In the latest episode of The Envelope video podcast, Ryan Destiny describes the challenges of making boxing movie “The Fire Inside” and Sean Baker and Mikey Madison explain how they fine-tuned the action, comedy and drama of “Anora.”
Kelvin Washington: Hello and welcome to “The Envelope.” I’m Kelvin Washington. Happy to be here with you alongside Yvonne Villarreal, and also Mark Olsen. Looking forward to have a conversation about a couple of great films. Mark, I’ll start with you with Ryan Destiny and “The Fire inside.” Tell us a little bit more about Ryan in the film.
Mark Olsen: This is a kind of an inspirational sports drama. Ryan plays Claressa Shields, who won the gold medal for women’s boxing at the 2012 Olympics in London. And it costars Brian Tyree Henry as her coach. The film is the feature directing debut of Rachel Morrison, who’s an Oscar-nominated cinematographer. And also the screenplay is written by Barry Jenkins, an Oscar winner, of course, for “Moonlight.” For Ryan, who has had some roles on television and been in a couple of smaller films, this is really her first major film role. She’s already been nominated to both the Gotham Awards and the Spirit Awards, and it’s really pushing her forward. So it’s a very exciting moment for her.
Washington: So I have to mention, I’m a Michigan man. There’s a lot of Michigan ties here. You got Ryan Destiny from Detroit. You got Claressa Shields from Flint, where I spent years doing radio. I know a lot of people who love her, the champ. So I feel personally invested to make sure I see this film and support this film.
We also have Sean Baker, Mikey Madison and “Anora.” Excited to hear more about this.
Villarreal: Like Ryan, this film really puts Mikey front and center. She stars as Ani, a sex worker who seems poised to give up that life when she marries a young Russian heir, a development that his family’s not fond of. And that sort of triggers a series of crazy events that really puts their new relationship to the test. And for Mikey, you know, we we know her for maybe “Better Things,” which was Pamela Adlon’s series on FX. She’s had smaller but memorable turns in films like “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” and “Scream.” And this really seems like it’ll put her on the map in a different way. This film is from Sean Baker, who is known for films like “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project,” which really shed a spotlight on people from marginalized communities. This film already won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and lots of people are talking about it.
Washington: All right. Well, I’m excited to hear about and see more about both these actors as well as the films. That will start with Mark and Ryan Destiny.
Mark Olsen: You’ve been working for a good few years as a singer and on television. But I think a lot of movie audiences are going to be encountering you for the first time with “The Fire Inside.” So on the one hand this seems like a culmination of a period of work, but also something totally new. What does this moment feel like for you?
Ryan Destiny: It’s a very weird and surreal feeling. I’m just trying to stay present. I’ve been wanting this moment for such a long time. And now that it’s finally here, I’m just trying to take it all in. It’s something new happening every day. So I’m just shocked at different things and really thankful.
Olsen: What are some of the things that you’ve been surprised by so far?
Destiny: The different lists that come out, for the Hollywood Reporter, Elle or Variety, and my Gotham Award nomination that came in. Stuff like that. You hope and want for people to recognize your work, but you just never know. So the fact that people are loving it and receiving it in this way just means so much to me.
Olsen: The film was delayed because of the pandemic, it switched companies and was delayed again because of the strikes. In some ways can you even believe that you’re here, that the movie itself is finally done?
Destiny: Not really. I’m trying to pinch myself every time because it’s crazy and I’m like, “OK, we’re almost to Christmas” — and that’s when it’s official official, it feels like.
Olsen: Tell me about that first delay. I understand that you were shooting for literally like two days or something before the production got shut down. That must have been so difficult.
Destiny: And just like everyone during that time, you thought, “OK, I’ll be back in two weeks, be back in a month.” And it just kept going and going. And then when I got the final call of Rachel basically saying that it was dropped, that was really heartbreaking. That was like a complete down-and-out crying moment, and we just didn’t really know what was next. So when that was happening, it was pretty dark.
Olsen: I’ve heard Rachel Morrison, the director of the film, say that as hard as it is to admit that, she feels like she grew as a director, she took some other jobs, she learned during that time. So in some ways it was a benefit. Did you have more time to prepare for the role? Looking back, do you feel like maybe you don’t even know what the movie would have been like if had actually made it that first time around?
Destiny: Absolutely. Everything that happened is exactly what was supposed to happen. So I don’t regret it. It was very, very difficult, very hard to wrap my head around on why things were happening that way. But looking back, it all makes so, so much sense. I grew as a human, as an actor, and it just helped for the actual work when it when it came back around. So just like Rachel, I’m really thankful for it.
Olsen: You and Claressa Shields, you’re both from Michigan. You’re from Detroit. She’s from Flint. Had you heard of her story before the project had come to you?
