Mikey Madison Is Enjoying Her Breakout ‘Anora’ Ride

We’ve caught Mikey Madison before the roller coaster truly begins. Over the past five months, the “veteran” 25-year-old actress has witnessed her film “Anora” win the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and experienced rapturous screenings at the Telluride, Toronto, and the New York Film Festivals. There is so much more to come, though. A long list of awards show invitations await, including a ticket to the Dolby Theater in March. Not only is Madison a frontrunner to earn a Best Actress nomination, but also to win the 2025 Oscar.

READ MORE: Best Actress Oscars 2025 Predictions and Contenders

She might not be a household name yet, but Madison has been acting since she was 15. Her first professional role was a little-seen indie film, “Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey.” It was when she was cast as Pamela Adlon’s daughter in the critically acclaimed FX series “Better Things” that her career started to percolate. There was a part in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time in America” and a pivotal role in the 2022 franchise revival, “Scream.” It’s her portrayal of the title character – or Ani – in Sean Baker‘s dramedy that has placed her in the top tier of young Hollywood talent. An LA native, Madison seems to be taking it all in stride, telling The Playlist this is “something I’ve dreamed of my entire career. So, I don’t know. I’m just enjoying the ride so far.”

For our conversation, Madison discusses the research that went into portraying a contemporary stripper and sex worker, how she found such great chemistry with her co-stars, the one contribution she provided Baker that stands out, the benefit of doing 10-minute straight shots, and much more.

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The Playlist: You are a veteran. You’ve been in this business for a while, but I’m going to guess this experience is like nothing you’ve gone through before. How are you handling all the Oscar and awards talk coming your way?

Mikey Madison: Gosh, it’s funny for you to refer to me as a veteran. I think you’re the first person to ever say that, but it’s true. I’ve been acting, I think, for almost 10 years now, and so I’ve been trying to work for a long time, and “Anora” has been such a huge blessing to me, not just as an actress, but personally because it’s such a special movie, and I’ve met so many incredible people from it. But I don’t know. I don’t have any expectations. I just feel really lucky to be at every place that I’m at. We’re able to show our film in so many amazing different places with audience members who love cinema, and I get to go to film festivals, which is something I’ve dreamed of my entire career. So, I don’t know. I’m just enjoying the ride so far.

Have you sat through the film more than once? And is there one part of the film where the audience reacts that surprises you ?

I have, and it’s actually my twin brother who has sat through the movie more times than I have, and both of us were really surprised that when Annie and Yvonne run into the chapel to get married, the audience cheers for them. It’s so amazing because I think in that moment, I recognized that the entire audience is on the journey with these two characters and, up until then, believes in this love story, and it’s so amazing as an artist to feel that kind of energy that the people who are watching your movie care about these characters.

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I know you met with Sean a year before the movie began production and he didn’t have a script at the time, but did he have a storyline? What came out of that meeting about what the project might be?

He had this kind of loose idea for what the story might be and what kind of character I might be playing, but it was very loose at that time. But he did have specific scenes that he described to me, just ideas he had in his head. He described one of the fight scenes to me, and so I thought, “O.K., this is something really interesting.” I had loved Sean’s previous films, “The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket,” and “Tangerine,” and so I kind of had an idea of who he was as a filmmaker and was very excited about the idea of jumping in and working with him.

You spoke to several strippers and sex workers to research the role. Because the movie takes place in the New York metro area, was it important that they were based there?

I talked to consultants from all over. I talked to an amazing woman, Andrea Werhun, who’s a chief consultant on our film. She’s based in Canada. She’s Canadian. I talked to women who live in Los Angeles and dance in LA and talked to women who dance in New York. I think I just tried to study as much as possible and get different perspectives and ideas from different people. And I read memoirs as well and watched documentaries. It was mostly just about educating myself as much as possible on the sign of work so that I could, as much as possible, accurately portray this character. It was important to me.

Was there any feedback you gave Sean that made it in there that you were either glad made it in, or maybe you were surprised did?

Yeah, I think our collaboration started when he was writing, but I remember one thing specifically. We were talking about some of the scrappy fight scenes, and he was asking me if I thought it was too much, and I was like, “No, I think the more brawl, the better.” And we definitely accomplished that in this movie, which has been really fun for me as an actor to do. But I think that our biggest collaboration happened before we started shooting while we were in New York. We were able to sort of come together and, I don’t know, just share our perspectives in a grander way.

Does Sean do rehearsals or does he prefer to work a scene out on set?

Early, early on, Sean, [producer] Samantha Quan, and I did a read-through of the treatment that they had. It was like half script-half treatment just to kind of hear some of the words off of the page. But in terms of rehearsal, we honestly didn’t do much of that. I would say the most rehearsal we did was for the fight sequence that’s in the middle of the film. Sort of the home invasion. Which is where we did a lot of rehearsing.

Why do you think you and Mark [Eydelshteyn]and Yuri [Borisov] have such great chemistry in the film? What do you think is Sean’s secret sauce is it your guys’ secret sauce?

I think it’s probably a mixture of a lot of things. Mark and Yura and also Vache [Tovmasyan] and Karren [Karagulian] are very dedicated actors. Mark and Yura come from a very serious theater background in Russia, which is something that I’ve never experienced working with. So we all got to know each other really well. But I think the biggest [reason] is that all of us were very passionate about this film, very in love with the story and our characters. And I think that when you have that and when you’re working on a set with everyone who is so excited about making movies, it feels differently. You feel that kind of energy coming out of the screen and the characters. I think you can sense that excitement and creativity. At least, I think so.

There are a number of 10-minute-long takes of your character moving throughout the club. And I know you did multiple times until the mag ran out. Was that the toughest part of doing the film?

I honestly think that those 10-minute-long scenes were the easiest in a way because I already knew exactly who my character was. There was no question in my head that I couldn’t answer about her. And as an actor, it was a really interesting experiment because being a dancer and having to approach men and pick them up is very psychological. You have to be very intuitive. And so I was literally just looking, and I would approach a guy, and we would have a conversation and see if he wanted to get a dance with me, and I had no idea where the conversation was going to go. And so, in a sense, that’s very freeing as an actor because there’s no expectation of what the scene might look like. You’re just kind of throwing yourself into it. And sometimes you get rejected, and sometimes they say “Yes.” And I think from that, we were able to pull some really interesting moments.

“Anora” opens in limited release on October 18