Taking a Shot
Finnish comedy-drama Money Shot sees a former porn star and a budding film director unite to shake up the adult film business. Writer Jemina Jokisalo and executive producer Sasu Norhomaa discuss making the show and why they’re confident it brings the laughs.
When it comes to making comedy-dramas, Finnish writer and producer Jemina Jokisalo believes sometimes these shows can lean too heavily into the drama and forget about the funny. But with her latest series, Money Shot, she was determined to make the audience laugh out loud.
Set in the world of adult films, the series stars Pihla Viitala as porn star Sari, who is left angry and upset after being fired for being too old. In her early 40s, she must now find a new way to make a living and decides to team up with aspiring director Linnea (Reetta Ylä-Rautio) to launch a new company that aspires to produce feminist erotic movies and fulfil women’s desires – and their own.
“It began as a dramedy, then it went towards drama and then towards almost slapstick comedy,” Jokisalo tells DQ. “Now what we’ve ended up with is a dramedy again, but when people say dramedy, it can sometimes mean it’s a comedy but it’s not very funny. But actually, the case with Money Shot is that it’s laugh-out-loud funny, I think. It definitely makes you laugh, but then it has these deeper moments where you feel for the characters.”
That Jokisalo, head of drama at series producer Solar Republic, began developing the show is also something of a joke. It was in 2019 that she and Solar executive producer Sasu Norhomaa were working together, and they were sounding off about the fact some of their projects weren’t moving forward.
“He just basically said to me, ‘We’ll have to start producing porn,’ and I replied, ‘OK, but it has to be feminist porn at least,’” she recalls. “Then I started thinking that would actually make a really interesting comedy series, and I started to develop the characters.”
She describes Sari as “the most warm-hearted person on the planet,” a veteran of the porn industry who has been “doing her stuff for a long time.” But when she’s told she’s not good enough – or young enough – anymore, those words trigger a crisis in her life, forcing her to evolve from a person who has been the object of everyone’s gaze to taking matters into her own hands and starting a new business.
“She has not run a business before, so it’s a bit tricky, but she makes it and she really grows a lot,” Jokisalo says.
Meanwhile, her young business partner Linnea somewhat unexpectedly announces her intention to partner with Sari, inspired both by Sari’s motivations to prove herself as more than just an object of male desire and her own frustrations at failing to land a place in film school.
“Actually, Linnea wants to bail out [of the business] but then during episode two, Linnea starts her own evolution because she’s stuck in a relationship that is basically almost diluted to friendship, she’s very lost with her own sexuality – she’s never had an orgasm – and she figures out that, ‘OK, if I start to do this, maybe I can find some enjoyment in my own life.’ It really turns her whole life around.”
That they come from different backgrounds means the partnership between Sari and Linnea might have been particularly explosive. But Jokisalo says that while there are moments of conflict between the pair, their shared sense of ambition, and the support they offer one another, allows them to take this step forward together.
“Lena comes from an artistic family that has a lot of money, but she’s an outsider in her family because her dad is a film director and her brother is already enrolled in film school, and she can never get in. Then Sari’s an outsider to society. Everyone thinks they know what Sari is like based on what she’s doing, which is not true. But they know what they want, and they have the same goal.”
That goal is to produce erotic films for women as well as men.
“Well, obviously mainstream porn is mostly done for the male gaze,” Jokisalo continues. “Then there’s this smaller, niche side to porn, which is called feminist. It’s ethical, so the people who are doing it definitely want to do it, and they get paid well. Usually there’s an intimacy coordinator on the set and everything’s done really carefully.
“But also, the films are very different because they cater to women more. Women can also like rough things in sex, but it’s not all that. The story is more important and there’s real passion.”
Beyond Sari and Linnea’s story, Money Shot – which is known locally as Toinen Tuleminen (The Second Coming) – also explores the hidden realities of the porn industry and reveals what making one of these films is really like. Some of the supporting artists on the show have appeared in porn films or run OnlyFans accounts, and were able to provide an insight into the business that supported Jokisalo’s own research.
“I spoke with women who have done porn or have done sex work, and the number-one thing everyone said was that they’re almost always portrayed in series and films as somehow damaged or it’s not good for you,” she explains. “There are rarely any positive stories about working in the sex industry. That’s why I wanted the show to be sex-positive and free of shame.