Destiny: Not in a really big way. I think I maybe heard her name around, but I didn’t really know. I was also an artsy kid, so I was very much in the arts. I don’t even think I watched the Olympics that year, so I was completely out of the loop. So the fact that not a lot of people heard about it — even a lot of people from Detroit felt the same way — was just insane and just not great to hear.
Olsen: When the project came to you, what appealed to you about the role?
Destiny: So, so many things. The people behind it. I really would just think about working with Barry in some way, but I didn’t really understand how that could actually happen. And so when this came around and I saw his name attached, I was like, “My gosh, this is so, so amazing.” Just really a fan of his work. And same with Rachel. And I really, really wanted a challenge. I really, really wanted something that was completely different than anything I’d ever done. So I think it was that appeal, it was something that was so different from me to the point where I didn’t even think I would get it. I went into the audition just hoping for the best, but not really thinking that it would be something that was in the cards for me.
Olsen: Do you find when you’re auditioning, when you have that mindset, does it take the pressure off and make it any easier for you?
Destiny: It does. It happens. I talk to a lot of my actor friends about it all the time. I think when you go into something with kind of lower expectations, it just helps overall. You’re not overthinking every little thing. You’re not doing the takes like 10 million times. You just go off of first instinct.
Olsen: Once you had the part, where did you start? Did you meet with Claressa? Did you spend much time with her?
Destiny: The first person I met with was Rachel, which was really great. And then the next step, I believe, was meeting my boxing coach, Rob Salley, which was very interesting. He’s like textbook boxing coach and we really hit it off instantly. I didn’t actually meet Claressa until after she saw the film for the first time. We kept wanting to meet, but things kept clashing. She would be training for a fight over in some other country while I was filming. I tried to go to one of her fights and then it got canceled. So it was always something. But when we did actually meet, it was literally perfect. And thankfully she loved the film after she saw it, too. So that that really helped.
Olsen: Was it hard for you to not be meeting her during that time?
Destiny: Not necessarily, because I felt like I had so much to work with. She had a bunch of footage on YouTube of a lot of her fights that I would study, and she had an amazing documentary made [about] her, which really gives a front row seat into her life in a very intimate way with her family. All of the relationships with her mom, her siblings, Jason. And I am very thankful for that because not everyone has that much footage to work with. And also being able to talk to her whenever I needed to pick up the phone or text to ask her any questions that I had. She was very, very open with me.
Olsen: Tell me about the training. I can only imagine what that must’ve been like.
Destiny: It was a lot. It was really, really exhausting, but in a good way. Because I have never pushed myself that way ever in my life before. Especially not physically. So to see my body transform from day one until actually starting was so crazy to me because I didn’t know my body could do those things that it was doing. And I built my stamina up in a crazy way. And I was doing things that I just didn’t realize I’d be able to do. So it was a really cool thing, and I’m glad that I caught it on like different videos and tapes that my coach would capture. So we really got to see step by step how I was moving forward. He did not hold back. He really whipped me into the shape, for sure.
Olsen: How do you think it impacted your performance? The character of Claressa, she is moving forward all the time, and that feels like something that would come from that training, from that sort of drive in the ring.
Destiny: My boxing coach, I say it all the time, he really went into this treating me like his fighter and not like an actor. And I think those little things really make all the difference when you’re doing something like this, and you need to be in that mindset like a fighter, like an athlete. And all of those things really, really helped me, in ways that I don’t even think I realized.
Olsen: Have your feelings about boxing changed at all through the course of making that making the movie?
Destiny: I think I always had respect for boxing. I just didn’t really have a true understanding of why someone would want to be a boxer. So I think I definitely walked away with just knowing and understanding a boxer’s mindset more. From obviously playing Claressa and then meeting a lot of boxers along the way as well, you know, and understanding their story and why they started. And same with my boxing coach, asking him a bunch of questions like, “Why did you ever want to do this?”
Olsen: Tell me a bit about working with Rachel Morrison. Obviously she’s the first woman to be nominated for an Oscar as a cinematographer. This is her feature film debut as a director. So as much as this is something new for you, it’s also something new for her. What was the dynamic like between the two of you?
Destiny: I think you just said it. It was something that was new for both of us. And so we really went in hand in hand, and she treated me like a partner along the way and really wanted my insight for a lot of the things that we had to make sure we implemented. Obviously, being from Detroit, Michigan, it helped a lot that we grew up around the same time. So I did understand a lot of things that culturally maybe she didn’t. So things like that, she really was super, super open with and just as much as I wanted to learn from her, she was also learning from me. And I think that made a world of difference. And she created such a safe space for me, and I’m so thankful for it because I think it made me a lot more vulnerable going in and not as afraid of making mistakes and doing things wrong and going for things way harder. So I am forever thankful for her for seeing something in me and she treated me like an equal. And that’s something that I really appreciate with everything that she’s accomplished. It did not feel like she was ever looking down on me. So I think things like that helped. I think she’s an amazing director and I’m so excited for what she does next.
