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00:00You know, that's kind of how I thought after I did Once Upon a Time.
00:05I was only 19 when I did that movie.
00:08I was so young and he was my hero and he was like, that was like, if I get to work with
00:14Quentin Tarantino one day, that'll be the coolest thing I'll ever do in my life.
00:19And after that, I was like, what the heck am I supposed to do now?
00:22And then I got to work with someone like Sean and make a Nora.
00:26You know, so I'm really hopeful and looking forward to that next role or person I get
00:33to work with where I get to have that feeling again.
00:36Because I think it's that feeling that I'm just, I'm really chasing.
00:46If you think for a second this is going to be allowed, you're dead wrong.
00:51In fact, if you don't help me fix this, I'm going to have you arrested.
00:55Yeah.
00:56I'm going to have you arrested.
00:57Arrested?
00:58Yeah.
00:59Oh, that's fucking hilarious.
01:00Yep.
01:01Arrested for what?
01:02For what?
01:03Yeah.
01:04I'll tell you for what.
01:05Trespassing.
01:06Trespassing.
01:07Fraud.
01:08Cheating.
01:09Theft.
01:10Theft?
01:11Yes, theft.
01:12Assault.
01:13And actually the picture is very, very clear here.
01:17A skimming prostitute married Ivan, cheated Ivan to marry her so she can steal from his
01:23wealthy family.
01:25That's it.
01:26Definitely.
01:27And I'm sure you already have criminal records, so.
01:31For sure.
01:32Yeah.
01:33One, two, three, you're in jail.
01:34Easy.
01:35Yep.
01:36Ivan proposed to me.
01:38He wanted to get married.
01:40He put a fucking ring on my finger.
01:41Do you see this shit?
01:42What ring?
01:43He bought me a fucking four-carat ring.
01:45Does this look real to you, motherfucker?
01:47Bet you never seen one of these before, have you, huh?
01:51No.
01:52No.
01:53This is my fucking ring, Ivan.
01:54Give me that fucking ring.
01:55I am not giving you the fucking ring.
01:56You touch me and I will fucking scream, motherfucker.
01:57Do not come fucking-
01:58Get that fucking ring off of her.
01:59What did you say?
02:00Did you say something?
02:01Be careful.
02:02Hold them legs.
02:03This is Zahara's property.
02:04Shut up.
02:05Shut up.
02:06Hey, hey.
02:07Don't scream.
02:08Hey, don't scream.
02:09Don't scream.
02:10Don't scream.
02:11Don't scream.
02:12Don't scream.
02:13Don't scream.
02:14Don't scream.
02:15Don't scream.
02:16Don't scream.
02:17Don't scream.
02:18Don't scream.
02:19Don't scream.
02:20Don't scream.
02:21Don't scream.
02:22Hey, what is she saying?
02:23Shut up.
02:24Shut the fuck up.
02:25Is she saying rape?
02:26Is she?
02:27What?
02:28Shut up.
02:29Shut the fuck up.
02:30What are you doing?
02:31Rape?
02:32What rape?
02:33What the fuck are you-
02:34Hey, the police are coming.
02:35Shut up.
02:36Shut the fuck up.
02:37Shut the fuck up.
02:38Stop screaming.
02:39Please.
02:40Stop screaming.
02:41Please.
02:42Stop screaming.
02:44Please.
02:45Stop screaming.
02:51Welcome to the actor's side.
02:53I could read a list of the awards she has won so far, and maybe I will.
02:58But it's an extraordinary performance for Anora, which debuted at Cannes, which is where I first saw it.
03:04Didn't know what I was walking into.
03:06What an experience.
03:08And what's been happening with this movie and with your performance.
03:13Mikey Madison, welcome to the actor's side.
03:16Thanks for having me.
03:17Isn't this fun, exciting, you know, to just suddenly be nominated and get this kind of recognition?
03:25Let me read here.
