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“There’s Only One Life, and I Believe in Tarantino’s Idea of a Strong, Solid Filmography”: Sean Baker on His Oscar-Winning Anora
Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in Anora With Sean Baker’s Anora winning five Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Editing and Best Actress) last night at the 2025 Academy Awards, we’re reposting our Fall, 2024 cover story interview with Baker.
“Tonight, this could be the greatest night of our lives/let’s make a new start/The future is ours to find.” The lyrics of Take That’s 2008 hit “Greatest Day” burst from the soundtrack at the start of Sean Baker’s exhilarating, Palme d’Or–winning eighth feature, Anora. Drew Daniels’ camera tracks across a row of strippers and customers at a Manhattan club before cutting to handheld shots in which one dancer, Anora, or Ani (Mikey Madison), moves from guy to guy, hustling time in the VIP room. (“You don’t have cash? Let’s go to the ATM!”) For the guys, their stacks of twenties buy the fantasy that, at least for the length of the track, this might actually be the greatest night of their life. That same evening, Ani is sent to entertain Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn)—a loaded, charismatic, and immature 23-year-old Russian—because her Uzbek background means she knows a bit of his language. And by the time “Greatest Day” is reprised later in the film at a Las Vegas wedding chapel, Baker’s filmmaking and the leads’ two buoyant performances have us believing that, for these two, the future might indeed be theirs to find.
Both of the above fantasies are, of course, manufactured: the first by the choreographed ritual of the strip club, the second by the ways how Baker, while remaining true to the cultural specificity and outsider energy of his earlier films involving sex work, such as Starlet and Tangerine, subversively deploys the building blocks of romantic comedy. But when “Greatest Day” cuts out, Baker places us in an entirely different movie: a hyperkinetic New York adventure with a drawn-out, almost Cassavetes-style home invasion set piece that dexterously and provocatively balances violence and humor. After first agreeing to be Ivan’s “horny girlfriend” for a week for $15,000, Ani accepts his impulsive post-coital offer of marriage, both of them glossing over the likelihood that Ivan’s oligarch parents (Darya Ekamasova and Aleksey Serebryakov) will cut them off financially. The news that their son has wed does generate shock waves in Moscow, with both parents immediately jetting over, in the interim dispatching family fixer Toros (Baker regular Karren Karagulian) and his muscle, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to get the marriage annulled. During the aforementioned home invasion scene, which lasts 25 minutes and took up 10 of the production’s 37 shoot days, Ivan bolts, leaving Ani to endure the film’s most visceral act of violence, which is largely emotional—the forced removal of her four-carat wedding ring.
The decelerated third act, in which the reality principle crashes hard, is yet another tonal gear shift, one that makes the film worthy of Cannes’ top prize, deepening, clarifying and, finally, complicating the movie’s themes. In screenplay terms, the film’s final scene, which (spoiler alert!) Baker and I discuss in general terms below, is dramatically airtight even as its emotional effects are compellingly ambiguous due to the complex shadings of Madison’s virtuoso performance. In addition to that ending, Baker and I discuss his role as casting director on the film, his nod to Altman, the influence of Italian sex comedies on Anora, and how his filmmaking has both evolved and stayed the same as recognition and budgets have grown. Anora will be released this fall by NEON.
Filmmaker: Back when I interviewed you in 2012 for Starlet, you said that you were working on a bigger New York film, a Brighton Beach story. Is this that, and it’s been in the works that long?
Baker: It’s actually not that, but it sort of is because Karren Karagulian and I were trying to make a film about the Russian community in Brighton Beach even before Starlet. After Prince of Broadway, we had written a script about the Russian gangster world, but it never got made because we couldn’t find financing. I’m glad it didn’t get made, because I’m happy with the direction that I was forced to take.
Filmmaker: I was fascinated to learn that the movie didn’t start with the Anora character but with making a film with Karren in which a home invasion would be the lynchpin scene. Then, you found your way to the character of Anora.