Olsen: Was it a challenge to balance the fighting scenes [and] the dramatic and emotional scenes? I would imagine that it be easy to kind of over-focus on the boxing and forget that you have to tell the story.
Destiny: Going in, I don’t think I realized how much it was to juggle. So I was learning along the way. And I’m really thankful for the stunt team that we had, because there’s only so many different ways that you can throw a punch. A lot of the fight sequences that we had to do, and I had to learn each of them, were like dances. So I had to learn probably five or six, maybe seven or eight different types of dances. And they all started blending into each other in my brain. So I’m thankful because they were very, very organized in the way that they would do things to where I could just like pick it right back up. And whatever I learned and that I would forget, my stunt double would be right there to remind me of the certain movements that we had to do.So it was definitely a lot to juggle. And that’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me that. But it was definitely it was a lot. And being able to also, just really have to stay in shape as I was filming, too it was something that was very, very hard. So I kept weights in my in my trailer. I stayed working out on the weekends, but also tried to rest as much as I could on the weekends, too. So it was definitely a hard balance. I think I did my best and I tried to wrap my head around it as much as I could.
Olsen: You mentioned Barry Jenkins, who wrote the screenplay. Was he very involved in the project or what were your conversations with him like?
Destiny: He was a lot more involved in the script itself and early on in production with Rachel and Claressa, making sure they got her story correct in whatever she wanted in the script. They would make sure that they would put it in there. Whatever she wanted out, they would take it out. So he was a lot more involved in pre-production, I would say. And then always involved — a call away — with Rachel while we were filming. I think during that time he was also in production with “Mufasa” as well. So he was definitely there and kudos to him. I don’t know how he balanced all of those all of those things, but he’s just such an incredible, raw writer, who really knows how to make things feel very grounded. And that’s something that’s very special to him. So I’m just thankful because his writing felt very freeing and he allowed us to add whatever we wanted to play with it however we want it to. He was he was really, really great throughout the entire process.
Olsen: Brian Tyree Henry, who plays Claressa’s boxing coach, Jason Crutchfield, he just is such a warm and empathetic performer. It’s funny because on the one hand, I want to ask you, was it intimidating working with him? But on the other hand, that doesn’t seem like the kind of person that he is.
Destiny: That’s it, absolutely. I went into it scared. I was nervous because I loved him so much as an actor. He’s a very off-the-grid type of person, so I didn’t know really how he was going to be. But he was so warm, he was so inviting and he really jumped straight into our production, I think straight from “Atlanta.” I think he had maybe like a week in between to get himself together. But yes, we hit it off instantly. And our chemistry, I guess, just really was natural and it really built over the course of filming. So he’s another person I’m really thankful for. Just how he works is so mesmerizing to me. And he’s the one who makes everyone else better around him as an actor. And he was an incredible leader too.
Olsen: I hear a lot of actors talk about seeing other actors on set, like the person who maybe is near the top of the call sheet, that idea of like being a leader on set. That is a little foreign to me. What do you feel like you saw him doing or what did you sort of take from him in just that on-set persona?
Destiny: There were so many heavy scenes in our script that you would never know that from how we were when the cameras were off. So I think the presence that he would bring is something that I admired a lot. He has such an infectious, positive spirit and it put everyone else in good spirits. And I think that’s definitely the first step in just a great work day and work week. That is something that I really want to take away and hopefully continue to do, because I think it makes a world of difference and puts everyone in a space of — this is obviously work, but it’s fun work and is such a such a privilege to be able to do these types of things in these types of roles and be on set every day and live out our dreams. So it’s no reason to be down or dark or just too serious about everything. So he was the complete opposite of that. And we both fed off of each other with that type of energy. And it made really great work, because I think you can see it on the screen.
Olsen: For sure. Because that dynamic between the characters of Claressa and Jason is so specific. Do you feel like that was essentially the same dynamic between you and Brian or was it something different?
Destiny: I think we definitely felt more like brother and sister versus Jason and Claressa felt a bit more like daughter and father. So maybe just that slight switch. But other than that, I was learning from him. And Claressa a lot of the times was learning from Jason. If you talk to Brian, he might say that he felt very open to even learning from me. But I think that’s him being an incredible actor, just learning from other actors in general every time he works with them.
Olsen: There are so many dramatic scenes, what was it like in those moments? The scene in his kitchen, where it’s almost like a breakup scene. That scene must have been very intense to do.