03:26You have already won Los Angeles Film Critics, Boston Film Critics, Washington, D.C., the
03:31National Board of Review, Phoenix, Seattle, St. Louis, Toronto, Virginia.
03:36Nominated Golden Globes, Critics' Choice, SAG, BAFTA, and Academy Awards for Best Actress.
03:44This is just a drop in the bucket of it.
03:48What do you think when I say all that?
03:50Gosh.
03:52I keep having these, like, pinch me moments of I can't believe that this is happening in my life.
03:59Is it actually happening to me?
04:01Or is this some kind of weird daydream and I'm going to snap out of it and it's all going to just be some dream?
04:09So I don't know if it's really sunk in yet because, of course, I've, like, dreamed about this my whole career as an actress
04:18and wonder, oh, I wonder if I'll ever be in a film that, I don't know, that is a part of something like this.
04:25And I am and it's very surreal and it's exciting and I don't know if it'll quite feel real maybe until it's over
04:37and then I'll have some time to really think about it.
04:39Yeah, yeah.
04:41I have to say you have been part of a film that was part of all this.
04:45Oh, yes.
04:46Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, literally I'm not saying this because it is my favorite film of the last ten years.
04:53I loved that movie and I love Quentin Tarantino, but it was his masterpiece.
04:59Oh, absolutely. I mean, he's my hero. I adore him.
05:04Even before I got to work with him.
05:07But I think, you know, I mean, to have a small piece, just to be a tiny, tiny part of that film was an absolute dream come true.
05:16And with that, I was just sort of, you know, watching from the sidelines and cheering everybody on, you know, like, yeah.
05:24So now it feels a little bit, it feels a little different.
05:28Yeah.
05:29Yeah.
05:30You had one of the most memorable scenes in that movie, I have to say.
05:34I mean, they set you on fire.
05:36I mean, it was like the stunts and the fights.
05:40You have that in Anora, too. You have fights.
05:42It seems like every role you're getting lately, you get a little physicality here.
05:45But you're working with Brad Pitt in that movie and the dog.
05:49Oh, yeah. Oh, yes.
05:51There were there were multiple pit bulls that I worked with.
05:55Very well-trained, beautiful dogs whose only job was just to do that film.
06:02They were trained specifically for that film.
06:04And I was like, well, what's going to happen? Are they going to go on and do different movies?
06:07And she was like, oh, no, they're going to go and live on a farm somewhere.
06:12I was like, wow.
06:13That's it.
06:14That's our whole career.
06:15I guess so.
06:17Amazing.
06:18But I think that one of the dogs won the Palm Dog Award.
06:22Palm Dog.
06:23Yeah.
06:24So it's quite an award.
06:27That's it.
06:29I have to say, though, that that was so memorable.
06:32You played Susan Atkins.
06:34Did you do research for that?
06:35I mean, it's absurd, you know, in a lot of ways of what you had to go through in it.
06:39Oh, of course I did.
06:41Well, I had already known quite a bit about the Manson family.
06:46I did a lot of research even before I auditioned for the film, just out of curiosity.
06:52It's one of those sort of, I mean, I'm an L.A. native and these things happened not too far away from where I live.
07:00And so I had just kind of randomly at one point, maybe a couple of years before I auditioned for the film,
07:08just like went down a rabbit hole of doing research and like watching documentaries and reading articles about the Manson family
07:17and this sort of huge thing that had happened in history.
07:22And so I already knew about the history of that.
07:26And so it was more just about understanding who the character was that I was playing,
07:31really trying to create a character so that I could be grounded in reality of all the absurd craziness that was happening.
07:42Yeah, that's interesting because it was like, yeah, I'm an L.A. native, too.
07:45So I like, oh, yeah, there aren't that many of us.
07:48You know, you don't meet them. I was born in Santa Monica.
07:51But it was it's always great to meet another L.A. native, by the way.
07:55Oh, absolutely. I feel the same way.
07:58I take a lot of pride in, you know, being being a valley girl.
