How Elle Fanning Transformed into an Alien OnlyFans Influencer for Margo’s Got Money Troubles
9 min readPutting on a compelling show is crucial to building a legion of fans—no matter the platform. In the Apple TV dramedy Margo’s Got Money Troubles, single-mom Margo Millet (Elle Fanning) learns this lesson early in her attempts to become a bona fide OnlyFans star. Following in her ex-pro-wrestler father Jinx’s (Nick Offerman) footsteps to craft a larger-than-life persona worthy of drawing an audience, Margo steps not inside the ring but into a content studio. There, she makes playful videos for sites like TikTok as a teaser for the main event on OnlyFans, where she becomes the attention-grabbing alien known as “HungryGhost.”
Margo’s HungryGhost username comes from the title of a poem written by her English professor, Mark (Michael Angarano), during their affair earlier in the season. Although Mark is the father of Margo’s baby, Bodhi, he has met his child only once, leaving Margo to raise Bodhi on her own. As she attempts to support herself and their son, Margo discovers OnlyFans as a steady source of income that speaks to her creative-writing prowess. In episode 6, “Grudge Match,” with the help of roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham), Jinx, and OnlyFans content creators KC (Rico Nasty) and Rose (Lindsey Normington), Margo turns an out-of-this-world fantasy into a reality as she takes her online material to the next level.
Adapted from Rufi Thorpe’s excellent novel of the same name, the series—from creator David E. Kelley—takes a grounded approach to Margo’s transformation into the extraterrestrial HungryGhost. “I think it can take you out of a story when we’re looking at real people in a real world, and it suddenly looks like they have had a professional makeup job,” makeup department head Erin Ayanian Monroe tells ELLE. “That was also important with the HungryGhost [look]. It took a tremendous amount of work and time to do it, but it also had to look like, conceivably, Susie could have done it.”
That same grounded sentiment applied to Margo’s closet, hair, and makeup when she wasn’t in her HungryGhost getup. Fanning’s realistic prosthetic baby bump and breastfeeding boobs were integral to the overall vision.
To better understand that vision, ELLE tapped Monroe, costume designer Mirren Gordon-Crozier, hair department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh, and special makeup effects designer Jason Collins. (Collins recently created the makeup for the Oscar-winning Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys in Weapons, and his company, Autonomous FX, is equally adept at realistic body rigs for births as they are at more out-there horror designs.) Both McIntosh and Monroe spoke to ELLE on Zoom from Budapest, where they are working on Fanning’s next project, the World War II historical drama The Nightingale.
Fanning, who is a producer on Margo’s Got Money Troubles alongside her sister, Dakota, is in almost every scene and had a hands-on role in Margo’s look—she even helped bedazzle her costume in a life-imitating-art moment. Read on to find out how the costume, makeup, and hair departments collaborated to bring her transformation to life.
The Playful Student Style
Costume designer Gordon-Crozier, who first worked with Fanning when the actress was 18, describes Margo’s early-episode preppy-with-a-twist outfits as a bit tongue-in-cheek. “She is playing a bit of a part,” Gordon-Crozier says. “Because she is 19, I think she’s still trying to find herself, who she is, what she wants to do, and how she wants to present herself.” That instinct manifests, for example, as Margo pairing a sweater vest with a red lace top while attending classes at Fullerton College early in the first episode, before she becomes pregnant.
Likewise, Monroe wanted to establish who Margo was before she became a mother. Monroe and Fanning have a shorthand that comes from nearly 15 years of working together (they met on a Sigur Rós music video in 2012), and Monroe has since collaborated with Fanning (and her sister, Dakota) on numerous film and TV projects, as well as on the red carpet. “We both were very invested in Margo looking like a real person, not a Hollywood, polished version of a college student,” Monroe says. “We wanted her to look very relatable, and for her makeup to reflect the situation she was in and the changes that the character was going through personally in a very real, tangible way.”
