• Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie declared “I am not a sex worker” in Euphoria’s May 17 episode, calling herself a “performer who uses her body to tell stories”
• The episode also featured Cassie posing fully nude with only a giant snake covering her body during a photoshoot directed by Maddy
• Cassie deletes her OnlyFans account after landing a film role — but not before receiving a severed finger from husband Nate in the mail
• Former Boy Meets World star Maitland Ward, now an adult film actress, blasted the show’s portrayal of OnlyFans creators as “disgusting and vile”
• Creator Sam Levinson has defended the storyline, explaining the creative intent behind the explicit scenes

Cassie Howard has always had a complicated relationship with her own image. But in Sunday’s episode of Euphoria, Sydney Sweeney’s character finally said out loud what she’s apparently been telling herself all along: “I am not a sex worker. I’m a performer. That uses my body to tell stories.”

The declaration came after sister Lexi — played by Maude Apatow — threw some pointed shade, specifically calling out Cassie for filming herself topless, engaging in sexual situations on camera, and charging extra for what Lexi delicately described as “jerk off instructions.” Cassie wasn’t having it.

It’s a distinction that landed differently for different viewers. For Cassie, it’s everything. For the real-world creators who actually use OnlyFans, it’s become something of a sore spot — and the debate around Season 3’s increasingly wild storyline is only getting louder.

The Episode That Has Everyone Talking

The May 17 installment, titled “Stand Still and See,” packed a lot into one hour. Cassie managed to book a movie role — a genuine big break — but the job came with a condition: the OnlyFans had to go. Deleting the account turned out to be harder than expected. She tried to get guidance from her new husband Nate (Jacob Elordi), who was too deep in his own financial crisis to be useful. That situation, it turns out, had already escalated well past uncomfortable: Cassie received Nate’s severed finger in the mail.

Earlier in the season, a photoshoot scene gave the show one of its most talked-about moments yet. Alexa Demie’s Maddy Perez stepped into the role of provocateur-in-chief, directing Cassie, Rosalía’s mysterious character Magik, and Anna Van Patten’s Kitty through a hyper-sexualized shoot dripping in the show’s signature neon aesthetic. At one point, Cassie appeared completely nude, covered only by a massive banana python draped across her body — a visual that immediately drew comparisons to Britney Spears’ legendary snake moment at the 2001 MTV VMAs. She later changed into skimpy pink lingerie as the chaos escalated.

It’s the kind of scene that feels designed to provoke a reaction. And it did.

Maitland Ward Is Not Holding Back

Maitland Ward — who played Rachel McGuire on Boy Meets World before transitioning to adult films about seven years ago — has emerged as one of the show’s most vocal critics. Speaking to TMZ, Ward zeroed in on earlier scenes showing Cassie posing in pigtails and a pacifier while wearing sheer clothing, calling the imagery “disgusting and vile.”

“The whole child-baby thing is so disgusting,” Ward said. “You just can’t go into that whole underage thing like that. I mean, you can do it to an extent if it’s very, very playful, like, you’re an adult being childlike or something. But just the way it was handled was so gross, and it’s just disgusting and vile.”

She also took issue with what she sees as the show mocking the entire industry. In a separate statement to Fox News Digital, Ward went further: “This show is treating sex work like a circus act, a freak show. Sydney Sweeney’s portrayal of an OnlyFans creator is setting sex workers — real individuals with lives, families, and jobs — back by making a mockery not only of what they choose to do with their bodies and lives, but of them as human beings.”

Ward didn’t stop there. “And of course, they use the traditional blonde, boobie-bimbo stereotype who will do anything for money and a jolt of fame, including posing as a dog licking a bowl and serving up pedophilia fantasies, as the one who goes into sex work,” she added. “This only reinforces the false and harmful stereotypes that sex workers have to fight against every day. It’s completely out of touch.”

It’s pointed criticism coming from someone with real skin in the game — Ward has been openly discussing the pressures of Hollywood and the adult industry, including a recent appearance on Investigation Discovery’s Hollywood Demons where she reflected on growing up in the entertainment system. “I think it was such a factory kind of environment. Like you were just a product being sold,” she said.

Sam Levinson Stands by the Vision

Creator Sam Levinson has heard the criticism and isn’t backing down. In an April interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he broke down the creative thinking behind Cassie’s OnlyFans arc — specifically the choice to pull back from the fantasy and expose the absurdity underneath it.

“[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor,” Levinson explained. “But what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it. What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion. The gag is to jump out, to break the wall.”

