The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Anora.

Sean, you always treat your characters with such humanity and respect. How did you come up with a character like Anora?
Sean Baker: The origin of this story goes way back, about fifteen years. Karren Karagulian—who plays Toros in the film—is a good friend, he’s been in all of my films, and we were trying to figure out a story that took place in the Brighton Beach/Coney Island area for a very long time. I heard a few stories that involved the Russian mafia in that area and there was one story about a woman who married the wrong man. She realized she married a gangster, someone irresponsible, and the seed of the idea sparked from that. Anora was a character that I drew on from many of the sex workers I had met over the years. I wanted her to be a very strong protagonist with a strong New York attitude. I always thought of her as a scrapper, somebody who could hold their own in a fight if they got themselves into one. Somebody who’s independent, and who is fun. When we were moving forward with the film, I had my eyes open for somebody who could be our Anora. And this happened to be right around the opening weekend of Scream. I had seen Mikey [Madison] in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I loved her performance in that film so much. She really stole the last fifteen minutes of the movie. She was in my head already as a potential somebody that I wanted to work with at some point. And when I saw Scream, with the combination of those two performances, she showed me everything I needed for Anora—the range, the intensity, the attitude. I turned to my wife and producer, Samantha Quan, in the theater while watching Scream, and said, We’re going to call Mikey’s reps the minute we step out of the theater. I was that convinced. We had a meeting, we connected, and I was able to then go off and write this screenplay while knowing that it was going to be Mikey. I had her in my head as I was developing this character.

nobody is just angry or wanting to fight—there’s pain underneath that.

Anora is such an intense and ferocious character, but there’s an understated vulnerability. How did you weave that into the performance?
Mikey Madison: I always saw her as someone who was deeply vulnerable on the inside but is constantly protecting herself by covering it up with anger and spunk. Because nobody is just angry or wanting to fight—there’s pain underneath that. I was very aware that that needed to be on the inside. It comes out in some private moments where you get to see the facade crack a little bit, and see some of that vulnerability, which is needed for a character like this.

I imagine the preparation was fairly intensive for this film—from the accents and the dancing to the general cultural environment.
SB: I’ll just start by saying that as a director, I was blessed with an actor who was beyond dedicated to taking on the accent and taking on pages and pages of dialogue in a language she doesn’t know. There were like four pages of Russian dialogue she had to learn. And then, of course, all the physicality. Mikey did her own stunts in the home invasion scene. And the dancing—she took months of pole dancing classes. We also had to choreograph the erotic dance that she gives on that second date when she goes to the mansion. There was so much preparation.  

You also hired a lot of strippers to act in the film. How did you work with them to help portray this world accurately and honestly?
MM: There were some amazing consultants that we had on the film and I was able to talk at length to them about what their work is like. I think that was vital to my performance. I also shadowed dancers at the club, observed, got some dances… I was taught by a dancer named in Kendi in Los Angeles how to get a lap dance, how to twerk, how to dance on the pole. I really wanted to go upside down. I wanted Anora to seem like she was very seasoned, like she’s been dancing for years. I had a handful of months to really master that, but I’m very stubborn and I was determined to get her to the place we see in the film. Then obviously there’s amazing women who are actresses and real dancers in the film, for example, Lindsey [Normington] and Luna [Sofía Miranda], who play some of the girls in the group.

SB: They play Diamond and Lulu.

MM: Yes, Diamond and Lulu. They were amazing and were able to offer so much insight into the kind of work that they do. I think that really helped create a realistic environment.

SB: Our chief consultant was Andrea Werhun, who wrote an incredible memoir called Modern Whore. It came out a couple of years ago and it was so insightful. It was a reflection on when she was younger, being both an escort and dancer. So it really applied to this character of Ani. Mikey was able to consult with her. Andrea read our script and gave us notes and details of the world that only you would know being in that world. It was incredibly vital to have consultants on board—for accuracy, but also to make sure that the representation was responsible and respectful. Hearing their feedback throughout all stages of the production was invaluable.

MM: It was also a catalyst for me as an actress to want to study and do as much research as I could and completely dive into the character in an even bigger way than I have before because everyone around me had similar lived experiences to my character. I wanted to seamlessly blend in; I didn’t want to stand out in any particular way. I didn’t want to look like an actress. I wanted it to look like I was really a dancer. To be around that kind of energy and to be in the club, listening to what the girls were saying, I was able to implement that into the improvisation as well. It was wonderful.

