Former Real Housewives of New York star Leah McSweeney recently revealed that she earned more money in one week doing her current gig on OnlyFans than she earned in the entire two seasons she appeared on the hit show on Bravo, despite earning $3,000 per episode in her first season and $10,000 in her second.
“I f–king love OnlyFans,” she said on the Sofia With an F podcast. “This is great. This is a wonderful platform where people aren’t censored. They don’t have ads in their face constantly. They don’t have negative algorithms pushing bulls–t. I feel supported. I’m making money. I get to express myself. It’s fun. I love it. I’m being creative on it. It’s dope.”
Leah continued to express her admiration for the platform, saying that it even led to a collaboration and, subsequently, a friendship with The Sopranos star Drea de Matteo.
“Now she’s my friend. Like, what? Like, are you kidding me? She’s the coolest, best person I’ve ever met,” she said. “She’s so awesome. She’s been so supportive and so sweet. She’s a girl’s girl. She’s a down-ass bitch. I f–king love her.”
Despite admitting that she was hesitant about joining the platform last October and having concerns over what people would say, she’s since been able to disregard the haters. She revealed that for a moment in time, people assumed she was “selling pictures of her butthole for $5”, but set the record straight on that, categorizing her content as “sexy” but “also funny”.
Leah is not the first Housewife to find herself on OnlyFans. Back in 2023, Larsa Pippen, who ranked in the top 0.01% of content creators on the site, revealed that the feet pics she sold on OnlyFans often resulted in sales of $10,000 per day. And when Sami Sheen, the daughter of Charlie Sheen and former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Denise Richards got wind of Larsa making some serious daily dough, she decided to join the site – and it’s reported she now earns about $80,000 monthly.
Initially, Sami joining the site prompted outrage among show fans and even castmates who felt she was too young to be on it. Charlie echoed these concerns, slamming Denise’s parenting, because she was very supportive of Sami’s endeavours. And soon after, rather than just support Sami, Denise, too, joined OnlyFans and she now makes more each month than Larsa, Sami and likely Leah combined. With over 100,000 monthly subscribers, who each pay between $22 and $25 a month for access, it’s estimated that Denise is earning a cool $2 million monthly from her content on the platform.
With figures like these, it’s not hard to wonder why so many former reality stars are winding up on the platform. And when you consider the amount of legal troubles the Bravo network is facing, the allure of having complete control over how and perhaps more importantly, where you make your money from is undeniable.
During the podcast, Leah asked a question about the timing of her joining – and the answer is actually something worth exploring.
“One week is more than one season,” she said, referring to her earnings. She then posed a question asking, “Why didn’t I do OnlyFans sooner?!”
I’ve always touted how good the stars of Bravo shows are at leveraging their visibility from the show to go on and create other brands that were almost guaranteed to earn them some decent income thanks to them being so well-known now. The network holds a massive, loyal audience, and with the amount of fraternization and crossover between the audiences, and thanks to events like BravoCon and shows like Watch What Happens Live, people are privy to cast members of shows they don’t even watch simply by way of them being affiliated with the network.
With that in mind, what would have been the result if Leah had joined OnlyFans before being a housewife? Unlike Denise Richards, who had a long and fruitful career prior to joining the cast, Leah had a completely different origin story. So chances are, she wouldn’t have had the same fortune she’s currently experiencing without having been on the show first.
It’s no insult to Leah, who by many measures was successful before being on the show thanks to her clothing line, MTTM. But with the show, at the time of her joining the cast anyway, being mostly legacy women like Ramona Singer, Sonja Morgan and Luann de Lesseps who had been there from the beginning, her level of fame paled in comparison to theirs, hence the measly $3,000 per episode cheque.
Even outside of Bravo stars flocking to the site in droves, other celebrities like Cardi B, Coco Austin, Iggy Azalea, Tyler Posey, Bella Thorne and dozensof others have all created accounts and post a wide range of content. Yes, some sexy stuff, but for others, it’s not that kind of party.
In November 2022, Whitney Cummings revealed that she was launching an OnlyFans account and would be using OnlyFansTV, the free streaming service operated by the platform, to serve as the host for her new streaming project, the Unfiltered Original Roast Series. And last November, her sixth stand-up comedy special, Mouthy, which she recorded to a sold-out audience in L.A. (while seven months pregnant, btw) premiered as an OFTV original, and the platform’s very first stand-up special.
It's both poetic and symbolic that Whitney was able to establish and maintain full control of her special, in everything from executive producing it to ensuring the earnings from it were distributed the way she wanted, while in a late-stage pregnancy.
Having this type of agency is what makes a platform like OnlyFans so compelling, in addition to all of the perks that come from having such control over everything from your work environment to the amount you can earn. For someone like Leah, who is in a literal legal war over the conditions of her workplace, which she alleges include being pressured by producers to abandon her sobriety because drunk housewives are always a hit, having her mental health exploited for views, and sexual harassment from a high-ranking producer that sent photos of their genitalia to other production staff, it’s naturally a perfect fit.
It would come as no surprise if more and more former, and perhaps even current Bravo cast members joined the site and tried their hand at earning some money. And it wouldn’t surprise me if more comedians and independent entertainers started leveraging the site in order to see their projects to completion their way, and helping to ensure they pocket the profit, which is so unlike anything we see when things are done the traditional way. If that becomes the case, networks like Bravo are in big trouble – and there are a lot of people who would be happy to see that empire start crumbling.