Destiny: It was. It’s so weird. I wish I could explain it more, but me and Brian were very playful outside of that. You know, there were definitely times where we would take a moment after each take and just stay to ourselves a little bit. But it wasn’t something that was kind of overly done, if that makes sense. We didn’t rehearse it a lot. It was something that I think we just went off of our first instincts and just really played into that and tried to make it feel as natural as possible. So again, without him, I don’t know how I would have done it, but he’s just an incredible scene partner. And that was one of my favorite scenes to do because we really were just going back and forth with each other and feeding off of each other’s energy. So it was it was really great.
Olsen: What does it mean to you to have the movie coming out? That, if nothing else, so many more people are learning Claressa’s story?
Destiny: The first time that I watched the movie, I was looking for different things that I kind of wanted to do better. I was just nitpicking myself. The second time it really hit me how incredible her story is and how much this means to people and to her and how much it’s needed. Her story is so inspiring and incredible, and I literally cried because it really touched me in a way that made me see it from a different standpoint and see the bigger picture of what it’s really about. And it’s about people seeing her story being inspired, respecting her journey, respecting other women athletes as well, and and what they have to go through.
Olsen: To step back from the movie just a little bit, I want to ask you about your career up until this point. You began as a as a singer. Was acting something that you always wanted to be doing? How did that sort of switch happen?
Destiny: I think it was, but not in a way where it was very clear to me. I was someone who kind of had singing and acting go hand in hand. I loved musicals growing up, so I loved being able to sing songs and say the lines as I was watching them. So I think it was a little bit of both, of me always being curious about both fields. But I don’t think I realized that I really wanted to do it until I was a teenager. And I think as you keep learning and keep getting different jobs, I started doing things as a background actor, an extra, a stand-in. And I think as you grow and you keep getting these little parts and then a bigger part, that you just fall in love with it.And I also was in a theater back in my hometown, Detroit, and that is also where I fell in love with just that world in general. A lot of my teachers and my coaches are very inspiring in the way that they open a lot of the kids’ lives by being creative and expressing your creativity and in just sharing that and making sure that we were very open and free as well. That was something that I think really builds me as a performer without even knowing it then at that young age. But I always gravitated towards it. I always loved it. And yeah, they always went hand in hand.
Olsen: Being cast on something like “Star” must have felt like a great way to sort of bridge those two worlds.
Destiny: “Star” was really fun because I watched “Glee” growing up. Didn’t realize that years later I’d be on a Fox show that also was about singing and dancing and acting. So it was it was very surreal for me during that time. I absolutely loved it, and I loved being able to merge all of the things that I loved into one project. I hope that I can do it again one day because it really is fun.
Olsen: You would want to do a musical?
Destiny: I think so. I definitely don’t know which one I’d fit into. It’s such a fun, fun world. And I love singing so much. So that’d be cool.
Olsen: What is it like for you now with “The Fire Inside” coming out after all these years of work? Do you have some sense of what you want next?
Destiny: I think I’m still figuring it out. I know for sure whatever it is, I want to continue to work on things that have incredible people behind it. I continuously say that I’m so, so proud of “The Fire Inside,” and it’s probably the most proud I’ve ever been of any project that I’ve been a part of. And I love that feeling. So if I could continue to feel like that, that would be a really big blessing. I think it really starts with the people behind it and how much care that they put into it. I think it always shows in the work, and no matter how it’s received from other people, if you walk away feeling proud about it, I think that’s what matters the most.
Yvonne Villarreal: The reception of the film has been overwhelming [since] it premiered at Cannes. Mikey, how are you processing this moment? How are you feeling with this level of attention?
Mikey Madison: It’s not something that I’ve really noticed a big shift in, necessarily, But I’m also not someone who pays attention to online chatter and things like that. I’m just not really on the internet. So I think I keep myself sort of blind to some of it.
Villarreal: In what ways does your life feel different? Are you being asked to do more shoots or things like that? Does it feel like there has been a switch?
Madison: I’ve noticed some small changes. One of them is every single person and their mother has reached out to me in some way. I’m not sure if I like that part of it, though.
Villarreal: Why?
Madison: I think some of it doesn’t feel super genuine. Like old friends coming out of the woodwork, like ex-boyfriends reaching out to me — “Hey, you wanna grab a coffee or something?” I’m like, “Because you’ve seen me on billboards?”
Villarreal: Does it feel any different for you with each film that comes out in succession?
Sean Baker: A little bit, yeah. I think the awareness of my films have grown with each one. This one seems to be — you know, Neon’s doing an amazing job here in the States, right, getting the film out there and getting exposure. So yeah, this one definitely seems a little bit bigger in terms of just awareness.
Villarreal: Let’s talk about the genesis of where the story came from. You have long said that you were interested in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brighton Beach and Coney Island, and the stories of Russian Americans living there. How did that fascination evolve into the story of “Anora”?