08:02So, yeah, yeah. We've gone through some tough times in the last few days here in this town.
08:08Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the past few weeks, it's been really heartbreaking.
08:13And I'm sure for you as well and just like the whole world.
08:16And yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
08:21Quentin Tarantino, you know, did you audition for him when you did that picture?
08:26Yes, I did. Yeah, I auditioned for him and he read with me.
08:31He was the reader and it was so much fun.
08:34And I auditioned for this one character and he was like, well, you know what?
08:39Why not? Why don't you do a cold read? And here's some new some new audition size.
08:44And, you know, I'll audition someone else and you go into this room and rehearse these lines.
08:48I'll bring you back in. And so I did.
08:50And so I did and I did a cold read for this sort of short monologue that Sadie has in a car.
08:58And that was the scene that I did my second part of the audition with.
09:02And then they then he brought me back for a chemistry read.
09:05And, you know, I was also able to be a part of the table read, which was so amazing.
09:13And I was sitting next to, you know, the late, great Burt Reynolds,
09:18which I'm so grateful that I had a chance to meet a legend like that.
09:23He was originally cast in it. Yes, he was.
09:26And unfortunately couldn't do it and then died. And so he's replaced by Bruce Stern.
09:31But you were there at that table read. Yes, I was.
09:35And I was the first one at the table read because I'm very I'm always on time.
09:39I was very early. So just sitting there, I had just gotten the role like a day before.
09:45And I was just sort of watching all of these like incredible, iconic actors walk through the door one after another,
09:53like Burt Reynolds walked in and then Al Pacino and Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.
10:00And it was so surreal. It was kind of like the same feeling that I have now amongst all of this.
10:08It was the same feeling I had then is like my mom dropped me off and picked me up.
10:12And I was like, I don't even know if that experience I had was real because it was so like dreamlike and strange and like fantastical.
10:21And yeah, it was so fun. And Quentin was having all of us read different characters as well.
10:27Like, oh, you know, Brad, can you read like, I don't know, like person number two or like this character?
10:36And so it was fun. It was. That's wow. Yeah, it was. And it also felt like very old Hollywood as well.
10:43Old school to sit at this big, long table and have a table read like that.
10:47I know. You don't get that much now, do you? TV you did. You did better things for five years.
10:53I did, but we didn't have any table reads for that. You didn't? That's unusual on television comedy.
10:58I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Was that fun doing better things?
11:02Yeah, I started I shot the pilot when I was almost 16, so I was still 15 and a half.
11:07I mean, it was seven years of of filming and spaces in between.
11:12And so it was a lot of my life. It was my entire my entire career as an actress was really on that show up until it ended.
11:20And so I learned a lot on that show. I really knew very little about acting and, you know, making television.
11:28And so it was all like a great university to go in and learn all aspects of the business.
11:34Absolutely. I sort of that's sort of my I never went to college or film school.
11:38So that's like my that's my college. It's my acting school, my film school.
11:42And then I think once upon a time was kind of like my grad school in a way I had was doing that at the same time as better things.
11:50I was filming better things during the day. And then at night I was doing night shoots on Once Upon a Time.
11:56Amazing. And then, of course, you wound up. This was such an interesting story.
12:00Sean Baker, the writer, producer, director, film editor, he's nominated for Oscars for all of those things on Anora,
12:07happened to come out of Scream and you obviously were in Scream.
12:13This one twenty twenty two and and basically offered you the role.
12:19Yes. Of a movie he hadn't written yet.
12:22This is a Hollywood story you rarely hear.
12:27I mean, usually there's a script or something. What do you think about that encounter?
12:32What did he see in Scream that led to Anora?
12:38Well, I mean, he had also seen my little role in Once Upon a Time.
12:44I remember him telling me that he had even gone to go see it again.
12:49Just my my my scene so that he could watch it again.
12:53He was thinking, oh, maybe one day we'll do something together, but I don't know what it would be.
