Elle Fanning has spoken candidly about how nudity is handled in her new Apple TV+ series Margo has money problems, and why she is particularly proud of the way it was handled.
The Oscar nominee stars as Margo, an undergraduate who gets pregnant by her English professor and turns to OnlyFans to support herself and her baby.
In adapting Rufi Thorpe’s novel with showrunner David E. Kelley, Fanning said she had long conversations about how to depict nudity in a way that felt purposeful rather than gratuitous.
“I’m really proud of how the nudity is depicted [Margo’s Got Money Troubles]because it’s not in an overly sexualized way at all,” she shared PEOPLE.
“A lot of it actually just has to do with the necessities of motherhood, the need to feed your child and breastfeed. And then it’s kind of juxtaposed, later, when Margo does her OnlyFans. But I think it’s a nice commentary on how her relationship with her body is changing.”
She noted that nudity “is never the focal point of the scene”, which she found creatively interesting rather than unpleasant.
The physical preparation for some scenes was more involved than expected.
For the breastfeeding sequences, Fanning wore prosthetics complete with a milk-squirting mechanism.
“I’d be in the trailer and they’d put them on and then I’d be like, ‘OK, I’m just going out.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, I can’t go out. This is not a shirt.’
Fanning stars alongside Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Michael Angarano, Thaddea Graham and Greg Kinnear.
New episodes of Margo has money problems stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