Baker: It was a couple of things at the same time: Karren and I wanting to work together, trying to find a story to tell for a very long time after abandoning the first one and then me hearing a similar real story from a friend of ours in which a young Russian-American newlywed was kidnapped for collateral. We thought, “There’s something there”; then it was years of trying to figure it out. Also, when I was scrambling to pay the bills back in 2000, 2001, I edited wedding videos, one of many side jobs to pay the bills. I edited a lot of New York weddings, and a few Russian and Russian-American weddings. That, in conjunction with [Karren], made me think this is a culture I can tackle in a way I haven’t seen before.
We had a consultant on board who had nothing to do with the sex industry, but [who told us about being] a young Russian-American and her experience in the United States. We did Zooms and calls for research, and during one of those meetings I was very forward in saying, “I don’t want to make a Russian gangster movie—it’s been done too many times—but I still want to play with the themes of power, and what’s power in this capitalist society but money? So, what would put her in that position? She marries into a family, but what type of family would it be if it wasn’t a gangster family? Oh, a Russian oligarch’s family! She marries the son of a Russian oligarch, a kid who’s never grown up.” Everybody laughed, and I was like, “That’s it.” Then, it was just about fleshing this out.
Filmmaker: And when did Mikey Madison come into the picture?
Baker: Right after Red Rocket. I didn’t want to move forward with any writing until we figured out who Anora was going to be. I had to have a face to write to. Then, it just happened all at once. Sam [Samantha Quan], my wife and producer, and I went to see Scream [2022] with Mikey in it. I had already been very interested in her as an actor from Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. She really stuck out in that movie to me—I went back for a third time in the theater just to watch that scene at the end with Brad Pitt. But when we saw Scream in the auditorium, I turned to Sam and said, “She’s Ani.” As soon as we stepped out of the theater, we IMDb-Pro’d her and realized she had the same agent as Brooklynn Prince from The Florida Project. It was serendipity. We had a meeting with Mikey, and then it was really wonderful to be able to spend the next year fleshing the story out, always knowing that Mikey was Ani.
Filmmaker: Was she involved in that development process, or was she more like a muse to write to?
Baker: The second, but I kept her very informed every time there was a development in the script. Like, OK, I want to make her a sex worker because it’s the world I know, and it fits into [these themes] perfectly, [so I told her], “Start taking pole dancing lessons.” Then, I called her a few months later, saying, “There’s going to be lap dancing, too.”
Filmmaker: The last time we spoke we talked about your use of scriptments—crosses between screenplays and treatments.
Baker: I’ve been moving away from that for the last few films. The Florida Project was the last one that was more of a treatment. Red Rocket [needed a script] because of the way it was shot during COVID, where we never knew whether we’d be shut down the next day—all of those monologues were very important and had to be written out. Going into this one, there was a lot of Russian. I don’t know Russian, so I had to write that dialogue in English, then we had to translate it. Also, it’s a very plot-driven film, and because of the budget we didn’t really have time to deviate into tangents. So, it was a full-length screenplay.
Filmmaker: There are flickers of your old approach, though, like the candy store scene.
Baker: Oh, yes—letting Ivy Wolk rant in there. Even though it was fully scripted, I took advantage of the fact that I had amazing actors who were talented at comedic improvisation. I have a lot that I wish I could put in the movie that is gold, but it is already a two-hour-and-20-minute movie. But after we would get the take the way it was scripted, I would always ask my actors to do an improv—to say the same things but color it up with their own dialogue.
Filmmaker: Were there ever moments where the improv was happening in Russian or Armenian that maybe you didn’t clock that it was good until much later?
Baker: Yes, mostly in the Armenian [dialogue] between Vache [Tovmasyan] and Karren. They were improvising in Russian as well. We had Russian speakers on the set, and when I would hear them laugh, I would know we got something good and immediately have it translated for me. But the [improv] was mostly in what we called “the crawl,” when they’re driving around and looking for Ivan.