Director of photography Marcell Rév also spoke about the deliberate aesthetic choices. Rather than going sleek and modern, the team chose a mid-century home that felt slightly off — a little tacky, a little stuck in time. “OnlyFans has its own aesthetic and how you elevate that aesthetic to the show’s aesthetic is a challenge. I’m not going to lie,” Rév said.

Levinson elaborated on the lighting approach: “Some of these scenes we only lit with these ring lights that she would use. When you’re inside, it’s a beautiful, glowing front light, but then you jump out of it and it’s just a pool of light and everything surrounding it is dark. It’s just gnarly and jarring. We wanted to capture what she’s trying to show the audience and be inside of it. But then also pull back wider and see how depressing it is.”

That tension — between Cassie’s self-perception and the reality the camera reveals — is clearly intentional. Whether it reads as empathetic critique or exploitation depends entirely on who’s watching.

Sweeney, 28, has consistently defended the show’s use of explicit material in past interviews, saying she trusts Levinson’s vision and feels comfortable with the content. And Season 3 has leaned into that trust fully — from the dog bowl scenes to the baby outfits to the python photoshoot, Cassie’s arc has gone places few expected.

Now that the OnlyFans chapter is officially closing and a film career is opening up, the real question is what version of Cassie Howard emerges on the other side — and whether the show can make her transformation feel earned after everything it put her through to get there.

The post Cassie Defends Her OnlyFans on Euphoria — But Not Everyone’s Buying It appeared first on Cream.

• OnlyFans storylines are central to multiple hit shows right now, including Euphoria, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Industry, and Abbott Elementary
• Elle Fanning’s Margo and Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie both turn to the platform after conventional jobs fail them
• Real creators and academics say economic anxiety — not hypersexualization — is driving the platform’s cultural moment
• Chloe Cherry, who plays Faye on Euphoria and is a former OnlyFans creator herself, calls it a “weird phenomenon of the 2020s”
• More than 4.6 million people worldwide have become OnlyFans creators, and the stigma around it is visibly fading

Elle Fanning’s character on Margo’s Got Money Troubles paints her entire body metallic green. She’s building a persona — an earthside alien named The Hungry Ghost — who offers mild nudity and withering critiques of her subscribers’ genitalia. It’s absurd, it’s funny, and it’s completely of this moment. Because Margo isn’t joining OnlyFans for thrills. She’s a single mom who lost her restaurant job and needs to feed her infant son.

That’s the story TV keeps telling right now. And it’s not a coincidence.

OnlyFans has quietly become the defining plot device of this television season. It’s driving Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie toward a chaotic kind of stardom on Euphoria. It surfaces in a storyline on HBO’s Industry. Even Janine Teagues — Quinta Brunson’s relentlessly optimistic second-grade teacher on ABC’s Abbott Elementary, arguably the most wholesome show on television — briefly considers signing up for a thinly veiled knockoff called “MostlyFans” when her job looks uncertain. The platform has gone from punchline to plot engine, and the through line across every single one of these stories is the same: the traditional economy isn’t working.

“You see the rise of hustle culture, and it could look like driving for DoorDash or driving for Uber, or it could look like OnlyFans,” said Rufi Thorpe, the author of the 2024 novel on which Apple TV+’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles is based. “But people are trying desperately to afford their rent.”

Thorpe started writing the book after watching OnlyFans explode during the pandemic — a moment when millions of people lost income overnight and started looking for alternatives. The “increasing financial hardship in this country,” she said, has everything to do with why a platform like this has become so culturally relevant. A recent CNN poll backs that up: most Americans are pessimistic about the economy, cutting back on spending including groceries, while inflation continues to eat into wages and job seekers across most industries face a brutal market. The characters on these shows aren’t anomalies. They’re mirrors.

From Victims to Entrepreneurs: How TV’s Portrayal of Sex Work Is Shifting

For decades, sex workers on television existed almost exclusively as victims — bodies found in the first ten minutes of a procedural, cautionary tales to be solved and forgotten. What’s happening this season is genuinely different. These characters are making a calculated economic choice, the same way someone might pick up a second job or start selling things on Etsy. The platform gives them something the gig economy often doesn’t: a significant cut of their own labor. According to OnlyFans’ creator policy, creators keep 80% of their earnings — and those who make more than $600 a year receive a 1099 tax form.

That last detail matters more than it might seem. Bridget Crawford, a law professor at Pace University who has published research on the economics of OnlyFans, says that receiving a tax form is genuinely meaningful to many creators. Their goal, she said, is to feel “like any other worker.” Having documented income means being able to rent an apartment, qualify for a loan, build a financial life. It’s the mundane infrastructure of legitimacy — and it’s exactly what Fanning’s Margo is chasing.

