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Margo has way more than money troubles in the Apple TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
After an affair with her married English professor leads to an unexpected pregnancy, Margo Millet (Elle Fanning) confronts a laundry list of issues from negotiating with the baby’s father, to mollifying her sleep-deprived roommates to, yes, a lack of money. And while she’s able to solve some of those problems with her creative approach to OnlyFans modeling, others don’t have easy solutions. That is to say: Margo’s got family troubles.
As the only daughter to a histrionic former Hooter’s waitress mother Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a drug-addicted ex-pro wrestler father Jinx (Nick Offerman), Margo is used to a complicated family dynamic. Once her son Bodhi is born, however, she needs everyone on their A-game. And that’s where two mismatched figures come in to establish the beginnings of an unlikely, yet unbreakable, family unit: Margo’s aforementioned father Jinx and her sole remaining roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham).
“I really love their journey together in support of Margo and Bodhi; in support of the household,” Offerman tells Den of Geek. “I come from a big family and Susie reminds me of my family where she sees the work that needs doing in the apartment and she just does it. She doesn’t ask questions. She’s like ‘I’m here for you.’ We end up forming this wonderful family bond. I think that’s a nice thing to show an audience in a time when isolation is being sold to us so powerfully.”
Jinx and Susie are the two most stalwart figures on Team Margo, helping the single mother with all sorts of child-rearing tasks. They also make up an unusual partnership, with one being an adolescent wrestling megafan and the other being her washed up idol. Though Susie is beyond star struck when Jinx knocks on her front door (Margo didn’t let her in on what her largely absent father does for a living), the pair slowly develops a co-equal relationship of mutual respect.
According to Graham, a young actor previously seen in Sex Education and Bad Sisters, the structure created by Margo’s Got Money Troubles director Dearbhla Walsh allowed her to swiftly acclimate to working with a veteran actor like Offerman.
“One of the incredible things about Dearbhla is she page-turns your scenes so you can see your arc in its entirety,” she says. “I think that’s so important. You get time to throw out ideas and ask questions. A lot of our scenes were together and I got to do them with Nick before we got to set. Especially as someone who feels very, very green and very new to this whole world, to step into a cast of this caliber, that time beforehand was so generous. It meant I wasn’t stepping in for the first time on set with the cameras rolling and going ‘Oh my God, that’s Nick Offerman!”
“I didn’t care for her,” Offerman deadpans in response. “It’s actually funny to hear you [say that.] I know you’re young but you don’t seem green. I was such a big fan of Bad Sisters and I saw season 2 that Thaddea was in. It was like when I got offered my job on The Last of Us, I had just seen Murray Bartlett in The White Lotus. It’s like seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark and they say ‘the guy in the hat and the whip – that’s gonna be your friend in the show.’”
While connecting with each other and forming the backbone of an unconventional family unit came naturally to Offerman and Graham, getting attuned to the cultural phenomenon that is professional wrestling was a bigger challenge. Thankfully, Offerman had resources to learn from, including Margo’s Got Money Troubles novelist and wrestling stan Rufi Thorpe.
“I knew about the Von Erichs because of [my friend Corn Mo’s] gorgeous ballad ‘Shine On, Golden Warrior.’ But I really came in pretty ignorant to the contemporary world. Rufi is a crazy wrestling fanatic. She really turned me on to Bret Hart’s memoir and Mick Foley’s memoir. She was a great resource. I was able to do a lot of homework. Then being trained by Chavo Guerrero – in actual wrestling by an actual member of the Guerrero family – were all huge parts of my recipe to put together Jinx.”
The Von Erichs, Bret Hart, Mick Foley, Chavo Guerrero, and Rufi Thorpe may have been the recipe to put together Jinx, but the bond between Jinx and Susie is the recipe to put together the Millet family…money troubles be damned.
The first three episodes of Margo’s Got Money Troubles are available to stream on Apple TV now. New episodes premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV, culminating with the finale on May 20.
The post Jinx and Susie Are the Linchpin of Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ Modern Family appeared first on Den of Geek.