The beginning of the film shows Anora’s world at the club she works at. I wanted to shoot that in a different way than I shot the rest of the film. By the time we shot, Mikey had spent a lot of time there—she got to meet the dancers, consult with and shadow them. She knew how to play this game, how to work clients. This was my ode to Altman: We had her on a wireless mic, and for two 10-minute 35mm magazines, we just rolled with a telephoto lens—20 minutes following her around the club. She’d go up to a client, use her magic and see if she could get him to the private [room]. We had some lines she had to hit, but it was mostly completely improvised as she went from client to client. She had a little earpiece, and I would radio her and go, “OK, next guy!” It was interesting to see how she would gauge her approach to each man based on her instinct and how she would read them. So, I got 20 minutes of that and then 10 minutes of handheld following her around. A lot of amazing improv got whittled down to three or four minutes, but it really showed you the mechanics of the club and her livelihood.
Filmmaker: I presume you shut the club down and were shooting during the day?
Baker: Yes, it was shut down and all faked, but we got it up and running pretty much the way it runs at night. We strategically placed all of our extras. Everybody was ready to talk if they were approached, and she had friends and colleagues spread throughout the place so she could talk to them between clients. We even had our producer, Alex Coco, DJ’ing, so we had live music playing that we were married to—which is usually a no-no, but I wanted them to be forced to shout over the loud volume of the music and moving their bodies to the real beat. We set up the scene as much as possible and shot it like a documentary.
Filmmaker: Karren’s been in every one of your films. Tell me a bit more about how that relationship’s changed and how his acting has evolved.
Baker: He’s always been such an incredibly strong actor, so natural. We’re also very good friends, and after a while, it was like, “Oh, he’s my good luck charm—if I don’t have him in a film, it’s going to bomb!” He’s obviously gotten better over the years, more confident, and knows craft now, whereas in the beginning I would just let the camera roll and see what I would get. It’s interesting to hear Mikey talk about her experience with him. She found it quite intense in a good way because he might not provide the same things that other actors who have been classically trained provide. He’s a little more unpredictable, but he’s also at the point now where he’s giving me alts—different approaches to a scene with each take. We have a shorthand. And, you know, he’s Armenian and knows Russian. He’s married to a Russian, so there’s that link, too. He’s like an advisor in that world, telling me whether things are accurate or not.
Filmmaker: I couldn’t not think about Pretty Woman when watching Anora, the way you inverted and played off the tropes of that movie. But then there is also that whole spate of ’80s and ’90s films, such as Green Card, where the romantic concept of marriage exists alongside commentary on how there can be this transactional element in the modern world too.
Baker: I didn’t really pick up on the Pretty Woman thing until very close to the shoot, when people told me, “Oh, this is very similar.” I hadn’t seen Pretty Woman since 1990 and intentionally did not rewatch it because I didn’t want to be influenced by it in any way. But there’s also Coming to America—the parents coming over, that’s very similar. When I was 17, I was working in a movie theater that showed Coming to America, and I don’t know how many times I saw it, but it must have had an influence. I was taking the romantic comedy in general and trying to do a spin on it. I use that Take That song, “Greatest Day,” which you would probably hear in a movie like Love, Actually. I open with that song and then end [the first section] with it, which is how I saw the beginning of the movie: “This is the greatest day.” I wanted to sell it to the audience as the Hollywood version, and now we’re going to take it a bit further and see where it goes.
Filmmaker: That long first act ends with this incredible sequence in the Las Vegas mall, with fireworks and everything. The second act, which is a New York adventure, is accelerated, and then there’s a real tonal and rhythmic gear shift, a deceleration, in the third act, which you feel in your body.
Baker: I love tonal shifts in films. [In mine] they’re very deliberate, and they keep the audience on their toes. I’ve been doing that with a lot of my films. In Starlet, we reveal that she’s in the industry an hour in. Being ahead of the audience, giving them hope and then taking it away—that’s very much [what happens to Anora]: She gets a little glimpse of hope and then it gets immediately eliminated. You know, I don’t do test screenings—
Filmmaker: You don’t do test screenings?
