Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo has 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 52-year-old star 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.
Drea de Matteo has branded Hollywood a ‘cesspool’ six months after being forced to join OnlyFans in the wake of her acting blacklist
The actress starred as Adriana La Cerva in The Sopranos between 1999 and 2006
‘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.
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.’
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Drea said that she would only return to acting if the right project came up
She was forced to launch her OnlyFans profile last year after she was blacklisted from Hollywood for not getting the Covid vaccination
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.
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 won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2004 for her performance in the hit series
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.’
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.’