“We can be very judgemental towards different people and certainly towards sex workers, but we are all hustling for money all the time. Everyone’s got to make a living.”
Jokisalo first met commissioners from Finnish streamer Elisa Viihde at C21Media television conference Content London, and they were immediately smitten with the premise. She then began work on the scripts, writing six episodes while co-writer Daniela Hakulinen picked up the other two.
“I spent two or three months doing the story arc for the first season by myself mostly, and I also did research,” she says. “Then when we got the green light from Elisa, Daniela came on board. We twisted some things around and made them more nuanced, and then we wrote the scripts.”
Wanting the series to appeal to a broad audience, Jokisalo knew the show had to be funny. “It’s funny for the female audience, but also for the men because they can laugh at lots of things about feminism, too,” she notes. “It’s also very sex-positive. No one needs to be shamed about anything. We show some nudity, it’s there but it’s not explicit, and we made a decision not to show the main actresses nude or anything like that.”
Norhomaa was the first person to read the scripts, and Jokisalo remembers his common refrain: “It’s really good, but it could be funnier.” She would then revise the drafts with more jokes, before sending them off to Elisa for their feedback. Federation Studios also joined the project as the international distributor.
But what was funny on the page became even funnier on set in the hands of director Teemu Niukkanen (Härölä).
“If you have the wrong director, it’s never going to be funny,” Jokisalo says. “For this project we found Teemu, who is the only director in Finland who refuses to do anything else than comedy. He read the pilot script and he was like, ‘Oh shit, man, this is the best comedy piece I’ve ever read in Finland.
“It’s important we laugh at the same things. Then, of course, the casting process was also really important because the actors needed to have comedy rhythm. Actually, Pihla hasn’t done a lot of comedy and she was really excited to get to do this. She was really good.”
Norhomaa has known Viitala for many years and says she was the first choice to play Sari from the beginning. The actor has starred in Hollywood films such as Hansel & Gretel, and takes the lead in Netflix’s Finnish crime drama Deadwind. But to play Sari, the normally dark-haired star underwent a dramatic transformation.
In contrast, rising star Ylä-Rautio (Kullannuput/Like Mother, Like Daughter) is a “natural talent” who stood out during the audition process for her “impeccable” comedy timing. With Ylä-Rautio starring opposite Viitala, the pair also demonstrated the generation gap the producers wanted to have as an obstacle between Sari and Linnea’s burgeoning partnership.
“We needed a big name for the lead and Pihla is definitely one of the biggest names,” Jokisola says, “and we knew she could do it. We had an instinct. She came to the first meeting and was like, ‘OK, I was looking at this documentary about old porn actresses, and I need the nails and I need to dye the hair.’ She actually did a lot of work with our wardrobe and make-up personnel to create Sari’s look.”
It’s not just Sari who stands out on screen, but the whole look of the show, which was designed to bring an element of Californian sunshine to Finland. “The look is different to other Finnish series. It’s quite unique,” Norhomaa says. “We wanted to make Finnish California. That’s the style we wanted. In Finland, there’s no porn industry, and the only real porn industry is in California. If you say porn industry, everyone thinks of LA so we had to take that to Finland.
“It was something we wanted even before the scripts. We didn’t want it to look like Finland. Finland is grey – in the summertime we have a lot of sun, but mostly it’s grey. It was also about trying not to make it too realistic, because nobody believes there’s a porn industry in Finland.”
Viewers in Finland will get to see Money Shot on Elisa Viihde from May 2. But before then, it will have its world premiere in competition at French television festival Canneseries next Tuesday, April 9.
Jokisalo believes that while the show’s porn industry setting will make it “pop,” she hopes people who might be “judgemental” towards the subject give it a chance.
“If they get past the beginning of this series, they’ll be on board,” she says. “The pilot is really funny. We have a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the series, and laughter is something that will always win audiences over. Even if someone is judgemental towards porn or people who do it, maybe they can change their minds after seeing the series.”
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tagged in: Elisa Viihde, Federation Studios, Jemina Jokisalo, Money Shot, Sasu Norhomaa, Solar Republic, The Second Coming, Toinen Tuleminen