Your Exclusive First Look at the Elle Fanning-Led Series Margo’s Got Money Troubles
8 min read
Months before Rufi Thorpe’s acclaimed 2024 novel Margo’s Got Money Troubles was set to publish, Elle Fanning knew she wanted the world to fall in love with Margo Millet. She certainly had. Already a buzzy manuscript circulating through Hollywood, the story—which follows the 20-year-old Margo, who becomes pregnant with her professor’s baby then turns to OnlyFans (and the marketing advice of her famous pro-wrestler father) to support them both—caught Fanning’s attention. “I got my hands on [the book] and got to read it early on and was so taken with it,” Fanning tells me. “I could see how it could be made into just a fantastic show.”
The question was how to pull off a television adaptation with the same absurd humor and undeniable heart as Thorpe’s novel. Fanning and her sister, Dakota—with whom she operates the production company Lewellen Pictures—met with Thorpe (already a fan of Fanning’s work in The Great) over Zoom to pitch their vision for the series: a sort of “epic dramedy,” true to life and true to Thorpe’s characters. She had little doubt she could assemble a powerhouse team for what would become the “hot series package,” especially with the support of A24, which signed on with the Fannings early in the process.
Soon enough, “there was a frenzy,” executive producer Matthew Tinker says of the resulting packaging and rights battle. As president of David E. Kelley Productions—Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley’s production arm—“we were kind of late to the party,” Tinker says. “People were just tossing themselves at the book. A24 and Elle [Fanning] had partnered up, and we just immediately pitched why we thought we could be additive to that.” Within a matter of days, he adds, “we had come together and put our final offer on the table.”
By the time the dust had settled, Fanning had indeed attracted a “dream” line-up: Kelley would serve as showrunner, with A24 producing alongside the Fanning sisters’s Lewellen Pictures, David E. Kelley Productions, and Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. The series would land at Apple TV—which outbid other streamers, including Netflix, for the rights—with Fanning starring as the titular Margo, Kidman herself in an initially undisclosed role, and an equally exciting cast filling out their ranks.
Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
“When you read the book, you just fall in love so much with these characters—they’re so vividly drawn,” Fanning says. “I felt, like, ‘Okay. We’re going to get…an amazing group is going to want to play these characters, because they’re all so specific and fun.”
Looking at the list of names amongst the cast, it’s not hard to fathom why Apple TV went wild for the package. Alongside Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer—who will also lead the highly anticipated Taylor Sheridan series The Madison later this spring—stars as Margo’s mother, Shyanne, a former Hooters waitress who raised Margo as a single mother and is currently preparing to wed an Orange County youth minister named Kenny (Greg Kinnear). Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman plays Jinx, Margo’s father, an ex-pro wrestler fresh out of rehab, who shows up at Margo’s front door weeks after she’s given birth to live with her full-time. Kidman appears later in the eight-episode series as a former pro-wrestler and friend of Jinx’s, who gets an expanded role beyond Thorpe’s book: In the adaptation, she also serves as a custody lawyer. Finally, Margo’s junior college professor, Mark, is played by Michael Angarano, with Mark’s domineering mother played by Marcia Gay Harden.
Together, this proves an irresistible combination of source material and talent. “It’s a very original story, and we’re all looking for that,” Kelley says. “It’s an affirmative story…My read of the book is that there was real social realism with absurdism splashed into it. And that’s just a juicy cocktail.”
Elle Fanning in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
In the opening paragraphs of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Thorpe writes, “The beginning of a novel is like a first date.” She continues, a few lines later, “Goodness knows you’ve fallen in love with books that didn’t grab you in the first paragraph. But that doesn’t stop you from wishing they would, from wishing they would come right up to you in the dark of your mind and kiss you on the throat.”
The television adaptation opens with a similar voiceover from Margo, as read by Fanning (who had some practice as narrator for the audiobook version of Thorpe’s book). “The beginning of a novel is like a first date,” she informs us, ultimately concluding, “That’s what you want. For the author to come right up to you in the dark of your twisted mind and kiss you on the throat.”
Watching the series offers something of that experience precisely: a charming, unusual, but certainly not unpleasant intimacy with characters and circumstances you might not have otherwise dreamed up together. Tinker admits to the atypical nature of the series and its team: “It’s something that, maybe, on the surface, you wouldn’t necessarily think of [David E. Kelley Productions] for. But when you look at David’s work, which I so respond to, it blends levity with real life, and the stakes these characters [in Margo] go through are serious, and they have real repercussions.”
Elle Fanning and Michael Angarano in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
Those repercussions come home to roost in the premiere episode, during which Margo begins an affair with her professor, learns she’s pregnant, decides to keep the baby, and gives birth all within the first hour of the series. In the ensuing episodes, she attempts to learn to nurse her son, Bodhi, while juggling roommates, work, and wedding planning for Shyanne, who—not the biggest fan of babies—is often flitting around on the perimeter in her “long acrylic nails and fake boobs,” Fanning says. She laughs, adding, “There were a lot of boobs going on for this show.”