Every model Thorpe spoke with while researching the show had joined OnlyFans for one reason. “I think that’s the predominant reason why anyone does sex work,” she said simply. The money.

What Real Creators Are Actually Making

Gracie Canaan knows this better than most. A comedian and OnlyFans creator who cohosts Audible’s OnlyFantasy podcast, she made $4,000 in her first month on the platform — offering what she describes as “the girlfriend experience,” which included “bikini level nudity,” “some nudes,” and character role play. Last year, she cleared over $100,000.

Canaan is quick to point out she’s not among the platform’s top earners — the site’s highest-profile creators can pull in millions per month, though OnlyFans doesn’t release data on what most people make. But she’s earning more than she did at her previous corporate job, which gives her a particular kind of clarity about the moment we’re in.

“Being in corporate America and seeing that crumble, and then being like — OnlyFans is actually more stable than this thing that I was taught to believe was this smart, safe thing to do — is wild,” she said.

She also pushes back on the idea that creative fulfillment and financial necessity have to be in conflict. “This is something I want to keep doing,” she said. “And I know from having jobs that I hate, that in order for me to keep doing it, I have to really enjoy it and the way I find joy from it is being creative.”

As for why these TV storylines are landing so hard right now, Canaan thinks it’s a combination of economic anxiety and a genuine cultural shift in how people understand the platform. “That stigma has been chipped away over time,” she said. “It’s now the point where it’s interesting enough without being as taboo as it used to be.”

Euphoria’s Messy, Complicated Take

No show has leaned into the OnlyFans moment harder — or more chaotically — than Euphoria. Cassie, played by Sweeney, initially joins the platform with a very specific goal: she wants an extra $50,000 for flowers at her wedding. What follows is a full spiral into the content machine, complete with a housekeeper helping her film and a scene in which she poses as an adult baby — a moment that drew real backlash from actual OnlyFans creators, who called the portrayal “troublesome” and said depicting the platform as a place that would permit that kind of content was a “serious problem.” OnlyFans explicitly prohibits any content involving age-related role-play.

Creator Sam Levinson has said the show was deliberately going for “a layer of absurdity” in Cassie’s journey — which tracks with how Euphoria has always operated. But the criticism points to a real tension in how fiction handles a platform that real people depend on for real income.

Nobody on the show has more credibility to weigh in on this than Chloe Cherry, who plays Faye and is herself a former adult film star and OnlyFans model. In a recent interview with Refinery29, Cherry was characteristically blunt about why she thinks the platform has become so normalized. “It has nothing to do with empowerment or power or anything,” she said. “Capitalism and the economy getting worse” — that’s the driver. She called OnlyFans “a weird phenomenon of the 2020s that we will look back on and be very confused by.”

Maybe. Or maybe we’ll look back and recognize it as exactly what it was: a generation of people finding a way to survive a system that wasn’t built for them, and a season of television honest enough to show it.

As Cassie put it in a recent episode: “This is the business world of today.”

The post Why OnlyFans Is Suddenly Everywhere on TV appeared first on Cream.

• Shannon Elizabeth, 52, has finalized her divorce from conservationist Simon Borchert after four years of marriage.
• She filed for divorce on April 14, 2026 — one day before launching her OnlyFans account.
• Elizabeth earned over $1.2 million in her first week on the platform.
• Her manager — and ex-husband — Joseph Reitman says she’s “happier than I have seen her in years.”
• She plans to stay in South Africa and continue work with her animal conservation nonprofit, the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation.

Shannon Elizabeth is stepping into her next chapter — and by every measure, it’s already a lucrative one. The American Pie star has finalized her divorce from second husband Simon Borchert, and she’s doing it on her own terms, with her OnlyFans account, a renewed sense of purpose, and over a million dollars in the bank to show for it.

“Today isn’t about the end of a marriage,” Elizabeth, 52, told Page Six in a statement on Monday, May 11. “There are moments in life when you realize that letting go can be exhilarating, that closing one chapter creates space for an entirely new one, and stepping into that feels incredibly liberating. I’m embracing what comes next with a full heart and a renewed sense of purpose. I’ve never felt more inspired, more creative or more connected to who I truly am.”

Elizabeth and Borchert — a South African conservation specialist she met in 2015 — married in 2021 after six years together. She quietly separated from him in September 2025, though she only confirmed the split publicly last month. “I’ve been separated since September of last year, and this has been a thoughtful, ongoing process — not something that happened in the past few days,” she told Us Weekly at the time. “The meaningful pieces are already behind me, and only the formalities remain.”

Those formalities moved quickly. Elizabeth filed for divorce on April 14 — and launched her OnlyFans account the very next day.

