Mikey Madison Tells Isabelle Huppert How She Became Anora

From the moment she shows up in Anora, giving lap dances to eager customers, Mikey Madison grabs hold of nearly every scene and doesn’t let go until its bittersweet final shot. Director Sean Baker saw something in the 25-year-old actor (namely, her turn as a psycho killer in the Scream reboot) when he cast her in his Palme d’Or-winning story of a strong-willed stripper who falls for a Russian oligarch’s son, and now, she has everyone talking Oscar. The actor Isabelle Huppert was floored by Mikey’s performance and called her to discuss this mega moment.

———

ISABELLE HUPPERT: Can you hear me? 

MIKEY MADISON: Yes, I can hear you perfectly. 

HUPPERT: Hello, Mikey.

MADISON: Hi! How are you? 

HUPPERT: I’m fine, thank you. The tech is against us tonight. 

MADISON: That’s okay. I would’ve waited all day.

HUPPERT: So you are in L.A.? 

MADISON: Yes, and you’re in Paris? 

HUPPERT: No, I’m filming in Brussels. 

MADISON: Oh, wow. How’s it going? 

HUPPERT: Very well. Are you working now?

MADISON: No, but maybe soon. I want to apologize in advance if you hear barking or whining in the background. I just got a new puppy.

HUPPERT: What’s his name? 

MADISON: His name is Jam. 

HUPPERT: James?

MADISON: Jam. I have a cat named Biscuit, so I decided to call him Jam.

HUPPERT: Jam, like jam? 

MADISON: Yes, like what you put on biscuits and bread.

HUPPERT: I have a new cat myself that I’m completely in love with. 

MADISON: What’s his or her name? 

HUPPERT: Her name is very, very complicated. That’s the only bad thing about the cat. I don’t even call her because the name is unsayable, actually, so I say, “My love.”

MADISON: That’s wonderful, I love cats. 

HUPPERT: Me too. And where do you live in L.A.?

MADISON: I live in Laurel Canyon. 

HUPPERT: Okay. I haven’t been to L.A. in a long time and I miss it very much. 

MADISON: I’ve lived here my whole life and I love it, but I’ve been craving a smaller town, to be honest.

HUPPERT: Yeah. Well, first of all, I loved the film, like everybody at Cannes. I’ve always loved Sean Baker’s films. I thought your performance was mesmerizing.

MADISON: Thank you so much. I’m a huge Sean Baker fan as well. I also want to tell you that I’m very inspired by your work. I’m such a huge fan.

HUPPERT: Oh, thank you, really. It’s nice when you hear that there is some kind of connection between two people’s work and inspiration. But yes, I was really amazed by what you did because it’s very physical and never sentimental, which I love, because too much sentimentality kills performances. You have to keep a way of staying kind of aloof, and that’s exactly what you did. But physically, it’s so engaging.

MADISON: Well, thank you. I knew from the beginning that she’s a character who uses her body in a very specific way because it’s part of her job. I studied lots of dancers and went to clubs and saw how they used their bodies, because to me, her nudity is kind of like a costume. And also the way that she moves in heels. I always wanted to be wearing high heels because I wanted her to be up on her toes. Also, when you wear heels that tall, it makes you walk in a certain way, so it was important that I was always as tall as I could possibly be.

HUPPERT: That really resonates, especially about high heels. Shoes are very important in the way you experience body language, and working with high heels or with flat shoes gives you a different body language for each character. But the way you use your body, with such liberty, with such freedom, I rarely see that onscreen. And of course, you are also held by Sean’s camera, because it always moves. It never puts you in the prison of the frame. You couldn’t be more exposed, but it’s not embarrassing, because it’s exactly like you said. You use the body as a tool.

MADISON: Absolutely. I never felt naked while I was filming those scenes, even though I was. I always felt like I had some kind of costume on. The only time I ever felt naked was the last scene, and I was completely clothed.