12:58And then, you know, a handful of years down the line, Scream came out and Sean goes to see everything.
13:03Every movie he goes to see in theaters. I know he's a film freak.
13:07I interviewed him here in this seat and he collects posters and everything else.
13:13Yeah, he's he's a true cinephile.
13:15Like if you looked in the dictionary and you opened it up and you saw a cinephile, there'd be a photo of Sean Baker.
13:21He is just like he just loves that movie going experience.
13:25And so he saw Scream and he told me that when he was sitting in the theater,
13:31he turned to Sammy Kwan, his wife, and our incredible producer and was like, oh, I think I think she's she's who should be in this film.
13:39And so I think he had a loose idea for what the movie would be.
13:42And he, you know, two days later, a couple of days later, I met with him, had coffee and he was like, hey, you want to you want to work with me?
13:50If you do, this is the kind of story I want to tell. I'll write it for you if you want to do it.
13:55And I was pretty floored. I was like, yes, absolutely.
13:59I would love to work with you. I said yes. But I was still kind of like, is this real?
14:05Like, did he really just offer me a role to work with him without an audition?
14:13And so he had offered me the role. So I called I made my agent Rachel said, please just call him again and ask him if it's if I really have the role.
14:22Just I just want to make sure that I really do, even though he said you have the role.
14:26And so he sent me a voice memo, which is like classic Sean Baker and was like, hey, Mikey,
14:32like just so you just you have the role. The role is yours. I'm writing it for you.
14:38That is amazing. Thank you for saying that. My imposter syndrome says thank you.
14:44That has happened. People, directors come in and write roles for someone they have in their head or something there.
14:51But you at your young age, based on, you know, your level of time in the business, that's a huge compliment.
14:59I'm very, very grateful that he wanted to work with me.
15:03I mean, making this film has completely changed my life, not just because of everything that's happening right now,
15:09but just the experience of making a movie like that with someone like Sean and the kind of collaboration we had.
15:16It was so amazing. And yeah, I just it's it's a special movie.
15:23It's always been special to me. And you were very you got to be very involved in the creation of any of the Nora.
15:30Yeah. Here, which is also something, you know, some directors will say, don't change a word of dialogue or anything.
15:36You were in on the whole process from the beginning. Well, he is, you know, he he is an absolutely wonderful talent.
15:44And he has a very specific singular vision. That is Sean Baker.
15:50It has Sean Baker written all over it. He has this very kind of twisted sense of humor that I love,
15:56that is very specific to him and his sort of inner monologue.
16:00And I knew that it would it would always be like a Sean Baker film.
16:04But he really welcomed me into the process in such a grand way that I'd never been welcomed into before.
16:10He I remember the first when I first met him, he was like, so what do you want to do in this movie?
16:16Like, is there any do you have any talents? Is there anything you want to do?
16:19And I was so shocked by that question. Nobody, no one had ever asked me that before.
16:26I was like, I don't I don't know. I don't know.
16:30Like, I don't know how to answer it because it was really shocking to me.
16:34And it took me a little bit to kind of really process that he really genuinely wanted to collaborate with.
16:41Girl. Yeah. Like he wanted to make this with me.
16:44And I was like, took me a second to get there.
16:47And then I was like, this is what I've been freaking waiting for is to is to have this with someone.
16:53And so I was like, OK, well, I'm going to go I'm going to go all in on this.
16:57And it was so wonderful. So it was just amazing to to do something like that.
17:04That that's an amazing thing. And she's an amazing character, too.
17:08You really had to do a lot of work to develop this, you know, from learning how to work on a stripper's pole.
17:16Did you get your own pole? Oh, you have one at home to practice on.
17:22Yeah, I did. I mean, that is that was a really important part of her physicality.
17:28You know, I wanted her to be good at her job, like really good.
17:33And I think that all of the work I did, I was like, I want it to seem like she's been dancing for a handful of years.
17:39And so I need to do something that that's impressive and effortless, too.
