Anora is continuing its upward trajectory this awards season, which recently included its lead star Mikey Madison being presented the Breakthrough Award at the 2024 SCAD Savannah Film Festival.

The Neon film follows the titular character, a young sex worker from Brooklyn who “gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.” Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karaguilan and Vache Tovmasyan also star in the film, which is directed by Sean Baker, the director of films such as Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket and more.

Madison was at the festival to receive her honor from SCAD and to chat with the premiere audience about the film as well.

Mikey Madison talks about working with Sean Baker

“I have always loved his [Sean Baker’s] films, the characters that he follows, and the kind of world that he creates,” she said in the Q&A ahead of the film’s Gala Screening at the festival.

Baker reached out to Madison to star in the film after seeing her performance in 2022’s Scream.

“So I was a fan before I met him, but he saw Scream opening weekend and was thinking about the idea for Anora and the story that he wanted to tell,” she explained. “And so he reached out a day later and said, ‘Hey, let me pitch you this idea. If you like it, I’ll write it for you.’ And I was pretty flabbergasted [and] very excited, obviously like to do that.”

She continued, “It definitely is a wild ride. There’s a lot that happens to my character within a short period of time. But she is a warrior. She has an incredible fighting spirit, and that was something that I recognized right away and I really wanted to implement into the story. We had 35 days to shoot, I think. And there were lots of big set pieces and huge sequences that we wanted to accomplish. So it was definitely very hectic at times. But I think as an actor, I think it can only add to the character if you’re involved in sort of a hectic

Films that inspired her as an actress

Madison noted three specific films that inspired her to take up acting as a craft, or as she explained, “got her into cinema.”

“Stand By Me was a film that I was absolutely in love with,” she told the audience. “I think I was about the age that those characters were when I first saw it, and it just really moved me. I was watching these young actors play these incredible characters and experience this beautiful friendship and share this connection [and] intimacy with each other. And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s so interesting.’ I [thought] I would like to somehow be able to experience that. And I loved John Hughes films like Pretty in Pink [and] 16 Candles. Those were films that I loved and really inspired me. So I think slowly, over time, I started watching more films and got more inspired.”

Learning so much about sex workers by being in this role

The actress made sure to give kudos to sex workers and spoke at length about how much she learned about the profession in her preparation for Anora and playing the role.

“I feel like I learned so much from this film, not just the making of [it], but also the preparation and all the research that I did for this character,” Madison said. “My character is a sex worker, and the film centers around that and her profession. And through my research, I’ve been able to discover and fall in love with that community. I’ve learned so much about that kind of life, and it’s really just enlightened me and really brightened my life in such an incredible way. I think I also learned a lot about my discipline as an actor– I want to feel the way I felt making this movie going forward in my other work because it was such an incredible collaboration. I worked with a director who really cared about my ideas and wanted to hear all of them wanting to implement them into the story. Hhe just really championed me. I think I learned a lot about who I am as a person.”

Anora is in theaters now.