Rico Nasty Talks Apple TV's 'Margo's Got Money Troubles,' Puerto Rican Roots And Her Next Hip-Hop Era - INTERVIEW

Rico Nasty did not have to search too far to find KC, her sharp-edged character in Apple TV's Margo's Got Money Troubles. She found her in herself.

The Maryland rapper, born Maria-Cecilia Simone Kelly, makes her acting debut in the A24-produced Apple TV comedy as KC, one of the women in Margo's chaotic new online world. The series, based on Rufi Thorpe's bestselling novel, stars Elle Fanning as Margo, a 20-year-old single mother trying to survive bills, motherhood, and public judgment after turning to OnlyFans. Apple renewed the show for a second season before its May 20 finale.

In an interview with this reporter, Rico said KC came from her own instinct to protect the people around her. "I built her, yes, a lot, based on my experiences," she said. "There is a sense of protection that I have over my friends, over what I've built, over my fan base."

That protectiveness, she said, became central to KC, a character who is not written to be soft, agreeable, or instantly welcoming. Rico said she wanted to push back against the idea that sex workers are not "girls' girls" or that distance automatically means cruelty.

"Oftentimes people are mean because that's a form of protection and that's OK," she said. "You don't have to give everybody every bit of you the minute that they need you."

In the series, Casey and Rose, played by Lindsey Normington, operate in a world that Margo wants to enter but does not fully understand. Rico said Casey's reaction to Margo is not hostility for its own sake. It is a boundary.

"You came here for advice," Rico said of Margo's dynamic with Casey. "You want to be cool like us."

That bluntness also mirrors Rico Natsy's music career. Since breaking through with songs such as 'Smack a Bitch' and 'Poppin,' the Latina rapper has built a following around intensity, color, rage, humor and refusal. Her 2019 mixtape Anger Management with Kenny Beats became one of her defining projects, followed by the albums 'Nightmare Vacation,' 'Las Ruinas' and 'Lethal.'

Rico said Casey's attitude is close to the way she has survived music.

"I don't really care if people like me or not," she said. "I've always been myself, and I've always been true to myself, even if it might turn a certain group of people off."

The role also seems to have changed the next Rico Nasty era. After the darker rock-adjacent energy of 'Lethal,' Rico said her upcoming music is all hip-hop and more colorful, with Kenny Beats back in the fold.

"KC's character is so colorful," she said. "I was inspired by her and I'm definitely reincorporating that into a lot of the music."

Rico also brought a personal Latino thread into the conversation. Asked about her Spanish, she laughed that she speaks "un poquito," adding that her grandmother is from Puerto Rico and speaks Spanish fully. "I use mine to comunicate with her," the artist added.

That detail lands naturally in a career that has always been about refusing to shrink. Rico Nasty has long moved between worlds: punk and rap, sweetness and rage, beauty and chaos, María Cecilia and Rico. Now KC has given her another mirror.

Asked what the character left her with, Rico said the answer was permission.

"It is OK to be protective over the things that you love, even if it may scare people off a little bit," she said.

And then came the most Rico Nasty answer possible: KC also reminded her to have fun with clothes again.

"When we were doing wardrobe and I was trying on these clothes, it felt like fireworks in my head," she said. "I miss having fun with colors and wigs."

Casey may have entered Margo's Got Money Troubles as a side character. But for Rico Nasty, she seems to have opened a door.

All the episodes of the series are available on Apple TV.