HUPPERT: Exactly. That’s beautifully said, to have nudity like a costume. It’s exactly what it is. But it’s one thing to say it and it’s another thing to make that palpable. I want to see it again when it comes to Paris. Will you be coming to Paris for the release?

MADISON: I will—it’ll be my first time there. I’m so excited.

HUPPERT: Oh my god, that’s great! We will welcome you. How many films did you do before, Mikey?

MADISON: Not many. I had done some really small independent student work in film, and then I had a small part in a Tarantino film when I was a teenager. I had primarily just done television, but I’ve always felt a real pull towards film, so it’s something that I’d like to focus more on.

HUPPERT: How did Sean find you? 

MADISON: I had done a horror film, and he had also seen the few scenes in the Tarantino film that I was in. After the horror film came out, he reached out and pitched me a loose idea for the film and asked if I wanted to do it. And of course I did. Sorry, my puppy is crying in the background. So, I was really excited that he wanted to do this with me. I had no idea why he wanted to, but I think he saw something in my character that made him think I could do a film with him.

HUPPERT: What was the film by Tarantino that you were in? 

MADISON: I played a Manson girl in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 

HUPPERT: Oh, okay.

MADISON: It was a small part, and at the end I get set on fire. I think he remembered that.

HUPPERT: I’m not surprised, because he has such an eye. Had you seen all his films before he approached you?

MADISON: Yes. Obviously, I loved The Florida Project, and Tangerine has been one of my favorite films for a long time, so I was absolutely shocked when he reached out.

HUPPERT: Well, it’s the role of a lifetime. How many weeks did you film?

MADISON: About two and a half months. We took a little break in between filming from New York and Vegas.

HUPPERT: What did you think of the screening at Cannes? Wasn’t it extraordinary?

MADISON: It’s been one of my dreams to go to that festival since I started acting. Even just to go, but to have a film in the competition was a really big dream. It was so interesting to watch it with an audience, to hear them cheer and laugh at times that I didn’t expect them to cheer or laugh at.

HUPPERT: Yeah, it was so great. It was wonderful [at the award ceremony] because I saw all you guys in the theater, and then the prizes went on and on and on, and when it came to the one before last, that was it. We knew that you guys were going to win the big one.

MADISON: That was so exciting, and Sean really deserved it.

HUPPERT: I think so too, because it’s really what we call independent American cinema. It’s so important for films like this to win this kind of reward. Are you going to travel a lot for all the releases in various parts of the world?

MADISON: Yes. I just got the schedule yesterday. I’m really excited to go everywhere, but I’m specifically excited about Paris.

HUPPERT: That’s great. Isn’t it going to the New York Film Festival as well?

MADISON: I think it is, yeah. And Telluride.

HUPPERT: That’s great, because one of my films is going to the New York Film Festival.

MADISON: Oh, wonderful! 

HUPPERT: It’s a Korean film, which I did a few months ago with this great Korean filmmaker called Hong Sang-soo. This is my third film with him, called A Traveler’s Needs.

MADISON: I’m so excited to see it. What language do you speak in the film?

HUPPERT: I usually speak English, but with Korean actors speaking English or Korean. Sometimes I’m supposed to understand and sometimes I’m not. When I’m in these films, it really plays on this opposition between two different languages.

MADISON: That’s so interesting because in Anora we have Armenian and Russian actors, so they’re speaking both of those languages, and I don’t speak either. Sometimes I had to pretend I knew what they were saying. It was a very interesting experience to be in the middle of all of that. It added a kind of chaos.

HUPPERT: And by the way, I love the main Armenian actor, the one who is within the church with the baby, and then he has to run out of the church. He’s so great.

MADISON: Karren Karagulian. He’s spectacular. He’s been in every single one of Sean’s films in some way or another.

HUPPERT: I understand that he’s not a full-time actor.

MADISON: Yeah, he’d learn all his lines on the subway over to filming. 

HUPPERT: Incroyable. And I love the actor that you end up with at the end. Speaking of the end—because I heard different interpretations—the last scene is, for me, a jewel. I was in tears. I never saw a love scene like this.

