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

Mikey Madison was preparing for the role of a stripper Anora in all seriousness — despite only a brief pole-dancing sequence in the film.

“I think I prepared more than I should have, honestly,” he said Scream (2022) actress, 25, tells PEOPLE following the Canadian premiere of her new film at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 8. Preparations meant “months of training as a dancer” so that her character, the titular Anora, “looks very seasoned.”

That included having to “learn how to twerk,” adds Madison, “which was really important because that’s a big part of club dancing.”

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Wrote and directed Tangerine director Sean Baker, Anora follows the title character’s journey from Brighton Beach, NY, strip clubs to a whirlwind romantic getaway with the son of a Russian oligarch (played by Mark Eydelshteyn).

However, “when the news reaches Russia, her fairy tale is threatened as her parents head to New York to annul the marriage,” reads the festival’s official synopsis for the film.

“There is my 20-second scene on [stripper] pole,” explains Madison. But since her character “has been dancing for at least a few years,” she went above and beyond when it came to training and research. “I wanted my body to look a certain way, and I wanted to feel different when I was walking around.”

From left: Sean Baker and Mikey Madison at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2024.

Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty

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While she’s “definitely not a dancer,” she admits, Madison gained a “different perspective” by training under real-life nightclub performers. “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 [nightclub dancing] and give my body time to feel easy when I finally did it. I didn’t want it to look like I was expending a lot of energy. I wanted it to look very simple.”

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

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From left: Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Mikey Madison and Vache Tovmasyan at TIFF on September 8, 2024.

Leon Bennett/Getty

And in addition to all that, she also learned Russian with a dialect teacher. “I went to New York about a month early just so I could live in that community and understand what it felt like to be born or raised there,” says the Los Angeles-born actress.

“I did as much as I could so that when I had to shoot on the first day, I knew the character very well,” adds Madison. “I didn’t want to leave any question unanswered.”

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Anorafrom distributor Neon, is in theaters October 18. The Toronto International Film Festival runs until September 15.

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Source: HIS Education