M ikey Madison has come bearing snacks. The Anora star and I are scheduled to meet in Woodbridge Park — a blip of a green space in Studio City, California, with picturesque benches, a sprawling playground, and plenty of trees. Toddlers wobble about the play area with their moms (or nannies). Exactly on time, Madison, 25, strides across the grass holding two blankets and a stuffed bag of Trader Joe’s goodies. By her side is a tiny, golden-brown Chihuahua named Jam, with bright-green eyes.
“I saw that you like trying interesting snacks,” she says. It would seem I’ve been Googled. We unpack strawberry-lemonade-flavored creme sandwich cookies, maple-syrup-and-sea-salt kettle corn, sea-life-themed gummies, pickle-flavored potato chips, sour jelly beans, dark-chocolate sunflower-seed butter cups, and flavored seltzer to wash it all down. As Madison digs in, Jam (full name: Larabee Strawberry Jam Madison) gnaws on a beef stick.
For anyone who’s seen Anora, in which Madison plays the titular pole-dancing, Russian-thug-biting, f-bomb-dropping Brooklyn escort, this idyllic scene might seem a bit jarring. The latest from writer-director Sean Baker, whose stories tend to follow people living on the margins of society (see also 2015’s Tangerine, 2017’s The Florida Project, and 2021’s Red Rocket), the film is by turns anxiety inducing, startlingly funny, and poignant. Prior to its October release, it generated a tidal wave of praise on the festival circuit — including winning Cannes’ highest prize, the Palme d’Or. And while Baker often hires non-actors for his films, Madison is no amateur. She’s just so convincing as this tough-but-sweet Russian American sex worker, she seems like the real deal.
“When they meet me, a lot of people have asked, ‘Oh, so are you gonna be a professional actor now?’” Madison tells me. “I think they thought that I was that character.”
While Madison might be most recognizable from her years playing Pamela Adlon’s oldest daughter on the FX series Better Things, Baker wrote Anora with her specifically in mind after seeing her portray an unhinged killer in the 2022 Scream reboot. In that film, as her character Amber (spoiler alert!) heads to her comically bloody death, Madison goes from steely-faced to positively feral, unleashing guttural screeches and flailing her limbs as if possessed. A few years prior, Madison gave an equally wild-eyed performance as a scheming Manson follower in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.
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Those experiences came in handy to play Ani (the nickname Anora prefers), whose life devolves into chaos after she accepts $15,000, Pretty Woman-style, to spend a week with Ivan, a young strip-club patron who turns out to be the failson of a Russian oligarch. When his parents find out Ivan and Ani have eloped in Vegas, all hell breaks loose: Ivan’s handlers show up to force the couple into an annulment, Ivan flees, and pint-sized Ani battles the trio of hulking men with kicks, punches, headbutts, and ear-splitting screams, leaving the family’s mansion a mess of shattered glass tables and lamps. The fight scene took eight days to shoot, and Madison did all of her own stunts. “It was pretty hardcore,” she says. “I was covered in bruises by the end of filming.”
That wasn’t the only intensely physical part of Anora. A California native, Madison learned Russian and worked with a dialect coach to nail Ani’s syrup-thick Brooklyn accent. She spent months in daily lessons to master lap dancing, twerking, and pole dancing. On top of that, her training included Pilates, barre, and cycling. Oh, and she installed a pole in her living room.
“The dancing, physically, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Madison says. “It’s supposed to look effortless, but it’s not.” Though she calls the workout regimen she instituted “very extreme,” she says the process “changed the way I moved and felt in my body. I had a sensuality I didn’t feel before.”
Madison also spent the year leading up to filming visiting clubs in New York and L.A., living in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, where Ani is from, and shadowing real dancers to get a sense of how they approached clients. It shows in Ani’s street smarts and instincts: She knows how to set men of all backgrounds at ease. “That kind of job is very psychological,” Madison says. “You have to be a very intuitive person to be a dancer. You have to be able to read people in a specific way.”
Being the child of two psychologists didn’t hurt — Madison reasons that “gave me an understanding and a curiosity for why people do things.” Growing up in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles, Madison was, she says, debilitatingly shy and happiest riding horses. (Prior to acting, Madison was a competitive equestrian.) Her father is a major cinephile, though, who showed her classic Bond movies and Tarantino. As her love of films bloomed, Madison began to wonder if acting might help break her out of her shell.
“I was curious about the intimacy that comes with being an actor, and what that might feel like,” she says. “I saw actors being able to experience big things and having deep connections.”
Madison’s sensitivity shines through in Ani, whose tough exterior is a function of her surroundings more than her nature. Madison is an incorrigible animal-lover (in addition to Jam, she has a cat at home named Biscuit), to the point where she’ll rearrange her day in the service of an ordinary backyard rodent. About six months ago, she tells me, she found an injured baby squirrel outside of her house and drove all over Los Angeles looking for an animal hospital that would treat it.
“I start driving, and I look over, and the squirrel’s basically taking its last breath, and it closes its eyes,” she says. “I was like a minute away from the animal hospital. I pull in, and one of the vet techs is walking by. I’m like, ‘Excuse me?’ And then I just burst into tears. She was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And I was like, ‘[imitating sobs] The squirrel! I have a squirrel.’”
It takes far more for Ani to shed a tear in Anora; the film brings the character on a sweeping emotional arc to get there. Along the way, much physical intimacy is required of Madison, too — nudity and sexual situations about which she is entirely practical. “Ani is a sex worker, and her body is part of her work,” Madison says. “I really wanted to portray this character in an honest way, without any sensationalization.” She adds that nerves were not an issue. “I wasn’t the only one who was naked, especially in the club,” she says. “I looked to my right and my left, and there’s other naked women giving dances. It was very casual. I was more comfortable than I should have been, actually, at times.”
While her performance is winning Madison attention in Hollywood, she says the opinions of real-life Anis matter most to her. Pulling out her phone, she shows me a video she took at the end of an Anora screening she hosted just for sex workers. On the screen is a packed theater, and as the credits roll, everyone is cheering, legs hoisted in the air, clapping their sky-high Pleaser heels in approval.
Production Credits
Styling by JAMIE MIZRAHI at A-FRAME AGENCY. Hair by MARA ROSZAK using RŌZ at A-FRAME AGENCY. Makeup by MELISSA HERNANDEZ at THE WALL GROUP. Production by PATRICIA BILOTTI for PBNY PRODUCTIONS. Styling assistance: ALEXANDRA MOGHTADAIE. Photographic assistance: TRAVIS CHANTAR and ALEXA FORD