Baker: Well, I wanted to return to New York. I made two features in New York back in the oughts. And it was actually after this one I made, called “Prince of Broadway,” where I thought I was going to tell another New York story at that point. And my actor Karren Karagulian, who’s in the “Anora,” he plays Toros — he’s been in all of my films and he has a connection to that neighborhood. He’s Armenian American, but came over after the fall of the Soviet Union, basically kind of landed in that neighborhood with selling caviar on the corners of Brighton Beach Boulevard just to survive. [He] had a lot of stories about that area and then married a Russian American. His wife, Lana, is actually in the movie playing his wife in the church scene. So [he] has that connection, has a lot of stories. And, so, it was something that we were exploring for a very long time. We were thinking it might be a Russian gangster story. We didn’t know. I wasn’t really keen on going there because it’s kind of been done many times and we put it on the back burner saying, “Someday we’ll figure this out.” And, well, about 15 years later we did. At that point, I’d been exploring sex work in my other films and I realized that I wanted a sex worker as the main protagonist in this film, building on this idea I had of this young woman who realizes a little too late that she married the wrong man. And so we applied that to that world, and it finally all came together.
Villarreal: How did you land on the name Anora?
Baker: When I was looking for a name, I literally looked at names from the Slavic region. I started on “A” and I worked my way down. I didn’t even make it to “B.” And Anora has a beautiful — it rolls off the tongue. It’s nice sounding to the ears, but also [it] has different meanings in different cultures. And I think they all apply to the Ani character — meanings ranging from “honor” to “light” and “bright.” And so I really, I just fell in love with it.
Villarreal: Was there a backup?
Baker: There was never a backup.
Villarreal: I didn’t know about the caviar. What [Karren] had done back in the day. I feel like you need to revisit that at some point.
Baker: I know, right?
Madison: It’s a good story.
Villarreal: That could easily be a lead [character] in another movie, just saying.
Madison: When I was living in Brighton, I saw people selling caviar on the street.
Villarreal: I didn’t know that was a thing. I haven’t visited Brighton enough, clearly.
You did not have to audition for this role, [Mikey]. This happened because, Sean, you had seen her in “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” and “Scream.” What clicked for you that she would be right for this role, that she would be the perfect Ani?
Baker: It was a combination of those two performances. They’re both intense. She showed that she can go to extremes. I knew Ani was going to be doing that. So that spoke to me. But also in “Scream,” let’s say, at least for the first three quarters of the film before it’s revealed who she is — I don’t want to give it away…
Madison: Well, the movie has been out.
Baker: OK, she’s Ghostface killer. Before that reveal, she’s playing a young adult with sass and a great sense of humor. I knew it in that moment. I cast my own films and something was telling me she was right. We knew in the theater, actually. Watching “Scream,” I turned to my wife and producer, Samantha [Quan], and I said, “We’re calling her agent the minute we step out of the theater.” It was a done deal at that point. Now, when we met over coffee, I quickly realized that Mikey was not in any way typecast. She’s very different from the roles she had played. I think that gave me even more confidence because I was like, “OK, those are performances. I see range and I see transformation and that’s everything.” So I offered her the role right over that coffee meeting.
Villarreal: When you were told by your agent or your manager, “Sean wants to meet with you,” tell me what that ignited in you.
Madison: Well, I was woken up by the phone call. At the time, whenever I would see UTA [United Talent Agency] come up on my phone, I knew it was a conference call, which is usually something really good or fun and exciting. So I answered it and they were extremely excited and were like, “He wants to meet you. He wants to offer you a role. In a couple of days you guys are going to meet. Are you familiar with his work? Have you seen his films before?” I think I was shocked or taken aback. Part of me was like, I feel like this is still an audition of some kind. I went into the meeting prepared to audition if I had to at that moment, and he offered me the role then and there. But I still — that insecure part of me at the time was like, “I want to just triple-check again.” And so I asked my manager to ask again if I had the role.
Baker: Yeah, I remember that.
Villarreal: In what way are you prepared to audition? How were you prepared to prove it?
Madison: I didn’t know anything about the character at the time. I knew very little, like a very loose synopsis that’s different than what the film is now. But just if he had asked me to do something, I would have. I mentally prepared myself to just be open to anything that happens. But I didn’t have to do any of that. It was very easy.
Villarreal: Because how do you approach it, [Sean]? Like you said, you were going off her performances, but when you meet with an actor, what are you looking for that will signal to you this is a right fit for a work collaboration?
