Apple TV is best known for its lineup of science fiction shows and feel-good sitcoms, but of late the streaming service has veered in a different direction. A pair of its current buzziest shows explore the world of OnlyFans creators and cam models, and they’re timed up near perfectly; just as one ends (Margo’s Got Money Troubles) another is set to begin (Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed). According to Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed creator and showrunner David J. Rosen, the timing is something of a coincidence, but also indicative of the current moment. “I think it’s in the air,” he says. “There’s just more and more acceptance of finding companionship and friendship and relationships through our computer screens and through our phones, and it’s natural that there’s going to be more storytelling that way.”
Despite their similar themes, the two shows are dramatically different in terms of tone and perspective. Based on the novel of the same name from Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles — the finale of which streams on May 20th, though the show has already been renewed for season 2 — is a dramedy starring Elle Fanning in the titular role. Margo is a college student and budding writer who has an affair with her professor and ends up pregnant. Forced to drop out of school, and fired from her part-time job, she ends up venturing into the realm of OnlyFans as a way to support her kid as a single parent.
The show is playful and funny — Margo’s OF persona is a clueless alien, and one of her paid services involves describing dicks as different pokémon — but it also attempts to get at some of the realities of the industry. While Margo finds a supportive community among her best friend, fellow OF creators, and (eventually) her family, she’s still forced to deal with the stigma that can come from sex work. In one notably scary scene, she’s doxxed in the real world when she’s recognized at a party, and has to find a safe route home. Her line of work becomes a particularly challenging issue in the season finale, where Margo is in a heated court battle over the custody of her child.
Whereas Margo’s story takes place from an OF creator’s perspective, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is centered on a subscriber, though it’s also about a single mother. In this case, Paula (Tatiana Maslany) is a recently divorced mom who turns to an OF-like cam service for companionship, and becomes very close with a cam boy (Brandon Flynn). While there is sex involved, most of their time is spent chatting about her life, including things too sensitive to talk about with anyone else. Things take a turn when Paula thinks she witnesses a kidnapping take place during one of their video chats, only to learn that it was actually an elaborate scam to extort money from her. The show becomes a tense crime thriller as the scam not only infiltrates every aspect of Paula’s life — thanks to their personal conversations, the scammer knows an incredible amount about her — but also becomes much more complex and violent.
Rosen says the initial inspiration for the show wasn’t OnlyFans or cam sites, but the explosion of video calls and virtual relationships that happened during the covid-19 pandemic. “I’d been thinking a lot about this epidemic of loneliness that we’re living in, brought on mostly by technology,” he explains, pointing out the irony that the very tech that connects us to family can also keep us solitary. “I started thinking about a character who might be immersed in this, and I had really wanted to write about a single mom because I feel like they are the most put-upon of all of us, juggling a million different things. I started picturing this character in her home at night, turning to technology as the one outlet where she could find a little bit of companionship, and then suddenly she’s looking into a [computer] window, turning it into her own modern-day Rear Window story.”
While Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’s inciting incident is centered on a cam model, Rosen says that he made a decision early on in the writing process that “this was not really a show about the world of sex workers, or the world of cam workers.” Instead, he wanted to use the topic as a way of exploring the broader issue of loneliness. He admits that his knowledge on the cam models “was not that deep” going into the project, but even still, it was important for the show to not demonize sex workers or present a false portrayal, which would’ve been easy given the criminal theme. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed has a lot of twists and turns, and one of them involves humanizing the man who is terrorizing Paula.
“It was about looking for companionship, and this one moment, and this one particular sex worker who is pulling a scam,” Rosen says of his approach, “as opposed to saying the industry itself and all of the people in it are out to get you. Obviously that’s not true. I just found it much more interesting to be about these two individuals who come across each other and cause this story to happen.”
Of course, these aren’t the first shows to tell stories around OnlyFans and online sex workers. HBO’s Euphoria is probably the most prominent example; in season 1 a high schooler named Kat (Barbie Ferreira) becomes a virtual dominatrix, and in the current season Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is an OnlyFans creator. But the Apple TV shows are notable in part because of the company’s often stringent history with censorship, which includes keeping anything remotely “adult” off the App Store (with notable exceptions), forcing OnlyFans itself to launch a SFW app. This has also extended in part to its streaming service, which mostly shies away from anything that could be considered controversial.
The appeal of OnlyFans and its ilk for workers is obvious, as it can be a substantial source of income. And with the company now a multibillion-dollar business with celebrities jumping on board, it’s thoroughly a mainstream proposition. The fact that OF has become so pervasive has made it impossible to ignore, even for a service like Apple TV. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and Margo’s Got Money Troubles releasing so close together might indeed be a coincidence, but it’s also a sign pointing to a future where these topics are much more normalized and writers can’t help but touch upon them.
“It’s one of the biggest industries in the world, or at least online, and so it just seems like it will become more and more a part of our storytelling,” Rosen says. “It’s an endless well of human emotions, made small on the internet where we can all find ourselves.”