From ‘American Pie’ to OnlyFans: The Reinvention

The timing wasn’t accidental. Elizabeth told Fox News Digital that the divorce and the platform launch were deeply connected. “Now is the right time for me to launch my OnlyFans for a few reasons. I’m going through a divorce, and I’m in a phase of rebuilding, rebuilding myself and my life — fresh starts.”

She’d been thinking about it since at least November 2025, when her manager, Joe Reitman, first floated the idea. “From September to the end of March, at least, it was really, really, really difficult,” she told Page Six. “It was very emotional, and it was just figuring out how to restart everything and kind of just starting from scratch, to be honest. So it was, ‘Well, now what?'”

The answer, it turns out, was OnlyFans. And the response was staggering. Variety confirmed she earned more than $1.2 million in her first week on the platform. When Reitman broke the number down for her, he put it in Hollywood terms she couldn’t ignore.

“You’ve now made more money in the span of a week or two than you did on American Pie, Scary Movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Love Actually combined,” she recalled him telling her.

It’s a remarkable line — and a reminder of just how much the entertainment landscape has shifted since Elizabeth first became a household name as exchange student Nadia in the 1999 comedy that launched a franchise. She told PEOPLE that joining the platform was ultimately about reclaiming control. “I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career. This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans.”

“I’m choosing OnlyFans because it allows me to connect directly with my audience, create on my own terms, and just be free. I really do think this is the future,” she continued.

What Comes Next

Elizabeth isn’t treating OnlyFans as a pivot away from Hollywood — she sees it as running alongside it. “I’m excited to be stepping back into development and conversations around new projects in Hollywood, while also continuing to use my OnlyFans page as a space where I can genuinely connect with fans in a more personal and authentic way,” she said.

She also hopes the platform’s reach will help her do more for the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation, her animal conservation nonprofit that she launched in 2018 and that has become the center of her life in South Africa. “Between entertainment, digital content, and the work of the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation — which will always be closest to my heart — I honestly feel more energised about the future than ever before. Sometimes the hardest transitions lead you exactly where you were meant to go.”

For now, the practical realities of starting over are front of mind. She told Page Six that her belongings have been in storage since September, and she’s still figuring out where to put down roots. “I know I’m going to stay out in South Africa because there’s a lot of work to do still with the charity and all. And I love it here! I have such a great friend group here. So my first thing is figuring out where I’m going to stay and get my own place again.”

She’s also thinking longer term about what the money could mean for her creative life — specifically, the ability to be more selective about acting jobs and to “move more into directing and producing as well.”

There’s an interesting footnote to all of this: the manager who pitched her on OnlyFans and is now watching her thrive is Joseph D. Reitman — her first husband, to whom she was married from 2002 to 2005. He’s been managing her career ever since, and his read on where she’s at right now is simple. “I can tell you Shannon is happier than I have seen her in years.”

“I envision being very busy. I envision this being, like, one of my best chapters,” Elizabeth told Us Weekly. “I want to be busy with projects. I want to be busy with my charity. I want everything to just grow and be successful.”

The post Shannon Elizabeth Finalizes Divorce as OnlyFans Earns Her $1M+ appeared first on Cream.

• Euphoria Season 3, Episode 5 featured Sydney Sweeney’s most explicit scenes yet, including a surreal “Godzilla” fantasy sequence that took a year to film.
• Cassie’s podcast appearances echo right-wing talking points, dropping slurs and manosphere commentary that viewers are connecting to Sweeney’s real-life controversies.
• Real OnlyFans creators are calling the show’s portrayal “cartoonish” and inaccurate, with several speaking out to Variety.
• The Season 3 finale will run 93 minutes — the longest episode in HBO history, surpassing Game of Thrones.
• Creator Sam Levinson has defended the storyline as intentionally absurdist, but not everyone is buying it.

Euphoria just had its wildest episode yet — and that is genuinely saying something. Episode 5 of Season 3, titled “This Little Piggy,” pushed Sydney Sweeney’s character Cassie Howard so far into explicit, chaotic territory that it’s got fans, critics, and actual OnlyFans creators all sounding off at once.

The episode opens with Cassie sucking her own toes while reciting a nursery rhyme for her subscribers, which more or less sets the tone for everything that follows. With Maddy (Alexa Demie) now managing her account, Cassie’s content schedule escalates fast: ASMR videos made by rubbing a microphone against her body, personalized humiliation clips, mailing used underwear to fans, and whispering names into a mic fitted with fake ear attachments. She draws the line — barely — at a $700 “fart in a jar” request.

Then things get truly surreal.

