Donna Mills joined OnlyFans in late July at 85 years old. Less than a month later, she’s reportedly earned “many six figures,” and her subscription page doesn’t even cost anything to join.
The number came out during Mills’ appearance on the Creators Inc. podcast, hosted by the talent agency’s CEO Andy Bachman, who’s been guiding her through the platform. “You’re working with Creators Inc., and I can say that you are doing incredibly well,” Bachman told her on air. “Many six figures, and it’s been early.” That’s a staggering figure for a free page, and it points to exactly how she’s actually making the money: not subscriptions, but tips and paid direct messages from fans who want more access than the free content already offers.
Mills’ content stays firmly non-nude, offering makeup-free photos, personal updates, and glimpses of her day-to-day life, which is the kind of access fans spent decades wishing they had. “It’s a very different world today,” Mills said. “And I’m trying to adjust to that world, and finding it very gratifying to be able to interact with my fans.” She’s framed the whole venture as continuity rather than reinvention: her Variety statement announcing the account described OnlyFans as simply another way to connect with the people who’ve supported her career for decades, “while staying true to who I am.” Bachman also said the goal was never to change who Mills is, just to give longtime fans more of the personality and behind-the-scenes access they already loved.
What’s striking, listening to Mills describe it, is how different the fan relationship feels to her now compared to her Knots Landing heyday. “They want to be friends with me,” she said of her subscribers. “They want to know me. They want to know what I do during the day when I’m home. They want to see my home. They want to know much more about my personal life than we ever experienced back in the ’80s and the ’90s, that, you know, the fans were cut off from.” That’s really the entire OnlyFans value proposition in one quote. Not explicit content, in Mills’ case, but the direct, unmediated access that television fame never actually provided, no matter how big the audience was.
The most-discussed request so far remains the grape-stomping video, born from a subscriber’s ask that Mills film herself crushing grapes at her vineyard. She’s given a funny update on the production challenges involved: “I tried to shoot it myself. You can’t shoot something while you’re stomping. It just doesn’t work.” She’s promising to do it properly soon, explaining it isn’t so much a chore as the kind of playful, personal content she wants her page to be known for. When Entertainment Tonight’s Kevin Frazier suggested the request was probably more about her feet than the grapes, Mills didn’t flinch: “There are a lot of people out there who are turned on by toes, I guess.”
None of this is new territory for Mills, even if the platform is. She turned her Knots Landing fame and her signature blue eye makeup into a hit 1986 instructional VHS, The Eyes Have It, followed by her own cosmetics line, running the influencer playbook years before “influencer” was a word anyone used. She landed two non-nude Playboy covers in 1987 and 1989. Monetizing glamour, access, and audience loyalty isn’t a late-career pivot for Mills. It’s the same skill set she’s had the whole time…there’s just a platform she can use to fully monetize it now.
Her current bio promises fans exactly that: “moments that don’t make it on screen. Personal, more candid, and completely unscripted.” Six figures in under a month, off a free page, says the fans were more than willing to pay for it.