Awards Season is in full swing, and it’s all going to come to a head with the Oscars. The Academy Award nominees are waiting to see who takes home a trophy, and categories like Best Leading Actress are particularly up in the air. Among the nominees include Anora‘s Mikey Madison, who spoke about why doing research in actual strip clubs was so important to her process.
When I finally saw Anora, I knew that Madison deserve an Academy Award nomination. In the first half o the movie she’s wildly charming and funny, and we see her working overnight shifts at a strip club and hustling to make money through private dances and occasionally more. In an interview with Deadline about the movie, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actress spoke about why it was important to do research for the role, including spending time shadowing real-life dancers in a club. As she put it:
It’s hard to think of just one thing [I did], because that was everything for bringing the character to life. If I hadn’t have done [the research], it would be a completely different character and story, I think. It was the most important thing I did.
She’s not wrong. In addition to Madison’s outstanding dialect work to replicate Ani’s speaking pattern, she also seemed to really understand what it was like to work in a strip club. And that was made clear as she negotiated with clients through various scenes in the movie… as well as Mark Eydelshteyn’s Ivan.
In addition to shadowing exotic dancers, she also trained to be able to dance herself. We saw these efforts pay off as she gave Ivan private dances in the club as well as his home. Another consultant that helped Madison was Andrea Werhun, who wrote the book Modern Whore. She helped to show what it’s like behind-the-scenes at clubs, as Madison shared:
Andrea was talking about locker-room chatter, things that you say to someone, what food she brings as her lunch to eat in the break room, little things like that
It should be interesting to see if the 25 year-old actress manages to take home an Academy Award. While she was originally a dark horse, but Karla Sofía Gascón’s recent controversy seemingly put the Emilia Pérez actress’ chances for a win far lower than they would have been. Now the Best Actress in a Leading Role category feels much more up in the air, and Mikey Madison has been taking home trophies from a bunch of other ceremonies during Awards Season. So who will take home the Oscar?
Only time will tell, but Madison has the possibility of reaching yet another career milestone during the Academy Awards. She’s already played Ghostface and been burned alive on film twice, so why not take home an Oscar for Anora? Luckily our questions will be answered when the Oscars air March 2nd at 7:30 PM EST.