Fanning as Margo in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
Each department was on the same page, and McIntosh similarly kept Margo’s hair as real as possible. “I never wanted to do anything to her hair that didn’t look like she hadn’t done it herself, especially in those times when she’s really struggling and it’s just scraped back up in a scrunchie or a claw clip,” McIntosh says.
The Prosthetics
Autonomous FX produced several pregnancy bumps for Fanning to wear, as well as a birthing rig for a labor scene in the premiere episode. “We liked having her stomach show when she was pregnant,” Gordon-Crozier says. “The prosthetics were so good; we had to show them off when we could.”
After Margo gives birth, we see her breastfeeding on multiple occasions, requiring Fanning to wear prosthetics. Fanning came up with a solution to reduce time spent in the makeup trailer on days when she was wearing a nursing bra and her breast prosthetics would not need to be visible. “I wonder if there’s a way that we can have the boobs built into the bra?”Collins recalls Fanning asking. Collins spoke to Gordon-Crozier about this proposal, who gave him a couple of the bras to test out a solution.“We took them apart here in my studio, and we literally made little insert milking breasts that we can run the tube through, so she could just slide her bra on,” he says. Collins credits Fanning with this time-saving device. “When she has to get up at 4 in the morning to put these [prosthetics] on, she can now sleep for another hour and a half to two hours,” Collins adds.
Fanning as Margo and Michelle Pfeiffer as Shyanne in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
A similar prosthetic invention came in handy in episode 3, when Margo begins exploring OnlyFans. Inspiration strikes while she looks at herself in the mirror, and she squirts breast milk onto her reflection. “People would pay to see that,” Margo jokes. In reality, Collins and his team tested out everything from the distance the appliance could shoot to what milk to use (they used almond milk, which does not come into contact with the baby), so it would be ready for Fanning on set. “We had a tube going through the nipple, that would go around under the appliance, and then go down her back, I would plug into that, and we would literally shoot,” Collins recalls. “There’s a tube connected to her. I would literally prime the milk, and she was able to aim it and shoot it wherever she wanted to, which got a lot of laughs from [director] Dearbhla [Walsh].”
The Cosplay Costumes
Margo’s early OnlyFans photographs utilize outfits from Susie’s cosplay costume box. During pre-production, Fanning had two five-hour costume fittings with Gordon-Crozier. “I think we all wanted to try on those outfits the most,” Gordon-Crozier recalls. “‘Let’s get into the fairy-elf LARPing costumes immediately.’”
Although Gordon-Crozier researched actual OnlyFans creators to consult on costuming, it was ultimately Margo’s own wild imagination that guided the direction. “I think that element was almost more important than the realism of it,” Gordon-Crozier says. “Because she’s doing it in her own way, trying to captivate her own audience.”
For the early OnlyFans photo shoots, Monroe added whimsical elements: “A little bit of eyeliner, a bit of glitter, a little stone on her face, just something to jazz it up,” Monroe says. “But it also could not look like a professional makeup artist had done it. It needed to have an immediacy that was authentic. Her skin couldn’t be fully airbrushed-looking.”
The Fantasy HungryGhost
Margo soon realizes that, in order to increase her subscriber numbers, she must embrace bigger, bolder storytelling. The “fairy-elf LARPing costumes” aren’t gonna cut it. Thankfully, taking on a new persona is a challenge with which she’s well-accustomed: “She grew up around all these men and women who were creating an alter ego for the wrestling world,” Monroe says. “That’s a familiar thing for her.”
Margo, then, decides that she needs her own alter ego: HungryGhost, a new-to-Earth extraterrestrial with an insatiable libido. At the start of episode 6, viewers get a glimpse directly inside Margo’s head as a giant imagined version of Margo’s HungryGhost alien speaks directly to a sold-out movie theater. She begins, “I’ve crawled inside your phone. I live there now. Forever.” In reality, these lines are from the Hungry Ghost OnlyFans bio, and the scene cuts to Margo typing on her laptop.
