Mikey Madison Wants to Work with Luca Guadagnino: ‘I Would Just Pass Out’

The National Board of Review held its annual Awards Gala Tuesday, January 7 at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. This year 246 films were viewed by a select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, professionals, academics, and students to celebrate the art of cinema from the last year.

Mikey Madison was honored with the Breakthrough Performance Award for her role in Sean Baker’s “Anora,” making her the most awarded actress of the current awards season thus far. Coming back to NYC from the Golden Globes on Sunday, Madison is still beaming with light as she makes her rounds on the awards circuit.

“I’ve met so many incredible women who I’ve admired for so long and have made wonderful friends, so I think that’s what I’ll take away from all of this,” she told IndieWire of what she takes away most from all of the circuit buzz and experiences. “If anything, it’s just the friendships.”

She recently paid a visit to New York’s Criterion Collection offices, where she spent some time inside the Criterion Closet, taking home the likes of Baker’s “Take Out” and Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher.”

“Oh my gosh, that was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m qualified enough to be in this closet,’ but it was very exciting for me,” she told us of the experience. “It’s fun. I also got to discover a lot of films that I’ve never seen before, just based off of judging a book by its cover. It was very exciting. I hope they have me back!”

As we all eagerly await to see what’s next for the actor, she teases that she has some filmmakers in mind who she wants to work with, “I love Alice Rohrwacher, I say her name a lot. I love Luca Guadagnino; I would just pass out.”

She spoke with IndieWire in a recent interview about the experience of never being to Brighton Beach before filming “Anora.”

“I had spent so many months doing all the other preparation for the character. I was like, ‘If I don’t understand what it’s like to live here, it’s not going to feel real or like something that I recognize.’ I moved there and lived next to the subway station, and I loved it. It’s an amazing community, and it was very interesting. I went and bought a couple pieces of my characters’ costumes as well, and I’d go to my favorite coffee shop, and listen to people. It was part of grounding myself in the character, the environment. It was nice to leave Los Angeles and be in that environment. You can do all of that work, but you’re still living in your own home in L.A., and it [didn’t] feel real to what I was about to do.”