The Scene Everyone Is Talking About

In a fantasy sequence inspired by the 1958 cult film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Cassie imagines herself growing into a giant and stomping through downtown Los Angeles — crushing buildings, swatting helicopters, and eventually pressing her bare chest against a skyscraper window where a man named Frank is watching her OnlyFans content. It’s one of the most technically ambitious sequences the show has ever attempted, and according to HBO’s behind-the-scenes footage, the production team spent a full year building the miniature sets required to pull it off.

“It was a lot of fun. It took about a year to build all the miniatures,” creator Sam Levinson said in the behind-the-scenes video released by HBO. Sweeney herself called it “probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

Viewers, however, were divided on whether the ambition justified the content. “They got Sydney Sweeney doing Godzilla p-rn on Euphoria,” one person wrote on X. “Wrap this sh-t up man.” Another added: “You are not alone in being weirded out by Sydney Sweeney’s giantess p-rn.”

Others on social media were more direct about their discomfort with the episode’s overall direction. “The oversexuality of Cassie is ruining Euphoria for me,” one user wrote. “#euphoria has gone too far WTF,” posted another. And perhaps most bluntly: “Sydney Sweeney, they just can’t be paying you enough for all this. Like the money can’t be that good.”

The Political Subplot That Hit a Nerve

As Cassie’s subscriber count explodes, she hits the podcast circuit to build her brand — and the talking points she peddles are impossible to ignore. In a montage of appearances, she tells hosts that “American men have been treated like second-class citizens” and that “in the past, men used to be hunters and gatherers and protectors. Now, they’re being forced to walk around on their tippy toes. It’s not natural.”

Then, during an appearance with a host played by Trisha Paytas, Cassie goes further: “If a man today were to say that he wants a girlfriend who can cook or clean, he might as well be screaming the N-word.” When the host responds, “You sound like a Democrat,” Cassie laughs and drops the slur for people with intellectual disabilities — saying it outright, not bleeped.

Maddy’s response to all of it? “You know what’s funny? The angrier these idiots get, the more money you make.”

The show frames Cassie’s red-pill content as a calculated strategy to drive male subscribers — whether she actually believes any of it is left deliberately ambiguous. But for a lot of viewers, that ambiguity is the problem, because it’s hard to separate Cassie from Sweeney herself right now.

Over the past year, Sweeney has been at the center of a string of politically charged moments: an American Eagle “great jeans/genes” campaign that earned praise from Donald Trump and JD Vance, the revelation that she’s registered as a Republican, and her mother’s “MAGA”-themed birthday party. She was dubbed “MAGA Barbie” by social media — a label she’s pushed back on publicly.

“I’ve never been here to talk about politics,” Sweeney told Cosmopolitan. “I’ve always been here to make art, so this is just not a conversation I want to be at the forefront of. And I think because of that, people want to take it even further and use me as their own pawn. But it’s somebody else assigning something to me, and I can’t control that.”

She addressed the American Eagle backlash more directly in a People interview late last year: “I did it because I love the jeans and love the brand. I don’t support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign. Many have assigned motives and labels to me that just aren’t true. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always trying to bring people together. I’m against hate and divisiveness.”

None of that context stopped the speculation. “Time when actors weren’t acting,” one Instagram commenter wrote. “To be honest, is Sydney Sweeney acting at this point??” posted another. Others pushed back hard: “So we’re mad about the political views of fictional characters now?”

OnlyFans Creators Have Had Enough

The episode’s political content wasn’t the only thing drawing fire. Real OnlyFans creators have been increasingly vocal this season about what they see as a damaging and inaccurate portrayal of their work — and Episode 5 pushed them further over the edge.

Sydney Leathers, who joined the platform in 2017, told Variety: “There’s just a lot that’s ridiculous and cartoonish about it. There’s so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating: the age-play stuff where she’s dressed as a baby in a diaper, for example. Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time.”

She added: “Sex workers in general, myself included, tend to be hyper-sensitive about the way Hollywood portrays us because it’s almost never nice. It’s always absurd or depressing and rarely ever on point. When you’re part of a marginalized community, it’s easy to get upset about certain portrayals of it.”

Maitland Ward — who starred in Boy Meets World before transitioning to adult content creation, where she says she now earns six figures a month — was even more pointed. “In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” she told Variety. “And there’s always this untrue stigma that somehow sex work is synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse. And they just said, let’s make a joke of it. That is so funny. I’m not laughing.”

Ward also connected the storyline directly to Levinson’s creative intent — or lack thereof: “It reminds me of when I pranced around in lingerie on Boy Meets World. It’s just the guys in the writer’s room coming up with their fantasies. To take someone so traditionally blonde and beautiful with the biggest boobs and dress her up as a dog and baby is really bizarre, but at the same time so expected in Hollywood.”