17:44And I'm not someone who is like at the time wasn't like super comfortable in my sexuality.
17:51I was like, I need to figure that out because she is a character.
17:54She's a woman who who is. Yeah. And is able to see herself, her sexuality, like as a woman from an outside perspective.
18:02Like, what is this man? How does he see me? Because that's her job.
18:06Her job is. She's a sex professional. Yeah.
18:10And so I was very ambitious and what I wanted to be able to master in terms of like pole tricks and dancing and floor routines.
18:20And twerking. Yeah, absolutely. That's a very, very important part of like club culture.
18:25It is. It's true. It's modern. That's a modern way that.
18:28Had you ever twerked? I've never asked an actor this question.
18:32Are you are you are you trying to learn? Is that.
18:37Well, no, I had I had never attempted before.
18:42I just didn't feel like in tune with my body in that like cool, sexy way.
18:48Like I just never had like tried to move like that before.
18:51But it's it's an important like I said, it's that's how women dance at the club.
18:57It's that's it's just a modern way of like moving your body and like showing off and has attitude to it.
19:04And so I was like, well, that's something I'm going to have to learn because I wanted it to be modern.
19:09And I wanted it to be like ballsy the way that she like, you know, shows shows herself off.
19:15And so I learned I had a I had an incredible dance teacher who taught me all of that.
19:21She taught me how to give a lap dance, how to twerk, how to dance, how to do pole tricks.
19:25She taught me everything. Wow. And I spent months like hours each day really trying to.
19:31Perfect, what I what I had learned, because, you know, for those moments that you get to see my character,
19:38you learn so much about her. Yeah, totally. It seems so natural.
19:43But I know all the work that goes into getting it to that level.
19:47And that's just one level of the performance, too, because she's heartbreaking.
19:51You know, if you haven't seen the movie, I'm not going to tell you the end.
19:55But watch the last shot of this picture and what you get to there
20:00and how you do this without dialogue that tells you absolutely everything.
20:05It's heartbreaking and it's amazing working with your Russian co-stars.
20:09You also had to pick up Russian. Yes, I did. Yeah, I had to learn Russian.
20:14I don't I didn't speak another language previously. I mean, I don't do not speak Russian now.
20:19It's a very complicated, difficult language to learn.
20:24But I had to I had to learn it. And my character is second generation Russian speaker.
20:31And so, you know, her backstory is that she learned Russian from her grandmother who only spoke Russian.
20:38And my character's mother spoke Russian as well, but it wasn't practiced in the household.
20:43So there's a very specific way that my character speaks Russian.
20:46It has to be almost childlike in a way.
20:49I didn't want it to be completely fluent and have all of those like, you know, rolling R's.
20:56I wanted there to be a stark difference between Igor and Vanya and then Annie as a Russian speaker.
21:07She's never going to fit in. She's never going to be one of them.
21:11She's never going to be at that level or place that Vanya is at.
21:15She's always going to be an outsider kind of looking in.
21:19And so I was very specific in the way that I wanted to learn Russian and the dialogue.
21:25And I really wanted to understand exactly what I was saying and, you know, be searching for those words and understand the way that you like wrap around the sounds.
21:38So it was really complicated and one of the most stressful parts.
21:41After the first Russian session, I burst into tears because I was like, I just am never going to be able to do this.
21:48Like, I have two months to learn Russian for this role.
21:52This is going to be impossible.
21:54And so I was like, all right, I'm going to have to fall asleep listening to 10 hours of Russian speaking.
22:00And I'm going to have to wake up in the morning.
22:02And that's also what I listen to.
22:04And I'm going to have to just do like, you know, two hour long sessions multiple times a week with this Russian coach and just like nail it into my brain.
22:14It's amazing. And you did it.
22:16And plus, you're from Brooklyn, the characters from Brooklyn here, too.
22:20So you have that accent because we have established we are both Angelinas, which definitely we have no accents.