Baker: You have to connect. You definitely have to be on the same page. I have to say that one thing, no matter who the actor is — whether it’s a first-timer that I’m interested in using, or somebody like Mikey with years of experience and training — I look for enthusiasm. They have to be returning the enthusiasm to you. And if not, things could go wrong. That’s the first thing I look for. But then I think this meeting also proved to me that Mikey was really down for doing the work. She said, “I can get a dialect coach to work on this accent. I’ll do whatever training that’s required.” I saw that she was already expressing real enthusiasm and a real desire to take this thing seriously and tackle this role with everything she had. That’s really it. Then, of course, we also bonded in terms of our taste of the same movies and I think sense of humor. So it was all there.
Villarreal: Mikey, you got your breakthrough role on “Better Things,” which is the Pamela Adlon series that she created, starred in and directed mostly. You’ve talked about how that was a film school for you. How did that prepare you for taking on something like this?
Madison: It was my first real job. I had done some really small independent work, like student type things, beforehand. But it was my introduction into acting and what it was like to create television and be in front of the camera. It was my first everything. I was able to create a base for what it was like to be an actress and make films. I learned a little bit of everything. And I think over the course of five seasons, I was also able to grow with my character, too, and continue to evolve and and find new things to learn. I was able to cut my teeth on it.
Villarreal: I want to talk about the prep that went into playing Ani. How soon after you got the reassurance that you really did have this role, did the prep work begin for you? I know you talked to sex workers, you watched documentaries, read memoirs. I heard about the Pinterest boards and the dance training or everything that went into it for you. How soon did you start all that?
Madison: I pretty much waited to heavily dive into anything until I got the script because I still knew very little about the character. I didn’t have a complete grasp of who she is or how I could take the script and bring her to life. And so I did little things. I took a pole class after Sean told me like that she’s a dancer. And from that pole class, I was able to understand how difficult it was going to be. It gave me an idea of how much preparation I would need going into it. Once I got the script, I was able to dive in a lot more.
Baker: I should mention that [in the] first meeting, there was no screenplay. There was just the idea in my head. So when I pitched this to her, I said, “If you want the role, I’m going to go and write the screenplay.” That’s what I did. It took about a year to write it. And as a screenwriter, it was really wonderful to precast Mikey because I was able to see her face while fleshing this character out. We shared it with you I guess as we were prepping for production, in development, starting to go to New York and all of that — that’s when Mikey took on everything. It was probably four months before production in which there was intensive prep.
Villarreal: What do you remember about that first day on set embodying Ani for the first time and finding your emotions and settling into her?
Madison: I had done so much preparation beforehand, like physical, emotional preparation, dialect and language. And so putting the costume on, being in hair and makeup for the first time, I felt like things fell into place a bit more. But the first day of shooting for me is always the worst, in some ways, because it’s like, “OK, I guess this is it. The first scene that we shoot is going to set the tone for who this person is.” I remember feeling a bit shaky in the dialect at first, and then Sean was like, “OK, let’s take it down three notches.” And I think we were able to get to a place where it was really fine-tuned and perfect. After that, I think I just I felt more into the character. But we started off gently jumping into it. I was so nervous, though.
Baker: I think it’s always important to have a very relaxed first day. You almost want to be shooting stuff that may not even make it to the final cut. It’s just stuff to get everybody comfortable. I often think of it as like B-roll that I’m shooting on that first day. And historically, I have dropped the first shot of every single movie I’ve done. Every first take of every film has been lost. I know that it’s going to be us basically getting going. But I do remember that moment that Mikey just said. The whole cast wasn’t even in town.
Madison: It’s not in the movie.
Baker: It’s not in the movie. But it was the first time that we were all seeing you and Karren and Vache [Tovmasyan]; I believe we were underneath the train tracks on Brighton Beach Boulevard. Everybody was in costume and makeup. We were just rolling some random stuff. And it was the first time that we were able to see everybody in the environment be their characters. And it was, I have to say, extremely exciting. I just had Mikey improvise a little bit, just basically chewing out the dudes, the two Armenian henchmen. It was just riffing about finding Ivan [Mark Eydelshteyn]. It gave me an incredible amount of confidence seeing it in the monitor. It felt like it was all coming together.
Villarreal: When you hear actors talk about process or finding their way into the character, it’s often with the clothes that they’re wearing. You had an interesting statement, I forget where I read it, but it was about how you observed the nudity as your costume. And I wonder if you could elaborate on that, taking that frame of mind with Ani.
Madison: [Ani]’s a sex worker and, so, naturally, nudity is part of what she does. And I think that when she goes to work, there is a version of herself that she puts on and presents forward. She’s playing some kind of caricature of herself in those moments. To her, I think that she’s completely comfortable. She’s presenting a very confident version of herself. She’s in a strip club or in a private bedroom, and she’s comfortable. And to me, I felt the same way. It was my job. I never felt really like I was naked, to be honest. I was extremely comfortable. I remember going into shooting the first scene where there’d be some nudity and I’d never done that before and I was like, “I wonder what this is going to be like? This’ll be interesting, I guess, just to not have clothes. I don’t know.” And nobody cared. It was very relaxing in a way because I was like, “OK, we’re all approaching it like this is a job.” And it is a job for me as an actress and also for Ani as a character.