Creator Alix Lynx found moments she could respect — but still took issue with the overall framing. “When Cassie goes to the influencer’s house to get video, coming from a marketing background myself, I thought, ‘OK, that’s f**kin’ smart. That’s a great formula,'” she said. “On the other hand, it’s portrayed that if you just dress up and do crazy s-t, you’ll instantly make money, or you just have to be hot and have big boobs and you’ll instantly cash out, and it doesn’t work like that. You have to really grow and nurture a fan base.”

For context, OnlyFans’ own Acceptable Use Policy explicitly prohibits “actual, claimed, or role-played: exploitation, abuse, or harm of individuals under the age of 18” — meaning several of Cassie’s storylines this season depict content that would get a real account banned instantly.

Levinson, for his part, has framed the storyline as intentionally absurdist. “[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion.” Ward’s response was swift: “That speaks volumes to me about why this OnlyFans storyline is being represented in the way that it is. It’s not being taken seriously.”

Sweeney herself addressed the broader criticism of the show’s graphic content back in 2023, telling Variety: “You have me, you have Zendaya, you have all of these very strong-minded, independent women. If we didn’t feel comfortable with something, or we saw something we didn’t like, we’d all speak up.”

What Comes Next

Episode 5 ends on a cliffhanger involving Rue (Zendaya) buried up to her neck in a hole by Alamo’s crew, with the crime-western storyline barreling toward what HBO is promising will be a historic finale. The network has confirmed the Season 3 finale will run 93 minutes — officially the longest episode in HBO history, surpassing Game of Thrones‘ Season 8 episode “The Long Night” at 82 minutes and House of the Dragon‘s Season 2 finale at 73.

Whether that runtime will be enough to resolve everything Sam Levinson has set in motion — Cassie’s influencer empire, Nate’s missing fingers, Rue’s increasingly dangerous situation — is the question fans are left sitting with. New episodes of Euphoria Season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.

The post Sydney Sweeney’s Euphoria Episode 5 Sparks Major Backlash appeared first on Cream.

• Euphoria Season 3 features Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie launching an OnlyFans to fund $50,000 in wedding flowers, including scenes where she dresses as a dog and a baby.
• Real OnlyFans creators including Sydney Leathers, Maitland Ward, Sophie Rain, and Alix Lynx have publicly criticized the show’s portrayal as inaccurate and harmful to sex workers.
• Creators point out that several scenes — particularly the baby/age-play content — would violate OnlyFans’ actual Terms of Service.
• Sam Levinson has defended the arc as intentionally absurdist, meant to show how disconnected Cassie is from reality.
• A separate scene where Cassie declares she’s “not a Democrat” on a podcast has also gone viral amid ongoing speculation about Sydney Sweeney’s real-life politics.

Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie Howard has always been Euphoria’s most combustible character — but Season 3 has her burning in a whole new direction, and the real-life OnlyFans community is not here for it.

This season, Cassie launches an OnlyFans account to help cover the cost of $50,000 worth of wedding flowers for her marriage to Nate (Jacob Elordi). What follows is a string of increasingly explicit scenes — including Cassie posing as a dog, complete with ears, collar, leash, tail, and a satin corset from Sweeney’s own lingerie line SYRN, lapping water from a bowl on the floor. Then there’s the baby shoot: Cassie spread eagle on a couch in a sheer pink shirt, pigtails, rattle in hand. Her housekeeper Juana (Minerva Garcia) is the one behind the camera for all of it, which, honestly, feels like the most underpaid job on television right now.

Later episodes push further. With her friend Maddie (Alexa Demie) stepping in as manager, Cassie films herself having sex, sends used underwear to fans, goes topless multiple times, and masturbates on camera. She also makes the podcast rounds — more on that in a moment — and crashes an influencer mansion party where a hypebeast does cocaine off her navel while Maddie rolls footage. All of it in service of helping Nate pay off his debts, because apparently that’s love in the world of Euphoria.

The response from actual OnlyFans creators has been swift and pointed.

“Not Even Allowed on OnlyFans”

Sydney Leathers, who has been creating content on the platform since 2017, didn’t mince words. “There’s just a lot that’s ridiculous and cartoonish about it,” she told Variety. “There’s so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating: the age-play stuff where she’s dressed as a baby in a diaper, for example. Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time.”

She’s right about the rules. OnlyFans’ Acceptable Use Policy explicitly prohibits age-play content involving real or simulated minors, along with role-played incest, bestiality, necrophilia, and rape. Violating those terms can result in content removal or full account deactivation. The platform maintains those restrictions largely to keep its relationships with the credit card processors and financial institutions it depends on intact.

