My Name is Earl star Jaime Pressly launches OnlyFans

Jaime Pressly has followed her friend Shannon Elizabeth in being an iconic celebrity from the early 2000s to start an OnlyFans.

OnlyFans is quickly becoming a place for stars to be able to find financial security as an X-Rated side hustle, with American Pie star Shannon Elizabeth reportedly having made $1.2 million in her first week on the platform.

Jessie Cave, the actor behind Lavender Brown from the Harry Potter movies, made a similar move, also joined OnlyFans recently and has said she is making far more from it than I’m A Celeb stars get from the ITV reality show.

All this is to say, Pressly joining the adult subscription service is the latest of a growing trend amongst celebrities.

Pressly revealed why she is joining the platform in a statement to Variety, saying: “I’ve always believed in evolving with the times. This is another way for me to connect directly with my audience, on my own terms, with creativity and intention.”

Pressly is mostly known for her role as Joy on My Name is Earl, also appearing in Not Another Teen Movie, and working for years as a model.

She continued, saying that she has ‘loved meeting fans at various Comic Cons’, adding: “The excitement of having those real face to face moments made me want to seek options like OnlyFans.”

Pressly consulted with Andy Bachman on the launch, the CEO of a creator monetisation company ‘Creators Inc’.

Bachman told Variety of Pressly’s decision: “Jaime Pressly has the rare mix of mainstream star power and a real audience connection that modern platforms reward. She’s an elite entertainer, and fans are going to love what she creates here.”

Many fans online have pointed out an interesting niche of the announcement, that Pressly’s plans appear to be a return to what OnlyFans was launched as before it became known as a predominantly sexual site for porn stars.

OnlyFans was originally launched in 2016 by Tim Stokely, who said the idea was to allow creators to monetise their relationship with audiences directly rather than being reliant upon advertisers.

In its original conception it was more of a competitor to YouTube and Patreon than it was to Pornhub, with Stokely explaining in a 2021 British GQ profile: “Our thinking was always ‘OK, what if you could build a platform where it’s exactly [the same] or very similar to existing on social media, but with the key difference being the payment button?’

“So all of these creators, making this amazing content for free, had a very simple way of earning from that content.”

One comment on the announcement of Pressly joining OnlyFans said: “If, in theory she's not producing adult content, and is legitimately using onlyfans was a platform to monetize interacting with fans, that was the intended purpose of OnlyFans.”

Shannon Elizabeth has gone a similar way with her OnlyFans, posting no nude content and focusing moreso on interactions with fans.

Speaking about why she joined the platform, Elizabeth said that her career in Hollywood was spent with ‘other people controlling the narrative and the outcome of her career’.

She said: “This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans.

“I’m choosing OnlyFans because it allows me to connect directly with my audience, create on my own terms, and just be free. I really do think this is the future.”