Mikey Madison’s breakout moment is well on its way. The actress stars in Sean Baker’s upcoming Anora, and the first trailer for the super buzzy film has arrived. In the film, which won Cannes’s highest prize, the Palme d’Or, Madison plays titular Brooklyn lap dancer Anora (Ani), who meets and marries the son of a Russian oligarch, Vanya (Mark Eidelstein). The Pretty Woman-coded Cinderella story is interrupted, however, when news of the relationship reaches Russia and Vanya’s parents try to get the marriage annulled.
Like many of Baker’s films, Anora is part love story, part comedy, and part class commentary. In the trailer, Ani meets Vanya in the private room of the Manhattan strip club where she works when he asks for a dancer who speaks Russian. She demurs that she “can’t even roll her Rs,” but the star-crossed lovers quickly fall into love (or lust), and when Vanya asks to be exclusive, Anora demands “15, cash, upfront.” The clip shows the pair taking drugs, having sex, and generally having a blast before getting married at a 24-hour drive-up chapel. The fairytale starts to unravel when scary-looking Russian men show up and demand the end of the “fraud marriage.”
The 25-year-old Madison previously had roles in FX comedy Better Things, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and 2022’s Scream, but Anora is already being hailed as her breakthrough. Madison told Deadline she was “floored” when she got the call from Baker and his wife and producing partner, Samantha Quan, about the role. She added: “It was definitely the most preparation, physically and emotionally I’ve ever done for a character, because Sean likes to mix professional actors with newcomers, and I wanted to be so confident and sure of who I was that I would fit into that environment in an honest and truthful way.”
That preparation included working with a dialect coach to get her character’s Brighton Beach accent down, and spending time with real-life strippers (several of whom have parts in the film). Many of Baker’s film have centered on sex workers, including Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021). When asked by Variety about his interest in this theme, Baker said he was “introduced to the adult film world” after making the Dree Hemingway-starring Starlet, saying, “I became friends with [sex workers] and realized there were a million stories from that world. If there is one intention with all of these films, I would say it’s by telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal. It’s helping remove the stigma that’s been applied to this livelihood, that’s always been applied to this livelihood.”
Anora became first American film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year since Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life took home the award in 2011. It hits theaters October 18.