Maitland Ward — who built a massive career on OnlyFans after her years on Boy Meets World and White Chicks, reportedly earning six figures a month — called the baby costume something much more serious than a bad joke. “In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” she said. “And there’s always this untrue stigma that somehow sex work is synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse. And they just said, let’s make a joke of it. That is so funny. I’m not laughing.”

Ward went further, connecting the storyline to a broader pattern she’s seen in Hollywood. “It reminds me of when I pranced around in lingerie on Boy Meets World,” she said. “It’s just the guys in the writer’s room coming up with their fantasies. To take someone so traditionally blonde and beautiful with the biggest boobs and dress her up as a dog and baby is really bizarre, but at the same time so expected in Hollywood.”

Sophie Rain, one of the platform’s most recognizable names, also weighed in — and her concern was less about the explicit content itself and more about the message it sends to young women. “I just watched the recent episode and while I do love Sydney Sweeney, I believe the depiction the director created labeling OnlyFans as this easy money gateway is damaging for girls,” she told Complex. “Only a few hundred women on the platform have made worthwhile money, and many women only make a few hundred dollars a month. I also think some of the outfits Sweeney wore, especially the baby costume, just horribly paints OnlyFans girls. I am very conservative on my OnlyFans account, and depicting us as catering to certain audiences that like us to dress up as toddlers is damaging to our community.”

Alix Lynx, a popular creator and adult actress, offered a more nuanced read. She actually appreciated the scene where Cassie attends an influencer’s house party to generate viral content — “coming from a marketing background myself, I thought, ‘OK, that’s fuckin’ smart. That’s a great formula'” — but took issue with the broader implication that success on the platform is instant and effortless. “It’s portrayed that if you just dress up and do crazy shit, you’ll instantly make money, or you just have to be hot and have big boobs and you’ll instantly cash out, and it doesn’t work like that,” she said. “You have to really grow and nurture a fan base.”

Leathers put a finer point on the emotional weight behind all the criticism. “Sex workers in general, myself included, tend to be hyper-sensitive about the way Hollywood portrays us because it’s almost never nice,” she said. “It’s always absurd or depressing and rarely ever on point. When you’re part of a marginalized community, it’s easy to get upset about certain portrayals of it.”

Levinson’s Defense — and Why It’s Not Landing

Sam Levinson has addressed the backlash, telling The Hollywood Reporter that the whole point of Cassie’s arc is absurdism — a way of showing just how untethered from reality she’s become. “[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor,” he said. “But what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it. What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion. The gag is to jump out, to break the wall.”

Director of photography Marcell Rév elaborated on the visual approach: “An obvious choice would’ve been something modern and very plain and fancy, but we ended up choosing this mid-century home, which is a little tacky, but also stuck in the ’70s. OnlyFans has its own aesthetic and how you elevate that aesthetic to the show’s aesthetic is a challenge. I’m not going to lie.” Levinson added that the ring-light cinematography was deliberate — beautiful and glowing from inside the frame, but “gnarly and jarring” when the camera pulls back. “We wanted to capture what she’s trying to show the audience and be inside of it. But then also pull back wider and see how depressing it is.”

Ward isn’t buying the artistic framing. His explanation, she said, “speaks volumes to me about why this OnlyFans storyline is being represented in the way that it is. It’s not being taken seriously.”

Before the season launched, Sweeney herself teased that things were going to get extreme. “She will do anything and at all costs to be famous this season,” Sweeney told fans. “She makes a lot of wild, interesting choices.” That much has certainly proven true.

The Podcast Moment That Went Viral for a Different Reason

Cassie’s OnlyFans arc isn’t the only thing generating heat this season. In the May 10 episode, Cassie appears on a podcast hosted by Trisha Paytas to expand her reach, and the conversation takes a sharp political turn. “If a man today were to say he wants a girlfriend that can cook or clean, he might as well be screaming the n word,” Cassie says, leaning into men’s rights rhetoric as a growth strategy. Someone off camera responds, “You sound like a Democrat,” to which Cassie fires back: “I’m not ret*rded.”

The clip has been circulating widely online, partly because it’s so deliberately provocative — and partly because fans have long speculated about Sweeney’s own political leanings, with many believing she’s a registered Republican. Whether Levinson is commenting on something, trolling the audience, or just writing Cassie as someone who’ll say anything for subscribers is, like most things in Euphoria, left deliberately unclear.

New episodes of Euphoria air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. The season finale is set for March 31.

The post OnlyFans Models Blast Sydney Sweeney’s Euphoria Arc appeared first on Cream.

