As Elle Fanning brought Rufi Thorpe’s novel to life with David E. Kelley’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles on Apple TV+, the actress had lengthy conversations about how to depict nudity in the series adaptation.
The Oscar nominee explained that she’s “not very modest” when it comes to onscreen nudity, and she’s particularly “really proud” of how it was used in her portrayal of the titular undergrad student who ends up pregnant with her English professor’s baby, for whom she turns to OnlyFans in order to provide financial support.
“I feel like I kind of broke that down in The Great,” she told People of playing Catherine the Great in the 2020-’23 Hulu series. “I was like, ‘I’ve kind of already done this.’”
Fanning added that she’s “really proud of how the nudity is depicted on [Margo’s Got Money Troubles], because it’s not in an overly sexualized way at all.
“A lot of it is actually just having to do with the necessities of motherhood, the need to feed your child and breastfeed,” she explained. “And then that’s kind of juxtaposed, later, when Margo’s doing her OnlyFans. But I think it’s a nice commentary of how her relationship to her body changes.”
Elle Fanning in ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’
The actress noted that nudity is “never the focal point of the scene,” which “made it really interesting.”
“A lot of the time, I did have prosthetics to make [my boobs] look like breastfeeding boobs and milk that would squirt out this contraption that they had,” added Fanning. “So I would be in the trailer and they’d put them on, and then I would feel like, ‘OK, I’m just going to walk out.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait a second, I can’t walk out. This isn’t a shirt.’”
Fanning stars alongside Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Michael Angarano, Thaddea Graham and Greg Kinnear in the series, new episodes of which are available to stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
