The content and format of Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles seem antithetical to each other — a novel about the internet. Yet, Thorpe’s book manages to perfectly encapsulate navigating life as a creator and sex worker online. The experience of motherhood and OnlyFans Thorpe captured in her 2024 novel is now an Apple TV series of the same name, starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nick Offerman.
But before the show got to the small screen and the book hit shelves, Thorpe had to immerse herself in the world of OnlyFans and content creators: “I think I’m spoiled as a fiction writer. Normally, I can just call up people, and no one’s interested in anyone else’s job, so people will often talk to you in depth about their jobs.” But that wasn’t the case with researching Margo. As she broached the topic of content creators, especially those on OnlyFans, she noted that their job is to protect themselves and their privacy.
But to write the successful novel that she did, Thorpe needed to do the research. So how did she do it and earn her sources’ trust in the process? At BookCon 2026, I chatted with Thorpe about her OnlyFans research and the Margo’s Got Money Trouble adaptation.
Samantha Mangino: Margo’s Got Money Troubles has such an accurate depiction and understanding of the internet and content creation. How did you do your research?
Rufi Thorpe: I started an OnlyFans account, and I would send a $50 tip to creators and say, “Hey, I’m a novelist. I’ve written these books. I’m writing a book about it, and it has a character who has an OnlyFans account. I want to explore sex work as work. The book has no moral agenda, and I can’t do a good job unless I do research. Would you please talk? I will pay you per question that I ask.”
A lot of girls have automated bot responses, and they’re not even reading their own messages. So you have to find an account that’s small enough that someone — a human — will answer you. In order to be a sex worker, you have to have really, really good boundaries. So they are very clear that their internal life is not for sale, whether it’s me, a creepy middle-aged woman novelist, or a John. So some questions were very easy for them to talk about, like the business side of things, marketing and promotion, and even the back end of how their system looked and how money worked. But any questions that I considered relatively open-ended, like, “How do you feel differently about this work now than when you first started?” A lot of times, they’d be like, “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” In a weird way, their reticence was an education in itself.
SM: Have you gotten any feedback from creators on the book and how they received it?
RT: I’ve heard from maybe five different OnlyFans models, and it’s been really positive. One challenge of the research and book is that it’s kind of historical fiction. The show is set in contemporary times, but the book is really set in 2018. When TikTok and OnlyFans were these baby fledglings, which is part of how Margo can go viral as easily as she does.
But finding people who were on the platform at that time was really challenging, because when I was writing this in 2020 and 2021, this boom happened. I’m sure all sorts of inaccuracies would really bother someone who was on the platform in 2018, but overwhelmingly, there’s a kindness and good intention behind the portrayal that I think people found.
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SM: As a reader of the book, I wholeheartedly agree with that. You approach all the characters with a really spectacular humanity that another writer might not do. Was there any lesson you learned from your research that was really important to include in the book?
RT: One of the things that I found most inspiring, as someone who grew up in the ’90s in a kind of MTV and Playboy-centered universe where what is sexy in the culture, as like one thing — blonde, skinny, big, fake boobs — is that what men actually are attracted to is so much weirder and more varied. And also, when you let content creators have creative control, deciding who they’re going to work with, what kind of content they’re going to make, it is much more varied. And there are lots of creators making fun, weird, funny, silly content. I think that seemed really joyful and exciting to me, and that’s kind of what I wanted to put across in the book. When you have this democratization of media, people are just cooler and stranger than you could ever predict.
SM: The turnaround from a 2024 publication to a 2026 adaptation release seems so quick. Can you tell me about that process?
RT: It was optioned before the book was published, which enabled it to achieve that rapid turnaround. It’s been just such a wildly positive experience. The whole team, from the very beginning, you know, all of the producers and David E. Kelly [creator of the Margo’s Got Money Troubles TV show], and they were so open and generous with me, allowing me to be as involved as I wanted. I had a meeting early on in the writers’ room where they asked me, “What are you afraid we’ll do?” and really thoughtful questions about what I wanted and what I thought was important. The whole thing has really been a dream from an author’s perspective.
SM: I think adaptations can stand on their own, but the Margo TV show truly captures the essence of the book. What do you think contributed to making that happen?
RT: From the beginning, I was like, “You guys should change anything you want and need to, to make it work as a show.” There are certain elements, like the meta-narration element, that I was like, I don’t really see how you’re gonna transfer this over. But what I never said to them was, “You need to capture this essence.” And yet, I feel like they got the heart of the book, that is, the almost ineffable, unsayable thing. Like, how do you even communicate that? And yet they got it, and they somehow translated it. I remember going on set and getting to see [Margo’s] apartment. And I was like, “Oh my God, these are the closet doors that were on my house when I was a little kid.” Like, the architecture of California was just so right.
SM: With the show being out, have you heard from the books’ fanbase? And new fans of it who are coming from the show?
RT: So far, it’s been just a lot of squealing and joy because the acting and the cast are so incredible. It’s exciting for me because only the first three episodes are out, and I feel like the show gets even stronger as it goes along, so I’m just incredibly excited for people to get to see all of it and to see more of the wrestling. Rico Nasty is in it, too. I’m such a huge fan of her.
So when I was writing the book, I would have a playlist of songs that I would listen to when I was stuck on a scene. I’d go take a walk and listen to music while I figured out the problem. Of the 20 songs on the playlist, four were by Rico Nasty. I’m an old-school Rico fan, and I didn’t even know they were considering casting her. It felt like this really serendipitous, full-circle thing: she was part of the book’s writing without knowing it, and then she gets to be in the show.
SM: You were talking about how the people who made the show clearly understand the book, so I think just being on that same wavelength led to Rico’s casting in a way that was never said aloud.
RT: When David E. Kelly first expressed interest in it, I was like, in a weird way, this makes sense, because I grew up watching David E. Kelly’s storytelling. It’s almost like he wrote me.
