'Sopranos' Star Drea de Matteo Reveals the Real Reason She Joined OnlyFans
Drea De Matteo
Drea de Matteo is proud of her decision to join OnlyFans—and her motivation for making the move isn't what you'd expect.
The Sopranos star, 51, announced she joined the subscription site in August with a since-deleted nude photo posted to her Instagram page.
De Matteo, who also has her own wine brand, podcast and online T-shirt shop, told Fox News Digital that she is happy to be able to stay home with daughter Alabama Gypsyrose and son Waylon Albert Jennings, who she shares with ex Shooter Jennings. Her career change was unexpected, even for her—and she says that it was her children who encouraged her to join OnlyFans.
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"My kids were the ones that were like, ‘Do it,’" she said. "[Alabama will] edit the pictures, too, because they want certain things that we haven't been able to do."
"I know some people have said some nasty things about me having joined OnlyFans. But, you know, the way we see it in this house is mommy's a warrior, not accepting defeat," de Matteo, who also previously starred in Desperate Housewives, said. "I figured, 'OK, so everybody's in their underwear and being sexy on Instagram and I don't do that, but I can do that and get paid for it.'"
She added, "I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner."
Of course, she may not have thought of starting a $15 monthly subscription with the service if she still had steady acting roles coming in—but by her own admission, her personal choices elsewhere in her life made that basically impossible.
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De Matteo said that her refusal to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates on TV and film sets made her lose work in the industry.
"I used to have a lot of money. And then, all of a sudden, I went from being allowed to work to never being allowed to work again," she griped. "I was never the kind of actor that took jobs just to stay in the business. I literally took jobs to feed my family."
Her vaccine stance, as well as the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, led her to pivot.
"I didn't know this was going to have to be a change of life, you know, all of a sudden that during a time I'm supposed to be relaxing a little bit, that I would have to switch careers and figure new things out because my own industry thinks I'm, you know, a savage," she explained. "I guess you could say I was a bad girl because I did not follow the rules a couple of years ago. So, I don't want to be at the mercy of mandates or strike or anything like that ever again."
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