The Sopranos star Drea de Mateo has boasted that her OnlyFans career has helped her get away from the seedy underbelly of Hollywood and given her the freedom to become her own boss.
The 52-year-old retired actress – who previously slammed Hollywood as a ‘cesspool’ – got recently candid about how selling racy images and video on the internet content subscription service has changed her life.
A clip from TMZ Presents Famous & Naked was released on Monday where she maintained her stance on the shadiness of the film and television industry and bragged that OnlyFans provides a safer space for her.
Drea – who played Adriana La Cerva on the iconic HBO series – said: ‘Hollywood the actual industry itself, there’s a lot of shifty s*** that goes on in Hollywood and we all know that. It’s about freedom and I don’t have to answer to f***ing anybody right now.’
The reason that the former actress joined the premium subscription service has been well documented as it helped save her from losing her home.
The Sopranos star Drea de Mateo has boasted that her OnlyFans career has helped her get away from the seedy underbelly of Hollywood and given her the freedom to become her own boss
A clip from TMZ Presents Famous & Naked was released on Monday where she maintained her stance on the shadiness of the film and television industry and bragged that OnlyFans provides a safer space for her; she is pictured promoting her OnlyFans
In the TMZ clip she said: ‘Why did I join OnlyFans? When we launched we had – I would say – a couple hundred bucks left in the bank. I’m not kidding. My house was going into for foreclosure.
‘Did I do it out of desperation? F*** yes I did. Did I think it would empower me just to be on OnlyFans? No, that wasn’t the f***ing point you know it empowered me to take care of my f***ing family. So the negativity that came with it, bring it the f*** on.’
Back in March The Sopranos star slammed Hollywood after being blacklisted by the studios for refusing to get the Covid vaccine – revealing that it would take a lot for her to come out of retirement.
In September, the former actress claimed she was forced to turn to the subscription service OnlyFans to make money after her stance on the vaccination caused her acting work to dry up and her agent to drop her, which quickly led her to being in a perilous financial situation and at risk of losing her home.
Although Drea has since declared she was able to make enough cash in five minutes of launching her profile to pay back her mortgage foreclosure, she has now implied that she herself is cutting ties with Hollywood.
Speaking exclusively with DailyMail.com, Drea blasted the ‘saturated’ industry, and said: ‘I mean, that place [Hollywood] is a freaking cesspool. I’m not gonna lie. TV sucks.
‘There’s nothing great. Sopranos opened the door for [me] 100 per cent.’
Drea starred as Adriana La Cerva in The Sopranos for seven years between 1999 and 2006.
Drea – who played Adriana La Cerva on the iconic HBO series (pictured alongside Michael Imperioli in 2002) – said: ‘Hollywood the actual industry itself, there’s a lot of shifty s*** that goes on in Hollywood and we all know that. It’s about freedom and I don’t have to answer to f***ing anybody right now’
Referring to a recent meeting with the HBO drama’s showrunner David Chase, and executive producers Terence Winter and Matthew Wiener, she continued: ‘They were doing a panel and they basically were like, “We don’t even trust the audience anymore because it’s all of this stuff that societies cram down people’s throats.”
‘It’s like, I don’t even know that it’s the audience. I think it’s more the industry.
‘The industry has just… everything that our generation has pushed for, whether it be better television, whether it be human rights, body sovereignty, all of these things, they took it and made an aberration out of it.
‘And the same thing went for television. Television is so saturated. Streaming doesn’t help anybody except for the big corporations.’
Weighing up whether she would ever go back to acting, Drea said: ‘It would have to really be something that was meaningful to me.
‘I don’t need to just jump on just to get a paycheck even though I had literally $10 left in my bank account when all this was happening, which is why I started the OnlyFans page.
‘I’d rather bet on myself than bet on the man at this point.’
While Drea appears to be disillusioned with Hollywood, she did share that she starred in a film after the Covid mandates lifted on May 12, 2023 and before the SAG-AFTRA strike took hold on July 14, 2023.
Back in March The Sopranos star slammed Hollywood after being blacklisted by the studios for refusing to get the Covid vaccine – revealing that it would take a lot for her to come out of retirement
The actress starred as Adriana La Cerva in The Sopranos between 1999 and 2006
She was forced to launch her OnlyFans profile last year after she was blacklisted from Hollywood for not getting the Covid vaccination
In the same interview with DailyMail.com, Drea said that her pivot to OnlyFans helped her save her home from foreclosure and launch her own business, a fashion brand she’s called ULTRAFREE.
She admitted: ‘OnlyFans saved my life, 100 per cent. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it really did save us.’
Tearing up, she continued: ‘Anybody that wants to condemn me and put me down, go for it. I just hope you never find yourself in the position I was in to take care of two little kids.
‘It saved my home of many years that was very important to us. And beyond all that, it has given me enough money to start up and finance ULTRAFREE.’
Drea had just $10 in her bank account when she started her OnlyFans account.
She had found herself in a perilous financial situation after taking a forbearance to help with her mortgage repayments, but ultimately couldn’t afford the astronomical sum that she owed collectors.
‘They put me into foreclosure and my house had flooded, so I was trying to sell the house quickly,’ she said. ‘I wanted to try and sell it before they took it.
‘At the same time, I lost my mom, and my other mom, who has dementia, had run out of money for her caregiver. I didn’t know which way was up.’
Drea won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2004 for her performance in the hit series
Turning to the platform was initially not something that Drea wanted to do. And in fact, when she first toyed with the idea, it was because she and her boyfriend had thought about starting a podcast.
‘I did it, but I didn’t want to do it,’ she continued. ‘I got a lot of heat for doing it and it went f*cking viral and people went nuts.
‘I mean, the original premise to open the OnlyFans was Robbie and I were gonna do a podcast on there that was controversial. We wanted to put it behind a paywall so to not be destroyed in the media for it.
‘That was what it was going to be originally, you know, like with him rubbing my feet because you have to add a little something for OnlyFans in there.’