Villarreal: What work do you do to make sure the people on your set are feeling safe or comfortable for moments like that?
Baker: It’s really about communication. And I always saw these as, instead of sex scenes, sex shots that were very calculated and thought out very much so before production. We would discuss exactly how she was shot and what Mikey and Mark would want on set. If they wanted an intimacy coordinator, they could have one. But I think we were just so in sync by the time we got to production that it was a very casual thing. Now I have my wife and producer Samantha Quan present and, being a producer myself, safety and comfort level of my actors are the No. 1 priority. So it’s just done in an actually quite a clinical way, just like we get the shot and move on.
Villarreal: The tagline to the movie is that this is a love story, but there’s so many elements that you get to play with in this film. There’s slapstick comedy. There’s a little bit of a thriller component, a road trip midway through the film. There’s this brawl out scene with the henchmen of Ivan’s Russian billionaire parents. And I wonder what it was like taking on the physicality of her in that way versus some of the other scenes you were doing in the film?
Madison: Well, we always had talked about her being very scrappy. She’s a fighter in so many different ways, emotionally and physically. But also, in that moment, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her. These people have burst into her marital home and are trying to ruin her life. And she doesn’t know if they’re going to kill her or they’re going to ruin her marriage. So, she’s fighting tooth and nail to get out of there and then to save her marriage and her life that she’s earned and created. So, in terms of the physicality, I think that we were all on the same page that we could we could try to push it as far as possible. And I think that was necessary too. You can’t go into those scenes half-ass. I had to fully fight as hard as I possibly could for it to work. We had done everything half-speed. We did quite a bit of rehearsals, choreographing those scenes, and then we jumped into it for the first take. We shot it chronologically. So, the first take set the tone and the intensity and how to build it and arc it so that it wasn’t repetitive.
Villarreal: Did seeing what she could do with Brad Pitt in “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” sort of allow you to go as far as you wanted with writing that scene?
Baker: Definitely. Probably a little bit, yeah. And also her stunt work on “Scream.” We had a stunt coordinator and we did even have a stunt double just in case. But it was so great when I heard from Mikey’s mouth, “No, I want to do this.” And it was also wonderful to see it on the first take where it’s playing out in real time. Because again, as Mikey just said, we did like half speed and sometimes even quarter speed. I’m just going in slow motion, just for us to know exactly how this was going to go down. But when it’s really going down and there’s really lamps smashing and vases flying and shattering, it was so impressive. We knew we had something very visceral. We were all very excited and going, “Wow, OK, they went there. This is crazy.”
Villarreal: Your films often center on people or communities on the fringes; class disparity comes into focus. These are people who may be chasing the American dream but don’t have access to it and are finding their own ways to get to it. [Does] the way you approach your characters and how they go about that shift depending on the political climate? Maybe not overtly, but do you think about that when writing these stories?
Baker: Yes, I do. How overtly I’m going to tackle it is really depending on the film at the time. It’s hard not to tackle class, though, in any era. All of my films have pretty much tackled it because it’s impossible to avoid, especially with our growing class divide. It would be almost irresponsible not to to to cover it. So I’ve seen that grow with my films, actually. I don’t know if I answered your question, but yeah.
Villarreal: I was just curious if you feel like there’s been an evolution in any way.
Baker: There has been, I guess you could say, a conscious choice actually not to be overtly political. And I’ll tell you why. It’s not because I don’t want to tackle these subjects. I’m tackling them. But I don’t want to preach because I feel that we’re already so incredibly divided as a country that if I start preaching my politics, I’m going to essentially alienate 50% of the population. And I think that art is about bringing people together and sparking discussion. And I realized when I made “The Florida Project” that the reactions were extreme in a very interesting way because I had the hard right, the extreme right, liking the movie and the extreme left liking the movie. And so that made me think, “OK, that means we presented this story and the politics in the story in an objective enough way where it was speaking to both sides and perhaps even opening up the eyes of both sides and having them think differently about it or maybe even applying their own politics to these stories.” I don’t know. But I do appreciate the fact that I had both sides talking about it. So it was from “Florida Project” on that I said, “This is how I’m going to do it and I’m going to be conscious of it.”
Villarreal: You got into film in your youth watching monster films and blockbuster films like “Star Wars.” That was probably in some ways a goal. When did you become conscious of “I want to focus on these stories.”
