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Mikey Madison actually didn't know any Russian at all before going into the film.
There are obviously some big spoilers ahead!
1. Writer-director Sean Baker and Karren Karagulian, who played Toros, have had the idea to make a movie about the Russian-American community in Brighton Beach for almost 20 years.
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Sean and Karren have been good friends for over 25 years and Karren has been in every single one of Sean's films. For a long time, they had an idea to write about Brighton Beach's Russian-American community because Karren has ties to that community, and his wife is Russian-American (she even played his character's wife in the church scene). Sean and Karen once even wrote a buddy-comedy movie about this community that was never produced. It wasn't until after Sean's movie Red Rocket (2021) that he decided it was really time to revisit the idea and then they came up with Anora.
2. Sean Baker was so impressed by Mikey Madison's performance in Scream (2022) that he knew while in the theater that he wanted to put her in the movie.
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Sean said that Mikey first captured his attention in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019). He felt she stole the show in the last 15 minutes and he loved her scenes so much, that he saw the movie two more times just to rewatch her parts. "So she was in my head, but then I saw Scream, and it was actually the combination of those two performances," Sean explained. He said in these roles he saw that she could be intense and could scream. He added, "She was playing a young adult in Scream. One with a lot of attitude. One that could hold her own in a fight. And, well, it was really just that combo that made me say she's the one." He and Samantha Quan, his producer and wife, made the decision to cast Mikey while in the theater of Scream and they called Mikey's reps immediately after. Then Mikey and Sean met for coffee, he pitched a loose idea for the movie, and she agreed on the spot.
3. The actors for the film were attached to the project before Sean Baker wrote the screenplay. "It really helped because I was able to picture Mikey in the role of Ani, Yura [Borisov] in the role of Igor, and Karren Karagulian as Toros," he said.
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4. Mikey and Lindsey Normington, who played Diamond, both acquired injuries during their fight scene. "She [Lindsey], like, busted her knee, like, I broke my nail off, I twisted my ankle. It was gnarly," Mikey revealed.
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"Obviously, like, I felt safe doing it the whole time. I think those were just kind of little accidents that happened," Mikey explained. "It was important for me to do all my stunts. I wanted to feel, like, what my character was going through. And you can see my face, and so, that feels really real."
5. After Mikey broke her nail off during her fight scene with Lindsey, Yura Borisov carried a bottle of medical glue in his pocket to glue her nail on daily.
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"I broke my acrylic nail off with the real nail underneath during one of the fight scenes. And so he carried a bottle of, like, medical glue in his pocket and was, like, gluing it on every morning and night," Mikey shared.
6. Mikey didn't know any Russian at all before going into the film.
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She said Russian was a very complicated language, and so it was one of the things that was most important to her to get right. "That was something that required a lot of time and dedication to just really understand what I was saying, be able to understand what the other actors were saying to me," she elaborated.
7. Yura learned English for this role.
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8. The opening scene, where Ani makes her rounds around the club and interacts with clients, was mostly improvised, and the set was made more like a real club.
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To make the set feel like an actual club, they allowed supporting and background actors to walk around the club freely and talk out loud instead of mouthing words. The film's producer also DJed and played music during the scene. They put Mikey on a wireless microphone and filmed her for 10 minutes straight as she made her rounds as Ani attempting to get club patrons to buy a dance from her.
9. Mikey came up with the idea to have Ani do an erotic dance for Ivan in his home and she helped choreograph it as well.
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Mikey said that scene in the script was just written as "Ani shows off her dancer's flexibility." From that, Mikey started thinking of ways should show that and came up with the idea of Ani doing an erotic dance for Ivan. She helped choreograph it with her dance instructor. She practiced the routine and sent it to Sean the night before filming to which she said he replied, "Perfect! Let's make a music video out of it."
10. The 28-minute home invasion sequence in the middle of the film took 7-8 days to shoot.
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11. Mikey Madison went to "stripper camp" and learned to pole dance for the role. She was trained by a dancer in LA, Kennady Schneider, who taught Mikey everything from "basic pole training to, like, twerking to, like, club chat."
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12. Mikey worked with an accent coach to help achieve Ani's spot-on Brooklyn accent.
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13. Mikey also lived in Brighton Beach a couple weeks before filming to socialize with people and listen to Brooklyn accents.
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14. To prepare for the role, Mikey did research on sex work by reading memoirs, watching documentaries, YouTube vlogs by strippers, talking to consultants, visiting strip clubs and receiving dances.
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Mikey explained that, "I really tried to do my due diligence, so I could fully understand what that world is like, because I was coming from basically having no understanding at all to wanting to accurately portray a sex worker in modern times."
15. Armenian actor and comedian Vache Tovmasyan was discovered for this movie by Karren Karagulian who was a fan of his stand-up.
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Vache Tovmasyan explained how he's been doing comedy in Armenia for 16 years when he got a call from Sean Baker, who told Vache he'd seen his comedy after Karren suggested him for the movie. Vache then looked up Karren on social media and found that Karren had messaged him five years prior to compliment his comedy. Vache then replied to Karren's message.
16. And finally, Mikey improvised a curse-filled rant in the film.
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"I'm very proud of some of my improved insults. Um, there's one that's, like, full of cuss words though," Mikey shared. "I think the F-word is Ani's favorite word and one that just, like, flows from her mouth very easily. And so, I utilized that, and every possible iteration of it as much as possible."
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