As Season 3 of Euphoria continues to stir up some controversy, one of the show’s stars is perplexed by Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney) OnlyFans storyline.
Chloe Cherry, who was an adult film actress and OnlyFans star herself before she began playing Faye Valentine in Season 2 of the HBO show, recently called Cassie’s new job “crazy as fuck” given her privileged life.
“People have the weirdest ideas and fantasies of sex work being like, so empowering and we’ve seen all these news stories where they’re like, ‘Oh, OnlyFans model makes $700 billion in a month,’ and everyone’s like, ‘whoa,’” she told Refinery29. “I literally just think that these things are a bit of smoke and mirrors, actually, and I don’t know. I don’t even really understand what it means to be on OnlyFans, honestly, I don’t even really know what people are doing on there.”
Cherry added of Cassie being on the adult subscription site, “It’s really hard to say if it would give her any power. Obviously Cassie is extremely attractive, so it probably would lead to her making a lot of money. But it just feels crazy as fuck to see somebody living like Cassie turn to sex work. It’s like, holy shit, that’s where we’re at in society? I really think that OnlyFans is a crazy, weird phenomenon of the 2020s that we will look back on and be very confused by.”
Although Cherry has expressed surprise at being embraced on a mainstream show, the actress noted that her inclusion “has nothing to do with empowerment,” but the current state of capitalism.
“I do think that it’s true. OnlyFans and sex work have become more normalized, but it’s literally only because of capitalism and the economy getting worse,” explained Cherry. “It has nothing to do with empowerment or power or anything. What it actually 100% has to do with is just the fact that we live under capitalism and the economy is horrible. That’s why people are turning to it.”
Following her mainstream acting debut in Season 2, Cherry reprises her role as Faye in Season 3 of Euphoria, which airs Sundays at 9pm ET/PT on HBO.