• Jaime Pressly, 48, launched her OnlyFans page on May 7 at 4 p.m. ET, currently free to subscribe
• The Emmy-winning My Name Is Earl star says she joined to connect with fans on her own terms
• Her friend Shannon Elizabeth earned more than $1.2 million in her first week on the platform last month
• Creators Inc. CEO Andy Bachman helped consult on the launch
• Pressly’s page promises exclusive photos, behind-the-scenes content, and direct fan chats

Jaime Pressly is taking Hollywood access and putting it directly into fans’ hands. The My Name Is Earl star officially launched her OnlyFans page on May 7, joining a wave of established actresses who are bypassing traditional entertainment gatekeepers and building something of their own.

“I’ve always believed in evolving with the times,” the 48-year-old Emmy winner said in a statement to Variety. “This is another way for me to connect directly with my audience, on my own terms, with creativity and intention. I’ve loved meeting fans at various Comic Cons, and the excitement of having those real face-to-face moments made me want to seek options like OnlyFans.”

She also shared the news on her Instagram Story with a characteristically self-aware note: “I made one. I might change my mind tomorrow.”

The page launched free to subscribers and promises a lot: exclusive photos and videos, behind-the-scenes glimpses of her life, late-night thoughts and candid moments, and one-on-one chats. “The cameras may catch one version of me,” her bio reads. “This is where things get a little more personal, playful, and completely unfiltered. 🌶️ A little sweet. A little wild. Always authentic. If you’ve ever wondered what I’m really like when the script ends… Come closer. 💋”

Pressly told TMZ that her experiences at conventions were a real catalyst — those face-to-face moments with fans showed her there was an appetite for something more direct and unfiltered than what Hollywood typically allows. She also told People that her goal is to “create what I want, how I want, and share it directly with the people who’ve supported me for years.”

The Shannon Elizabeth Effect

The timing is hard to ignore. Just weeks before Pressly’s launch, her longtime friend Shannon Elizabeth — best known for American Pie and Scary Movie — joined OnlyFans on April 16 and promptly earned more than $1.2 million in her first seven days on the platform. Creators Inc. CEO Andy Bachman confirmed the seven-figure first week to Variety.

Elizabeth has been open about what drove her to the platform. “I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career,” she told People. “This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans.” She later described the response as staggering: “My fans have come out for me like nothing I could have ever expected. To see the fans come out and support me the way they have has just been so overwhelming and humbling and exciting.”

The two friends reunited in Texas in late April, sharing a joint Instagram post on April 26 — a moment that had fans speculating Pressly might be next. “So great seeing you after all these years, @jaimepressly,” Elizabeth wrote. “Always nice crossing paths again and sharing a moment like this. Such a beautiful human, inside and out. Hope we get to do it again soon 💫.” It turned out the speculation was right.

Pressly and Elizabeth actually have history beyond friendship — they co-starred in the 2001 film Tomcats, making this a full-circle moment of sorts.

What Pressly Brings to the Platform

Bachman, who helped shape the rollout, is bullish on how Pressly’s profile translates to the creator economy. “Jaime Pressly has the rare mix of mainstream star power and a real audience connection that modern platforms reward,” he said. “She’s an elite entertainer, and fans are going to love what she creates here.”

Pressly won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2007 for playing the irreverent Joy Turner on My Name Is Earl, a role she held across all four seasons and nearly 100 episodes. She went on to star alongside Allison Janney, Anna Faris, and Mimi Kennedy on the CBS sitcom Mom from 2013 to 2021, earning a Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination along the way. More recently she’s appeared in Welcome to Flatch, The Conners, and Elsbeth. Her film credits stretch from Can’t Hardly Wait and Not Another Teen Movie to Joe Dirt and I Love You, Man.

She’s also spoken candidly over the years about being underestimated. “The biggest misconception about being labeled ‘beautiful’ is that that’s all you are and that you don’t have a brain or anything to back it up — which couldn’t be further from the truth,” she told Us Weekly in 2022. Her OnlyFans bio seems to be making exactly that point: this is the version of her Hollywood never fully got to show.

Pressly and Elizabeth are part of a longer line of celebrities who’ve turned to the platform — Bella Thorne famously earned $2 million in her first week in 2020, Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo joined in 2023, and Carmen Electra, Tyler Posey, and Sonja Morgan have all made the move at various points. But there’s something specific happening right now with this generation of actresses — women who built their names in the late ’90s and 2000s, who are done waiting for Hollywood to hand them the next chapter.

“The cameras may catch one version of me,” Pressly wrote. The rest, apparently, lives on OnlyFans.

The post Jaime Pressly Joins OnlyFans: ‘Evolving With the Times’ appeared first on Cream.