Baker: No, I hate them. The only people I show my film to are Samantha Quan, Alex Coco and my cinematographer, Drew Daniels, if he wants to see it. But it’s really just us. We’re making the film, we’re putting it out in the world, and I don’t really want any other opinions. As soon as you bring other opinions in, they start talking about style and cutting and pacing. I’m sorry—this is my voice, accept it or not, and I have final cut on my films. But there was one moment in Cannes that I wasn’t expecting. When Anora is on the plane at the end and says to Galina [Ivan’s mother], “I’m going to sue you and sue Ivan,” half the audience cheered. I wasn’t expecting that because I knew that, five seconds later, Galina is going to come down the steps and basically threaten her life. [In Cannes] I was like, “Oh, the audience is going to be let down,” but that’s exactly what I wanted.
Filmmaker: At the same time, as Galina is delivering these threats, she’s winking to Igor, which illustrates another aspect of the film. Going back to the home invasion scene, the film’s violence walks a line between real threat and physical comedy. In that scene, for example, Anora breaks Garnick’s nose, and half the scene he’s running around with a bag of frozen vegetables on it. It’s very funny, yet when Anora enumerates in a very sober, straightforward way to Igor later all the violent things that have happened to her, you realize that everything she is saying is correct, even if there was a comic edge to the way we originally saw them.
Baker: All that was intentional and a real balancing [act] that, in this day and age, I was really worried about. It stems a lot from Italian sex comedies of the ’60s and ’70s like Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away and the balance she has in that film. There’s a Mario Monicelli film, The Girl with a Pistol, with the wonderful Monica Vitti, which has a lot of physical comedy in the violence. You don’t know whether you should be cringing or laughing. I always found it fascinating that the Italians were able to strike that balance, which was my goal.
Filmmaker: For a large part of the scene, Anora is forced into replicating a lap dance position as Igor holds her down.
Baker: I’m glad you caught that. That was important for me to have in there.
Filmmaker: We don’t have to go into hardcore spoilers, but I was very curious about the final scene. I mulled over different interpretations of it and think I’ve landed on what you intend, but there’s a lot of ambiguity. How did that final scene evolve throughout the writing and shooting?
Baker: Obviously we’re playing with this whole idea of Stockholm syndrome, in which Ani gravitates toward the character of Igor, but we wanted to take it much further than that and have an act that could be interpreted, questioned and debated in many different ways. Mikey and I talked a lot about motivation in development and tried to really define for ourselves why she’s doing [what she’s doing] in that moment. We have our own interpretations, but we don’t know 100 percent, and that’s the cool part about it. We finally came to the conclusion that we’re not even sure that Ani is fully aware of her motivation in that moment. It’s a very instinctual thing [for her]. And that’s what we decided to eventually rest on—we don’t have to fully understand that moment because I don’t think Ani fully understands that moment, and certainly Igor doesn’t. It’s very complex. We see what led up to it, but we’re not going to psychoanalyze her to the point where we know exactly why. The only thing that was a surprise [during filming] was that Mikey delivered that one take with a single tear, which was incredible to me. I didn’t know if, in the moment, there were going to be buckets of tears, and it ended up being a single tear, which is quite profound.
Filmmaker: When we spoke for The Florida Project, having come from smaller films and more guerrilla productions, you talked about not feeling you were on your game in terms of crew, department heads and the size of production. This is obviously an even more demanding film, especially, for example, with the home invasion scene. You had 10 shoot days for that—a quarter of your schedule—and there’s the increasingly distressed state of the house throughout the scene; the production design continuity issues, the emotional continuity issues; the balance, as we discussed, between humor and violence. How has your own relationship to production evolved as the films have gotten more complicated?
