The Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo has opened up about how surprised she is by the success of her OnlyFans, which has already helped her pay off her mortgage.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the 52-year-old actress revealed that her foray into charging for lingerie pictures on OnlyFans initially started as a joke and eventually helped save her financially. "The kids started joking around about it, and they were like, ‘Hey, why don’t you do this like as a joke?'" she shared. "And I was like, ‘All right, well, let’s do it.’ We were gonna do a podcast on OnlyFans, a really controversial podcast on there that we knew wasn’t gonna get banned for talking about touchy subjects. We thought, ‘Let’s put it behind the paywall, get a huge audience and do this here.’ And you know, maybe have someone rub my feet while we’re talking — so you make it OnlyFans friendly, you know what I mean?”
However, her plans changed when she announced her plans to launch an OnlyFans account last year, with many hoping to see some skimpy photos of Matteo sporting the beloved "Mob Wife" aesthetic she helped define as Adriana La Cerva on The Sopranos. "People are really excited over granny porn," she said. "Now we’re out of the woods with our home, thank God."
But the reaction to her OnlyFans hasn't been entirely positive, despite the enthusiasm from some of her fans. "I’ve never been in the spotlight," she said. "My personal life has never been up for question by anybody, because who fucking cares? When the OnlyFans thing came out, I was like, why the fuck does anyone gives a shit about it? I thought I’d make a couple thousand dollars, get by. I did not know that it was going to be that explosive."
Among her critics are "Christian conservatives," who she said have labeled her "a whore." Some Italians and Sopranos fans have also "frown[ed] upon" her embrace of the platform. "The liberals think I’m a piece of shit because I didn’t comply to the vaccine mandate," she added, after noting she lost a lot of work following the COVID-19 pandemic because she refused to get vaccinated. "I can’t win. I joke around like I’m a man without a country.”
In the interview, she also touched upon whether she'll get back into acting in a big series again. "I honestly don’t know that I want to play anybody but myself right now," she said. "Like if there was an Adriana character again… [Sopranos creator] David Chase, I was with him a few weeks ago. He goes, ‘I bet I could make you act again.’ I was like, ‘Damn straight you could, and you might be the only one.'”
In January, The Sopranos turned 25, and Complex celebrated by ranking 20 of the show's most iconic characters. See where Adriana La Cerva falls on the list here.