Gordon-Crozier, Monroe, and McIntosh collaborated on two versions of Margo’s alien persona: the imagined, “fantasy” version of HungryGhost, straight out of Jane Fonda’s ‘60s sci-fi movie, Barbarella; and the “real” version that Margo and Susie put together. “We worked out the fantasy HungryGhost first because it’s the most glorious situation,” McIntosh says. “Then worked backward as to what’s a believable situation that Margo could create herself.”
Margo’s fantasy HungryGhost wig.
McIntosh’s team tested pale yellow, pale green, and pale blue wigs before landing on a dusty pink to complement the green pigment Monroe had picked for Fanning’s skin. McIntosh assigned hairstylist Celeste Gonzalez to work on the “fantasy” HungryGhost’s wig, utilizing Gonzalez’s synthetic-wig skills from her time working at Disneyland. “She ended up sewing three wigs together to make that one wig,” McIntosh says. “It’s heavy for Elle to wear, but Elle wore it well and with ease. You wouldn’t know how heavy it was. [Fanning] was so excited about it.” Antenna stitched into the wig by Gordon-Crozier’s team added to the kitschy alien effect.
The majority of the green on Fanning’s skin is not clothing or traditional body paint but liquid eyeshadow. Monroe estimates she used about 100 bottles of the green shade during production, applying with a spongy applicator, then layering a glittery eyeshadow on top. “It took two and a half hours to put it on and an hour and a half to take it off,” Monroe says. Three people armed with hot towels and makeup remover did the latter at the end of a shooting day.
The painstaking process was worth it. “There are all kinds of wonderful airbrush products and things that you can do that are much, much quicker, but it didn’t have that vibrancy and that pigment quality that I wanted,” Monroe says. “Elle was game. She’s always game if she feels like it’s the right thing.”
Fanning as the fantasy HungryGhost in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
Another makeup concept that took time to bring to life was the imagined alien’s literal stars in her eyes: As it turns out, those were eyelashes that Monroe made by hand.“I got a traditional strip eyelash base that was pretty sparse because I didn’t want it to be very black,” Monroe says. “I wanted it to be more translucent.” Monroe cut hair from the blonde wig worn by Fanning’s acting double, then took a tiny iron from the hair department, curled the wig hairs, and glued crescent moons and star appliqués to the ends.
The Real-World HungryGhost
Margo doesn’t have the resources or hours to make her TikTok creation as intricate as the fantasized HungryGhost that opens the episode. Still, stars are a recurring motif in Margo’s Got Money Troubles: Margo and her father have star tattoos that Monroe hand-drew and then applied, and Margo’s real-world HungryGhost persona sticks to the cosmic theme, wearing a star gem on her cheek.
Likewise, instead of three wigs sewn together, Margo opts for a wig within her budget as she dresses to film HungryGhost content. “That [wig] is straight out of the bag, pretty much,” McIntosh says. “I cut the bangs on it, and that’s it. Once again, that real-life situation.”
Behind the scenes, Fanning took a page out of Margo’s book, playing a hands-on role in the creation of her extraterrestrial get-up: She helped add space motifs to the stacked Dolls Kill boots that both the fantasy and real-world versions of her OnlyFans persona wear. “We sat at the back of our costume truck one day when she was waiting around to shoot, and she helped me bedazzle her silver chunky boots,” Gordon-Crozier says.
Fanning as the real-world HungryGhost on the set of Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
For the real-world HungryGhost’s outfit, Gordon-Crozier custom-built a retro-futuristic ensemble that Susie and Margo could have made themselves using silver and iridescent vinyl. “We built the silver cones with diamond tassels on the end, which was a must for me,” she says. “Margo always has, like, a sense of humor to her, and so she really thinks about her HungryGhost character with that in mind. She gets her love of character-building from Jinx.”
When it came to Margo’s HungryGhost gloves, Gordon-Crozier had to tamp down her perfectionism. “I wish I had fitted them better, but I do have to remember that Susie or Margo’s [supposed to be] making the costumes,” she says. “Everything is handmade and homemade, with not a lot of money.”
On Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Fanning and the team shoot for the stars and breathe life into an otherworldly being—all while keeping Margo’s glittering boots and green body firmly on the ground.