22:28Well, to other people, I certainly have like, I mean, I'm a sally girl.
22:34And if you haven't noticed, which is like, I mean, I know I'm very aware of the way I speak because of all of this dialect work that I've done recently.
22:46But I'm like, I really like hold my voice up here.
22:49It's like at the end of my sentences go up.
22:52And it's so different than the way that Annie speaks.
22:55And like, I think her voice resonates in like a very different part of her body.
23:00It's like more from here. There's like a toughness to it.
23:03There's attitude. And so I really I wanted it to be specific to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.
23:12I wanted it to have like a modern feeling to it.
23:16I wanted to understand all of the slang and the way that like these young women talk from that area.
23:22So I went to Brighton Beach and I lived there about a month before we started shooting.
23:29I listened to how people were speaking. I tried to integrate myself into the community and understand what it was like to be a Brighton Beach native.
23:42And I lived just two blocks away from where my character lived.
23:49Would you call yourself a method actor?
23:51No, no. I don't know anything about Stanislavski. I've never studied Stanislavski's The Method before.
24:01Maybe one day I'll read a book about it and try to understand.
24:04He's got a great book, An Actor Prepares. I took it in high school.
24:08Oh, did you?
24:09Yeah, yeah. Because I tried to stay away from the hard subjects. So I took acting.
24:15And then tricks on you because it's pretty complicated and intellectual.
24:20Much more complicated, which is why I'm talking to actors rather than doing it.
24:27I admire so much what actors go through to create a role. Every different kind of role.
24:35Yeah, yeah. No, I think my process is just more intuitive.
24:40I think it's just whatever I feel is necessary to play each specific character is just something I'll try to do.
24:47And I think for this one, there was so much about Annie that is so different from me in my life.
24:53And I wanted to understand it on a deep way.
24:56I'm constantly searching for just trying to get even deeper as an actor, keep refining my artist practice.
25:03And so I was like, I'm just really going to try to immerse myself in this world as much as possible.
25:09And I think that all that work I did is why you get to see me on screen.
25:15Like, you know, for instance, like in the club with all of those women, I'm the only woman who is not a sex worker in real life.
25:24And so I didn't want to stand out.
25:26I didn't want to seem like an actress amongst like all of these women who are acting for the first time and have similar lived experiences to the people they're playing.
25:36I wanted to I wanted it to be honest.
25:39And I wanted I didn't want there to be like, I don't know, like a shiny surface to it.
25:46I wanted it to be just real and realistic.
25:50Well, you pulled it off. I have to say with that, I had no idea that they weren't professional actors or anything.
25:58And well, I think that sorry to interrupt, but I first time actors.
26:03I think Sean really tries not to say like professional or non-professional because they're all professional people who are just happen to be acting for the first time.
26:17Well, it's an extraordinary movie. It's extraordinary.
26:20Like I said, I thought it can. I remember that.
26:23You know, I love seeing movies. I have no idea what they are.
26:26All I knew was kind of exciting to do that. The name.
26:28A Nora. OK, what's this?
26:30And we go in and there it was.
26:33And of course, when the palm door that had to be an exciting experience.
26:36Oh, my gosh. Of course. I mean, Greta Gerwig was the jury president.
26:41And she's a director who I loved forever and even like wrote a letter to years and years ago.
26:47Oh, you're kidding. Here she is the head of the jury.
26:49Yes, I know. It's very exciting for me.
26:52And I had no expectations going into Canada.
26:55That itself was like a dream come true for me to go to Cannes Film Festival, have a film in main competition.
27:02That was like, oh, wow. Like this is this is like the coolest thing I will ever do.
27:08And then it's sort of like kind of gotten more and more dreamlike and more exciting.
27:12And like everything has just been a wonderful surprise that has followed.
27:17A continuing ride. Well, I wish you the best going forward.
27:21Thank you for joining us on the actor's side today, Mikey Madison.
27:25Thank you so much for having me.