Viola Odette Harlow Spills on Hollywood, Health Battles, and Life on OnlyFans

Reese Piper
Sep 14
10 min read

Updated: Sep 14

REESE PIPER IN CONVERSATION with VIOLA ODETTE HARLOW

PHOTOGRAPHY by PENELOPE DARIO

With her breathy vocals and ethereal aesthetic, Viola Odette Harlow channels old-school glamour like only a former child actor turned rockstar can.

Fellow sex work and disability advocate Reese Piper catches up with Viola shortly after the Los Angeles fires to discuss living with chronic illness, the intersection of disability, sex work, and art, and her upcoming book No One Famous Has It Yet. Harlow reflects on growing up in Hollywood, her shifting relationship with performance, and how survival often demands reinvention.

PETIT MORT (Reese Piper):

How have you been handling the fires in LA?

Viola:

It’s been tough. I have lupus and heart disease, so I’m especially vulnerable to smoke. I usually avoid even a little secondhand smoke, so being surrounded by it feels dystopian. It reminds me of The Handmaid’s Tale—I often joke with my husband that the writer had to create an extreme scenario to make the story believable. But now, it’s almost like we’re living in it. The premise of fertility issues and societal collapse seems less far-fetched with everything happening now.

It’s getting worse every day.

Exactly. Unlike Handmaid’s Tale, where there’s a reason behind the chaos, in real life, it feels like things just keep spiraling with no explanation. I studied psychology, and what stands out to me about people like Trump and Musk is their body language. There’s a lot of insecurity behind their public personas.

They definitely come off as insecure.

Right. It’s like the behavior of a bullied child saying, “I’ll show you,” but they’re grown men in power.

It’s like they’re angry, wounded boys.

Exactly. Maybe they didn’t have the right role models, men who taught them empathy and respect for all people. As a millennial, I remember a time when men were expected to show respect, even if it wasn’t always genuine. But now, I see young men online using the Bible to argue that women should be subservient to men, and I’m shocked. My dad’s a theology major, and that’s a misinterpretation of the Bible. It’s been written by many people over time, and people often cherry-pick verses to fit their agendas, like justifying views on women or abortion.

You grew up in LA, right?

I’ve lived in a few places, but mostly LA. I love it here, even though it keeps burning down and getting worse each year. I dream sometimes of moving to British Columbia, living like Anne of Green Gables, but I’ll probably always stay in LA. It’s where the magic of old Hollywood happened—where Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire danced, where The Wizard of Oz was made. As a kid, I was fascinated by its history, like the Brown Derby, even though it’s a bank now. It felt like the world of old movies—like I Love Lucy when she goes to Hollywood.