Drea De Matteo said her teenage son helps edit the photos she posts on OnlyFans, a detail she shared while talking about how her children pushed her to join the subscription platform in the first place.
Appearing on the Not Today, Pal podcast with Robert Iler and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, the 52-year-old actor said the arrangement involves both of her children, including daughter Alabama, 16. When Iler noted, “Before you start, your son was outside saying he edits your OnlyFans photos,” De Matteo replied, “Oh yeah. He’s like, ‘So what do you want me to do with the bikini line here?’”
She also said she checks the material with her children before it goes up. “No. But they don’t see the girl shots. But I do go over that with them before I ever put them out…I was like, ‘Are you okay with this?’ Because it’s like, if I were to do it in a movie, because I would make out with girls in movies all day long before I’d even make out with boys,” she said. De Matteo added that Alabama edits pictures too and that her children were the ones telling her to join OnlyFans. “My kids were the ones that were like, ‘Do it.’ She’ll [Alabama] edit the pictures, too, because they want certain things that we haven't been able to do,” she said.
The conversation landed because De Matteo has not been shy about how sharply her work situation changed. She said, “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. I was never the kind of actor that took jobs just to stay in the business. I literally took jobs to feed my family.”
That is the backdrop to why the OnlyFans move drew so much attention last year, when she told News in September that her children had encouraged her to sign up. Known to viewers from The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives, De Matteo has already faced criticism over the subscription platform. What changed this week was not the backlash itself, but the fact that she described her teenagers as active participants in the work, not simply aware of it.
That is where the friction sits. De Matteo said the children do not see certain content, and she insists there is a line between what she shares and what they review. But she also said they help shape the presentation, and she answered criticism with a blunt defense: “So, when people make nasty comments about why I would have done that, my response is, 'Damn straight, I hope you're never in the f*****g position I'm in. I take care of an entire family and a lot of other people who depend on me.'” The result is a portrait of a family business built around necessity, one that De Matteo says began with her children’s support and continues with their help.
For now, the most consequential fact is plain: the actor is not backing away from the arrangement. She says her children know what they are helping with, she says they encouraged her to do it, and she says the decision was tied to keeping her family afloat.