SB: Yeah, these women brought the vernacular, the slang, and they also helped us with the soundtrack. Like saying which songs are of this world and that will really show that we know what we’re doing. There were a few songs there that came directly from our consultants telling us that we must have a Slayyter song in the film.

The first five minutes of the film really puts the audience in that place and it feels so authentic.
SB: That’s all Mikey. That is probably the least scripted section of the film. Basically, I just wanted to set up the mechanics of the club, a night in the life of Ani before she meets Ivan. I had Robert Altman on my mind while we shot the opening. We had to have the club up and running. I mean, of course, they were all our people, but there were also background actors playing our clients and the dancers interacting with them. The music was blasting. We had our producer Alex Coco literally DJing and that’s usually a no-no, because you can’t marry music with dialogue. But like I said, I wanted the vibe of the club. I wanted to see people moving to the music and feeling like they were in this environment. Having to raise their voices over the music so it’s very realistic. We had a wireless mic on Mikey and we just followed her around with a telephoto lens for thirty minutes. We were shooting on film. We had a ten-minute mag, and another ten-minute mag, we just ran out the whole ten minutes one at a time. She had an earpiece, and I would say, okay, now approach the man on the right. And I would just watch her, having done so much research, it was incredible to see that she was giving the exposition to her improv. She was hitting all the beats I needed to really set up this world in that short four to five minutes before she meets Ivan. She’s incredible.

All the locations in the film are fabulous, but we need to talk about the mansion because it’s insane that house exists in New York City.
SB: I was sitting in my West Hollywood apartment writing this thing, and we were getting close to production and I was like, I’m going to need to find this mansion. So I literally just googled, “biggest and best mansion in Sheepshead Bay.” And it pops up! And it happened to have been on the market a few years ago. I’m going, Oh my god, this is the location. I told my incredible location manager, Ross Brodar, who had already locked these other incredible locations, Get that pie for me. It was actually designed for and lived in by a Russian oligarch up until the beginning of Covid. And then he sold it off to a local Russian American who grew up in the neighborhood. He was very proud of the house and was very happy with us shooting there and was extremely gracious by allowing us to shoot there for about three weeks. It’s in Mill Basin, actually.

Shooting the home invasion scene took eight days. Can you two break that down?
MM: I think the most challenging part, or the most time consuming, was just trying to block all of it. To choreograph the stunts because it’s such a big sequence with so many different characters and moving parts. We took a lot of time in rehearsal to block out where we would be at each point, when this next scene needs to happen, and then we’d go through it all kind of half speed. And then you just have to jump in and shoot. Nothing could prepare me for what that might feel like, I have to knock over this lamp and turn that vase over… I also had to know, in terms of stamina, how many scenes I would be able to do at full speed, at full energy, so I kept that in mind. I tried to get it right on the first take.

SB: Also the screaming, right? After like the fifth take or sixth take of the big screaming, Mikey was like, we should probably stop for today or we’re gonna lose my voice. Everybody had to be on board, you know? The cast and crew understood that this had to play out in real time. So we had to have our coverage. And there was a lot. I think that’s probably the difference between this sequence and the other sequences in the film—I had to over cover myself.  The other thing is that we’re shooting over eight days with all that glass. There are going to be some weather changes. And it’s not always going to be that overcast, the way it’s supposed to be throughout the film. Sometimes the sun will pop. But my wonderful cinematographer, Drew Daniels, and our gaffer, Chris Hill, they got it. They were even like calculating and timing when the sun would pop, and we’d use those sections. Hopefully it’s subtly worked in, but there are moments where the sun will shine through, and, for example, Toros runs by with the scarf, and that allowed a big flare into the lens. There was a lot of thought put into it. I really have to thank my incredible crew and cast for making it happen.

The sequence is so funny because she’s outwitting and outfighting them… but also, there are three strange men that are trying to physically restrain her, and that seems terrifying. It’s a balancing act.
MM: I think that’s one of the reasons why Ani fights so hard. She’s fighting for her life in every single sequence because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her. But at the same time, playing her, I know that these scenes will be funny just because of the situation that she’s in. But Ani doesn’t think it’s funny. That’s one of the things I really appreciate about Sean. He takes a scene like that, which could go such a different way, such a dark way, and he makes it something that nobody expects. He inserts his sort of dark comedy into it, which I love. I think we share a similar sensibility in terms of what we think is funny.