MADISON: That was such an interesting scene to film, because we tried to film it for many days, and something would always go wrong. The weather wasn’t right, or the snow didn’t look good. We finally were able to film it, and I was so scared. But Yura [Borisov], who plays Igor, is such a soulful actor. The whole film, my character has been covering up her emotions with a hardness, not letting anybody see her crack, so I found myself also feeling like that during filming. I was never emotional, and me as Mikey, I’m a very emotional person. For the last scene, I was almost shaking going into the car because I didn’t know what that would feel like—because I had been feeling the same way as my character for so long.

HUPPERT: That’s exactly what it is. The character, as you said quite rightly, is never emotional, but at this moment, it becomes over- whelming. But as I was saying, I’ve heard different understandings of that scene. How do you understand it?

MADISON: It’s been interesting to hear other people’s interpretations, because it’s so open-ended, and I’m more curious to hear what other people think—if they think that the characters will end up together or not, or why they think they end up having sex.

HUPPERT: Exactly. It’s like a question mark. Anybody can project what they want, which is what makes it great. Maybe it’s the beginning of a love story, maybe not. We don’t know—

MADISON: And Yura really wanted me to slap him and hit him as hard as I could, which I’ve never done to anybody before. I actually thought about your role in Loulou a lot, be- cause you get slapped around quite a bit and there’s so many great physical fighting scenes, which is all you.

HUPPERT: Oh, really? That’s funny. And Yura is fantastic. It was such a good idea to cast him in this role.

MADISON: Yes. He is one of the most soulful actors I’ve ever worked with. Without saying anything, he lives his characters so fully in his bones, and I was really fascinated and inspired by him. It kind of would scare me. I’d look over and I’d see his eyes, and it would really shock me. 

HUPPERT: And how many takes did you do for that scene? 

MADISON: We did it a handful of times, and it was different each time. But Sean was also specific about wanting to see tears, and so there were some scenes where I was only crying out of my right eye, so you couldn’t see it.

HUPPERT: [Laughs] Are you kidding me? And he wanted to see tears from both eyes? That’s a very special story. [Laughs]

MADISON: Yeah. He wanted to see it from my left eye because the right one is covered. I don’t know, maybe some actors can, but I can’t control that. And so we finally got one where you could see it in the left eye. And also the energy of the scene just felt right, and I think we all knew that was the take that we would use.

HUPPERT: I’ve never heard something like this before, from the right eye and the left eye. And so, what will be your next film?

MADISON: I have no idea. I’m looking right now to see what the next project will be.

HUPPERT: You’ll get many opportunities soon, I’m sure.

MADISON: Thank you. Right now, I’m mostly focused on trying to potty-train my puppy.

HUPPERT: That’s a good project. I can understand. Sometimes I go back home during the weekends and I’m happy to see my cat.

MADISON: [Laughs] Yes. 

HUPPERT: She’s amazing. I’ve never seen a cat like her before. 

MADISON: What kind of cat is she? 

HUPPERT: A British something. 

MADISON: A British shorthair, maybe?

HUPPERT: British short, like you said.

MADISON: Oh, wow. That’s beautiful. My cat is like a Persian mix, and she’s very sweet. She’s not the most intelligent, but she’s very sweet and cuddly, which is perfect.

HUPPERT: Mine is very small. She’s six months, but I think she’ll be smart.

MADISON: Yes.

HUPPERT: Okay, Mikey. This has been a great conversation. 

MADISON: Yes. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I hope that I can meet you in person soon, maybe.

HUPPERT: Yeah, me too, absolutely. When you come to Paris, we’ll organize something.

MADISON: That’d be wonderful. 

———

Hair: Amber Duarte using Oribe. 

Makeup: Zaheer Sukhnandan using Mac Cosmetics. 

Nails: Ayumi Namaizawa at A-Frame Agency. 

Photography Assistant: Emma Mortimer. 

Fashion Assistant: Charlie Burke. 

Production Management: Georgia Ford. 

Location: Palihouse Santa Monica.