Baker: Well, with The Florida Project, I had been used to such intense guerrilla filmmaking that when I wanted to change the schedule in the middle of the day, it threw the crew off because they just didn’t know my way of working. I learned that, going forward, I was going to have to let the crews know what they’re in for. And what was wonderful about this particular crew is that with Alex Coco having produced Sean Price Williams’s film, The Sweet East, and with [line producer] Olivia Kavanaugh [who had worked on Uncut Gems], there were people in New York familiar with the Safdie brothers’ way of working. Alex found this amazing crew that was down for anything. Now that I’ve made eight films, people kind of know [my working methods], but it was so important for me to have a Zoom meeting with every single crew member, even the PAs, in which we got to know each other. It took a long time, and people were like, “This is so different [from other productions],” but this should be the norm. There shouldn’t be a hierarchy. I should be able to talk to you, and you should be able to talk to me at any time, and that’s the way it was. All departments were working on all cylinders. My amazing production designer, Stephen Phelps, took all my references, from Jess Franco and Godard (Contempt, specifically), and all the Italian sex comedies I showed him, and we figured out a color scheme where reds would be present in every shot.
Filmmaker: You’re credited as casting the film, working with Samantha. Directors are always heavily involved in casting, as are the producers, but you’re one of the few directors I’ve seen who has a “casting by” credit. And you had more than 30 speaking parts in this film, so it’s a real job. How were you managing that, particularly the “job” portion of it?
Baker: Well, Samantha was heavily involved, and then also FilmNation. I wasn’t actually doing the paperwork, but I was in charge of choosing everybody. The reason I take casting credit now is that it’s not like I have a casting director come on and present me with names. I take my time: I scour Instagram, I watch films deliberately to look for talent, I find people on the street. When [Samantha and I] see somebody in public who makes an impression, we approach them. That’s how we found Suzanna Son in Red Rocket. Ivy Wolk, from the candy store scene, came from an Instagram interaction. Casting is everything to me. I almost need these faces in order to write.
Filmmaker: Were you having to deal with visa issues because you were bringing people over from Russia?
Baker: Yep, and that’s why I have to credit my incredible producers, who made it happen with the help of a lot of other people. It was scary that we [maybe] weren’t going to get Yuri [Borisov] and Mark in the country, but it worked out at the last minute. We were actually looking for backups but couldn’t find anybody matching the strength of those two. And Yuri had to go back halfway through production to finish up working with [Andrei] Konchalovsky, who’s now like 87. I’m like, “OK, it’s Konchalovsky, I’ll let it happen.” But it was scary as hell, just praying he’d be allowed to come back.
Filmmaker: Across all our interviews, you’ve been one of the most candid filmmakers in talking about the arc of your career. When I interviewed you about Starlet in 2012, you ended the interview by saying you wanted to do more small movies and then maybe some TV. At the end of our Florida Project interview in 2017, you were firm that you didn’t want to do TV. Now, with Anora, you have a Palme d’Or and, I’m sure, many more opportunities. So, what would your closer be on this interview?
Baker: Oh god. I think what the Palme d’Or is hopefully going to allow me to do is just focus on these types of movies and allow me to continue to make them. I might not get rich making them, but at least I’ll make a living, and my wife and I will be comfortable. There’s only one life, and I believe in Tarantino’s idea of a strong, solid filmography. If I went off and tried to make a series right now, that would eat up three to five years of my life. I’m at the age where I’ve just got to go film-to-film, and I’m very lucky that this has now gotten me to a place that will allow me to do that. You know, I could have broken out, maybe after Tangerine—meaning, I could have followed the Hollywood model of making my next film with an A-lister or two. Well, I kind of did [with The Florida Project] because Willem [Dafoe] is a star, but that wasn’t the intention behind it. He was just perfect for the role. But, quite honestly, I just don’t feel the desire to suddenly get five A-listers and make a $100 million movie. I don’t see how that will change my personal life. It might make a bigger film in terms of scale, or maybe have a bigger audience, but I don’t know—my films all become sort of sleepers anyway. They find the same amount of people. My true passion, and the only thing I’m truly interested in, is feature films that are made for the intention of going into a theater. Whether they make it there or not, I don’t know, but that’s what I want to focus on, and that’s how I fell in love with cinema. And I’ve found myself in a place where I can focus just on that.