For Margo’s nursing scenes, prosthetics were in order. “I’m kind of flat,” Fanning jokes. “We had to pad me up. I talked to [fellow actress and friend] Margaret Qualley about that because I knew she wore fake prosthetics for The Substance. I was like, ‘How does this work?’ We were tracking a lot of boob sizes for everyone.” Fanning worked closely with the two infant actors playing Bodhi, named River and Graham, with whom she became “really close,” even attending River’s birthday party after the show had wrapped.
Filmed largely on the Universal Studios lot in Los Angeles—an increasing “rarity these days,” Fanning acknowledges—Margo’s Got Money Troubles was an unusually family-friendly affair. “There were a lot of people here that were so thrilled to be able to work at home and be with their family, and that just bled into the work itself,” Tinker says. “The show feels very personal. I think this is the most personal thing that we’ve ever made, certainly since I’ve been a part of [David E. Kelley Productions].”
Nick Offerman and Thaddea Graham in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
The show also treats Thorpe’s text with the reverence of kin: In the adaptation, there are few major deviations from the source material. “Some projects, when you go into an adaptation process, you see the seed of a good series that you can add to—maybe a zig here or a zag there,” Kelley says. “But, with this book, the architecture was very sound. The characters were well-drawn. They were people I wanted to spend time with, and that’s why I dived in.”
One of the few changes is to the character of Shyanne, which is expanded beyond the scope of the book, with key scenes added (including an exciting wedding expedition to Las Vegas in episode 5). Pfeiffer brings remarkable humor and heart to Margo’s mother—an at-times less-sympathetic character in Thorpe’s novel—who might not always know how to handle her daughter but loves her ferociously nonetheless.
“I was born and raised in Orange County in Southern California, and I feel like I have waited my whole career to play someone that comes from where I grew up,” Pfeiffer says of Shyanne. “She is the type of person that is easy to judge and snicker about behind her back, and yet all of us have a secret desire to be like her: someone who lives her life and speaks her mind unapologetically.”
She adds that “the authenticity of the material” was what drew her to Margo’s Got Money Troubles in the first place. “Somewhere in between the professional wrestlers and women in cosplay, the story is rooted in what’s real.”
Nicole Kidman in Margot’s Got Money Troubles.
Perhaps one of the most challenging hurdles for the series was to accurately depict the world of pro-wrestling—and to make it feel accessible (and…well, applicable to OnlyFans) for viewers otherwise unfamiliar with its conventions. The first step was to cast the perfect actor as Jinx, Margo’s father and a famous retired wrestler now battling addiction.
Kelley says Offerman “was the first person that came to mind. We didn’t know we’d have a chance at getting him. He’s enormously busy with his schedule. And, to our great fortune, he read the book and was like, ‘Where do I sign up?’ Because Jinx, I think, just went straight to his heart.”
The crew consulted Thorpe and did their own research at wrestling conventions in California—“I dragged David to a WWE wrestling show in Anaheim,” Tinker says, laughing—and built a ring at Universal Studios for the cast to film within. “All the wrestling stuff you see [in the show] is Nick,” Tinker says. “Nick, in full character, did his stunts. He jumped off the ropes. He came up with all the mannerisms that Jinx has.”
Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman, and Nick Offerman in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
Kidman, too, had her own opportunity to don a wrestler’s guise as Lace. Fanning doesn’t want to reveal too much about Kidman’s character just yet, but she teases, “She’s kind of in the book, but David very much expanded her role as well and made it very meaty and fun and exciting.”
Midway through the season, Margo draws on her years of watching Jinx in the ring to develop an OnlyFans persona, known as Hungy Ghost, to address the “money troubles” referenced in the show’s title. She teams up with a pair of other OnlyFans creators to film episodic videos, ultimately enlisting the help of both Jinx and her roommate, Susie (Thaddea Graham), to “build a brand” capable of supporting her and Bodhi. It’s funny and fascinating to watch—particularly when Shyanne learns the news—but it’s also a raw and insightful look at “the female agency of taking ownership over your own life,” Pfeiffer says. “The story of Margo is so culturally relevant right now. It powerfully explores all the contemporary struggles of motherhood, societal stigmas, the financial struggles of early adulthood…It’s a series about rallying around those you believe in, and a beautiful example of unconditional love and resilience.”
Fanning adds, “I think the way that we talk about OnlyFans—and the way that it’s represented in the show—is that it’s a real creative outlet for Margo. It’s something that actually frees her and helps her when she’s at her lowest point, which is really a beautiful thing.”
As each of the show’s eight episodes (which will drop weekly following the three-episode premiere on April 15) go on, the dynamics between Margo, Jinx, Shyanne, and Margo’s professor, Mark, grow increasingly complicated. But that mess is precisely what lends the story its relevance—and its pleasure. “For viewers, it’s going to be very hard to say goodbye to these characters—if we do our jobs right,” Kelley says. “Because they’re going to feel like family members.”
Elle Fanning in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.