“Anora”'s Mikey Madison Spent Months Training for 20-Second Pole Dance Scene, Had to 'Learn How to Twerk' (Exclusive)

Writer-director Sean Baker’s latest drama made its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival

Mikey Madison took preparing to play a stripper in Anora quite seriously — despite only a brief pole dancing sequence in the movie.

“I think I prepared even more than I needed to, honestly,” the Scream (2022) actress, 25, tells PEOPLE following her new movie's Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 8. Preparation meant “multiple months training as a dancer” so that her character, the titular Anora, “looks very seasoned.”

That included needing “to learn how to twerk,” adds Madison, “which was really important because that's a big part of dancing at clubs.”

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Written and directed by Tangerine filmmaker Sean Baker, Anora follows the title character’s journey from Brighton Beach, N.Y., strip clubs to a whirlwind romantic elopement with the son of a Russian oligarch (played by Mark Eydelshteyn).

However, “once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled,” reads the festival's official synopsis for the movie.

“There's a little 20-second scene of me on a [stripper] pole,” explains Madison. But because her character has “been dancing for a few years at least,” she went above and beyond when it came to training and research. “I wanted my body to look a certain way and I also wanted to feel differently about myself when I walked around too.”

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Although “certainly not a dancer,” she admits, Madison earned “a different perspective” by training under a real-life nightclub performer. “It made me move my body in a different way and gave me, I don't know, a different nuance to my sexuality.”

She adds, “I just really needed to educate myself on all aspects of [nightclub dancing] and give my body time for it to feel easy when I was finally doing it. I didn't want it to seem like I was exerting a lot of energy. I wanted it to be very effortless looking.”

Baker, 53, also sent Madison films to inspire her depiction of Anora, she says. “Then I did a deep dive into my research on sex work, and I read memoirs, watched documentaries, talked to some really amazing consultants who were very generous with their time and information and just gave me lots of little details that helped to enrich the story.” 

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And on top of all that, she learned Russian with a dialect coach. “I went to New York about a month early just so I could live in that community to understand what it feels like to possibly be born or to be raised there,” says the Los Angeles-born actress.

“I did as much as I possibly could so that when I got to set for the first day, I knew the character really well,” Madison adds. “I didn't want to leave any question unanswered.”

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Anora, from distributor Neon, is in theaters Oct. 18. The Toronto International Film Festival runs through Sept. 15.

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