‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ Nearly Had a Real Vegas Cop Cameo

Elle Fanning as the titular character in Margo’s Got Money Troubles Apple TV

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for Margo’s Got Money Troubles.]

In Margo’s Got Money Troubles, 20-year-old Margo Millet (Elle Fanning) is struggling with the financial and emotional hardships of raising a baby as a single mother after becoming pregnant by her English professor.

She has some help from her father, Jinx (Nick Offerman), a former pro wrestler and recovering addict, and her mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), a former Hooters waitress and now-reluctant grandmother, but both bring added complications. And so, Margo turns to the only solution she can find to support her child: becoming a creator on OnlyFans.

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The show is based on the book by Rufi Thorpe and was scooped up by A24 after a bidding war, with David E. Kelley coming on as showrunner.

Kelley, who also created series such as Ally McBeal, The Practice, Big Little Lies, spoke with THR about working with his wife, Michelle Pfeiffer, getting pulled over while filming and what to expect next season.

What attracted you to this story?

The book, and Rufi [Thrope’s] writing. The dimension of the characters. They just spoke to me and resonated with me once I finished the book. I think the tonal blend of humor and then, some severity to the stakes, dramatic severity. That’s something I’ve always loved to do in my other projects, and this seemed commensurate with that. You’re always looking for something fresh and different, new, and I’d never explored this world before, so when I read it, I was hooked.

How did you find Margo’s voice?

I just channel the characters. I know it sounds a little schizophrenic, but they speak to me. I’m never truly able to describe characters with the necessary clarity that I should, but I’ve always had a pretty good compass of how they would behave in a certain situation or how they would sound. Rufi was very specific in the book, so that was a great jumping-off point. … I know that’s not a real answer, and it sounds like I probably should seek out therapy, but there is a fusion between me and the characters when I write.

Did you think of this as a comedy or drama, or somewhere in between?

In between, but more toward the latter. Start with the dramatic through lines. The book was funny. The characters are funny, and the situational things that they find themselves. I felt confident that the humor would reveal itself, but we really didn’t want to be funny at the emotional stakes of the piece. So if we were going to air on the dramatic side. I felt that we would find the funny, especially with the actors we had with Nick Offerman and Elle and Michelle.

You and Michelle had only briefly worked together in the past. What was the conversation about working together on this?

Before, the movie world and the TV world were two separate lanes; she was doing well in hers, and I was doing well in mine. And we also just figured, we don’t want to bring work home with us, and how can we both be in the same project and avoid bringing work home with us? So we just decided, let’s keep those worlds separate. But, I always like to say that my number one job on any series or show is to be the chief guardian of that show. How do you make it the best it can be? And putting that hat on, there was no denying that Michelle was the best person to play Shyanne. So we put that domestic policy on hold and went for the greater good of Margo.

It looked like you were filming some episodes live on the Las Vegas Strip. What was that like?

Vegas doesn’t shut down for anybody. They will give you permits to film what you need to film, but they don’t stop what they’re doing. So we were in casinos, bars and on the Strip. In fact, the scene where Michelle and Elle are riding down the Strip and they stick their heads out of the limo, they actually got pulled over by [real] police. I think Elle and Michelle thought, “Oh, this is a nice touch. They’ve added police chasing us.” But the police were in fact doing their job. You’re not allowed to stick your head out of a sunroof while going down the road, [and] they got pulled over. I think they got a warning.

Outside of those scenes, the majority of this is shot in L.A. at a time when there’s a production exodus there. What went into that decision?

We try to do that with our company anyway. We’re trying to preserve whatever production we can, to the very point you mentioned, that there’s just been too much of an exodus, and so that’s our mindset going into any project. Is there a way we can shoot in L.A. and keep the business and the work? This particular project, it was organic because it takes place in Fullerton, so it was California in the book, and we kept it so on film.

You’re approaching a number of sensitive subjects with this show, but one of them being sex work and people who work for OnlyFans. How did you go about writing about that?

I was terrified of it, and I never would have done it, but Rufi’s research on it was so impeccable. So I trusted her. I knew that we needed to be responsible about it. But between Rufi and Elle, because Elle did a lot of research, I felt that we would be responsible. And then Eva Anderson, who was my first lieutenant co-writer, when she came aboard, I said, “Look, you’re taking charge of the OnlyFans side of it because it’s not a world I know. And I was late ‘60s at the time. Now I’m 70, but I think you know whoever is meant to write this part of the story, it’s probably not a 69-year-old man. So you run with that.” And she did.

When you were writing season one, were you thinking there would be a second season?

We wrote season one to have closure at the end because season one was the book, but we always intended to go further should we get that opportunity, and we were lucky to do so. We felt fairly confident that this story had a fertility to it that we could keep going because it’s really about Margo’s life, all their lives — Margo, Jinx, Cheyenne — and they’re all their lives are a bit like a river. They dive in and they see where it takes them. So we knew the journey was going to offer up more opportunities for storytelling without knowing specifically what that story was, but the plan was all along, let’s write this thing out as hard as we can, and with success, the audience will fall in love with the characters as much as we, the writers, were, and then we’ll be able to keep going.

We’re already writing [season 2]. I think the audience will be pretty happy. We’re very faithful to the themes that Rufi drew out in the book, and Rufi actually still participates a little bit. We send her all scripts and beg for her notes. She’s very smart and also very, very much still a guardian of these characters.

The last episode of season one ends with the reveal that Greg Kinnear’s character, Kenny, who is married to Cheyenne, is the person who called CPS on Margo. Are we meant to view him as a villain?

I hope not. Probably from Margo’s perspective and Cheyenne’s too as they feel very offended and betrayed. But then, when you take a step back and you look at what he was faced with, and him wanting to be a family member and one of consequence, and also a guardian of [baby] Bodhi. He wanted other eyeballs on it to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. We’ll go back and revisit that a little bit in season two. So I won’t give away where we’re going. But ideally, it would be nice if our viewers are arguing over that very question. One saying, “How could he do that? Other people saying, “You know what? [Jinx] had a syringe in his arm and near drowned in a bathtub, and he’s a primary caregiver. Maybe child services should have a peak.”

As you said, this is a new subject area for you. Are you only looking at new subjects and topics at this point in your career?

I still would be a sucker for a great legal thriller just because I like that. I like to watch them, but it would have to be a great one now because my mindset now is to not do another law show because I feel I’ve done enough. New is probably the best and most definitive word, something where I can explore a world that might not necessarily come to me. One of the reasons I got into the adaptation process is I felt going to books could serve as springboards to make me go in directions where I otherwise might not go. Otherwise, I could be writing legal shows forever. So I get out of my comfort zone, but I rely sometimes on authors to point me in that direction. I did it with Stephen King and Mr. Mercedes. He sort of brought me into that horror genre. Rufi brought me into OnlyFans world and wrestling. So yeah, if it can’t be new at this point, then I can just go fishing.

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.