Sean Baker and Mikey Madison on the Scream star's new movie with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score
Nov. 1, 2024Big Screen Spotlight | The director and star of Anora chat to GamesRadar+ on the red carpet at London Film Festival
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Anora, the latest comedy-drama from director Sean Baker, stars Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Mikey Madison as Ani, a stripper and escort from the Brighton Beach neighborhood of New York City who finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance – and marriage – with Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) a Russian oligarch’s son.
Over the past 12 years, Baker’s movies, Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, have all dealt with different aspects of the sex industry, from adult film stars to trans sex workers, and he returns to the same themes of labor, class, and exploitation in Anora. “There are so many aspects of sex work, and sex work is really an umbrella term for many different occupations in that world,” Baker tells GamesRadar+ on the red carpet at London Film Festival.
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“So I realized, upon getting to meet sex workers, becoming friends with sex workers, and hearing their stories, that there were a million stories to be told in this world,” “It’s not like I set out to make one after another. I never wanted it to be a shtick, but I found constant inspiration.”
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“The physicality of the character, it was the most challenging thing I’ve ever had to do, honestly. Not even really the fighting,” she adds, referring to a scrap between Ani and some of Vanya’s father’s henchmen in the movie’s second act that veers between farcical and disturbing. “It was just learning how to dance and learning pole tricks. It was unbelievably difficult.”
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Like Baker’s other work, Anora is full of comedic beats and larger-than-life characters, but the film also emphasizes the repetitive, labor-intensive nature of sex work – at the end of the day, being an escort is a job, just like any other. “The unfair stigma applied to sex work has not gone away,” Baker tells us. “My hope is that continuing to make these stories is helping to chip away at that stigma.”
Anora is out now in UK cinemas. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of ourBig Screen Spotlightseries.
I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.
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