Baker: I think I fell in love with world cinema while I was at NYU undergrad — more to do with just living in New York City than NYU itself. The proximity to repertory theater, the best video stores at the time. This is pre-internet; it was access to titles that I could never see before. And I think that I started to gravitate to Italian neorealism, British social realism. And I love the way they tackle politics. So I think that was where I saw, “OK, you could be making statements with these movies as well. At the same time tackling human stories with universal themes.” It was really after 9/11, and we were in extremely political times, that I made that film “Take Out,” which was my first exploration of something outside of my world and focusing on the present-day America.
Villarreal: The way that “Anora” ends is something that has generated a lot of discussion. It’s a tender, heartbreaking moment. The fairy tale is sort of come crashing down. Ani’s back to being a pumpkin, so to speak. She’s trying to figure out what happens next. [Mikey,] you said that that was maybe one of the hardest scenes for you, intimacy-wise. You felt more exposed in that moment doing that scene because it’s just so you can feel the uncertainty there in a way. When did that become clear to you? When did you feel like this seems harder than the rest of the stuff you’ve done for this film?
Madison: I think it was just the pressure that I put on myself for that particular scene because it’s such an important scene for the character and for the film. It was one of those scenes that I was anticipating and kind of dreading in some way. There was so much buildup to that scene, too, trying to shoot it for multiple days and then having something go wrong, like the lighting or the snow or it was too crowded of a street. And so finally on the day when we got there, I almost felt like numb in a sense, like I had sort of given up in this weird way because I was like, “I’m never going to get this scene right,” which is so dramatic.
Villarreal: Every director’s fear, right?
Baker: I certainly didn’t pick that up, because I was freaking out inside, so that’s interesting to hear.
Madison: There was a place that I needed to get to emotionally. Ani was constantly covering up any vulnerability or emotion. She wasn’t letting it be shown. She didn’t want anyone to see her like that. And so I found myself in a similar headspace while I was shooting, like not wanting to be outwardly emotional, keeping my cards close to my chest. And so I think that that’s one of the reasons why I was sort of dreading that scene because usually I’m just an emotional person. I cry when I’m happy, when I’m sad, overwhelmed, really anything. And I was like, why does this feel so difficult? Why do I feel like I’m on the verge of tears but nothing is coming out? I just wanted that release for her. I had a couple conversations with Sammy Quan, our producer, and talking about the character in the scene. And everyone’s sitting in the car waiting for us and I’m like, I feel like I need to ground myself in a different way. I need to let go of any idea I had of what I wanted the scene to be and let it just be what it is because I don’t think that you can really preplan a scene like that — like, “Oh, at this moment, this happens and this and this.” I needed to just be honest to what my emotions are at the moment. Because I think once you start pushing for some some big emotion that’s not there is when you lose the audience for the character. And so I was like, I need something to kind of just twist the knife a little bit deeper, open up some kind of emotionality that I didn’t have before. We all did that. Sean was in the backseat of the car —
Baker: Breaking the fourth wall there.
Madison: But it makes it very intimate in a way, because it’s like the creator of this story and these two characters, we’re all together in that last moment. It creates an intimacy within the film. But I pulled something out of my back pocket and we were able to sort of ground ourselves and get to a place where we could do the scene.
Villarreal: You’re not going to tell me what you pulled, huh?
Madison: Sometimes I feel embarrassed talking about it because I think some actors have things that they think about or listen to or that they have in their repertoire of emotional things to sort of open you up in a different way. It was very embarrassing, in a way, to share that with Sean and Yura [Borisov], but also I think it was needed because then we were all sort of in this like raw, vulnerable place.
Villarreal: Before I let you go, I know you don’t want to give your thoughts on what happens or the interpretation you have for it, but is there a reading of the ending that you found interesting that other people have had [of the ending]?
Baker: I receive a lot of messages and lately I’ve been doing a lot of Q&As and I’ve had people come up to me afterwards and express and share what they feel. What I’ve found, which has been just the most rewarding, is when we have actual sex workers coming up afterwards and saying — and I won’t tell you exactly what they’ve said — but the fact that with the film, in general, they [feel they] are being seen through the movie. I think that’s one of the reasons we made this film and that’s, for me, the most rewarding thing. Regarding the ending specifically, yes, people have had a lot of different interpretations. Some have been way out there. And I know that’s definitely not what’s happening. I can tell you that. But for the most part, I think that it is doing what it’s supposed to do and that’s allowing audiences to write their own ending, in a way. This is a lot to do with Mikey’s wonderful performance, I think people are really connecting with the Ani character and they want to know more. They want to be with her after this film. They want to know she’s all right. So there’s been a lot of positive writing at the end of what the epilogue could possibly be. And that’s nice, too. That’s really nice to hear from people who are like, “I love Ani” so much and I hope this happens to her.
Villarreal: It could be your first sequel.
Baker: Yeah, exactly.
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