OnlyFans has once again come to the rescue for yet another fallen Hollywood star. Drea de Matteo recently shared with enquiring minds her reasoning behind joining OnlyFans as a content creator in 2023.
To give you a picture of de Matteo’s career trajectory, she initially rose to fame with her television debut as Adriana La Cerva in the smash hit The Sopranos in 199. Her work in that role earned de Matteo an Emmy award in 2004, which was the same year she landed a lead role on Joey, the Friends spin-off series. In 2009 she joined the cast of Desperate Housewives as Angie Bolen. Her Hollywood resume is pretty outstanding, so why did the star find herself so close to financial ruin?
Well, Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood, and pandemics are gonna pandemic.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, working actors on most productions were expected to get vaccinated if they wanted to continue working.
Drea de Matteo elected to not get vaccinated.
Hollywood elected to not hire her again.
de Matteo claims that her choice to remain unvaccinated during the pandemic got her blacklisted in Hollywood, making her one of several actors who found themselves without work as a result of opting to wait on getting that Fauci Ouchie.
de Matteo is not only an actor, however. She’s a person who is also a mom whose 2 underage children have grown accustomed to having Hollywood luxuries like food to eat, and a roof to sleep under. The former TV housewife found herself desperate once again, this time for real.
Enter OnlyFans.
OnlyFans doesn’t really care if you’ve been vaccinated, as you’re the one responsible for you when it comes to the content that you post to the platform. de Matteo was hesitant to join, but when you’re running low on options and you have kids to feed, you find a way to make it happen.
OnlyFans became her lifeline.
Since joining OnlyFans, Drea de Matteo says that not only has she been able to fully support her family, she’s actually made more money on OnlyFans than she did on The Sopranos. She’s not the only actor who claims to be paid better as an OnlyFans model than she was in film and television.
Bella Thorne and Cardi B also show up on OnlyFans to great acclaim, and greater income. While many stars initially make the pivot to OnlyFans in order to earn a living, what keeps them there— aside from the money, duh— is the sense of control over their own image, and their own work. de Matteo has said that she’s found freedom and a sense of community on OnlyFans, and one would think with as impressive a resume as she had prior to joining the platform, that she wouldn’t be hurting for those things, and yet.
When you rely on the Hollywood machine to continue to hire you in order to eek out a living, you’re at the mercy of casting directors, your manager, other actors, producers, the list goes on. At OnlyFans? You’re the one in charge of when you create content, what kind of content you create, how much content you create, and while the platform does take a cut of your earnings unless you’ve hired a production team, you aren’t paying out a host of other people in order to get paid.
Having that kind of power after being at the mercy of Hollywood does seem enticing, but it also points to a problem; why isn’t Hollywood taking care of its actors if it wants to keep using their artistry for profit?
If de Matteo’s journey teaches us anything, it's this; when one door closes, maybe it's time to open a window… on your computer, that is.
