanning, Pfeiffer and Offerman are all excellent, bringing genuine emotion to their characters even when the writing falls back on stock plot elements. The idea that Margo’s OnlyFans pursuits are a synthesis of her parents’ professional backgrounds is intriguing, but only intermittently realized. Instead, creator David E. Kelley (working from Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel) relies on familiar bits of interpersonal conflict that could have come from any number of less distinctive family dramas.
That begins with how Margo gets pregnant, following a whirlwind affair with her literature professor Mark (Michael Angarano), who showers her with compliments and writes her poems, but turns cold when she tells him she’s decided to keep their baby. That’s the inciting incident, so it’s obvious that Margo isn’t going to get an abortion, but it’s also the first of a surprising number of almost prudish moments in a show with a protagonist who’s a proud adult entertainer. The show is always on Margo’s side, even when other characters aren’t, but there’s a sense of begrudging acknowledgement rather than full-on celebration.
It’s a shame, because Fanning gives an exuberant, committed performance as Margo, and the show spends too much time beating her down, particularly toward the end of the season, when Kelley adds more obstacles than Margo faced in the novel. After initially disappearing from her life and the life of his newborn son Bodhi, Mark returns backed by his wealthy, Cruella de Vil-looking mother (Marcia Gay Harden) to antagonize Margo, but he’s an inconsistent character whose decisions are more plot-motivated than organic. The same goes for Shyanne’s fiancé Kenny (Greg Kinnear), a conservative Christian who wavers between supportive and judgmental depending on the moment.
The core family trio — along with Margo’s eternally patient roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham) — remains appealing, though, and Offerman especially finds reserves of heartbreak and regret in Jinx, who was an absentee parent for most of Margo’s life. He’s a recovering addict whose drug-related arc is disappointingly predictable, but he has a vibrant love of showmanship, glimpsed all-too-briefly in vintage clips from his wrestling days. Nicole Kidman’s initial appearance as wrestler-turned-lawyer Lace is similarly joyous, but her presence is wasted once Lace steps out of her costume and into the generic role of Margo’s stern, rules-focused attorney.
Pfeiffer is undoubtedly too old for her role, but in working with husband Kelley for the first time since 1996 feature film To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, she gives a Shyanne a sense of sadness and vulnerability. When Shyanne lashes out at Margo, it’s clearly a way to lash out at her younger self, for making the kind of misguided decisions that she sees reflected in her daughter.
Kelley offsets the potential for old-guy cluelessness on the part of someone who’s been writing and producing TV shows since the 1980s by collaborating with female directors for all eight episodes, and nothing in Margo’s Got Money Troubles seems like it will age as poorly as certain aspects of Kelley’s quasi-feminist trailblazer Ally McBeal. Then again, Ally McBeal was always bold even when it made cringe-worthy missteps, while Margo’s Got Money Troubles too often pulls back from possible boldness.
A late-season episode opens with a surreal fantasy sequence featuring Margo’s extraterrestrial OnlyFans persona, and cosplayer Susie puts together some phantasmagorical looks for Margo and the veteran OnlyFans performers she starts working with. Margo begins her OnlyFans career by selling male fans assessments of their penises as Pokemon characters, clever little koans that reflect her previous ambitions as a writer. That artistic ingenuity, rather than her sometimes rote personal problems, is what makes Margo stand out as a character.
Luckily, Thorpe’s novel provides open-ended source material that could be extended for further seasons, which seems to be the intention from the finale. Now that Margo’s money troubles have been taken care of, she can focus on what really matters.
