MOVIE NEWS – Often, it is only after a long struggle that the decision is made about who will get a lead role requiring special talents in a given film. However, for director Sean Baker, the choice was easy.

When he watched the latest Scream movie with his wife, Samantha Quan — who is also the co-producer of his films — he whispered in her ear during the screening that he would call Mikey Madison‘s agent within a minute of leaving. The young actress played a supporting role in the Scream film, and Baker found her performance so convincing that he immediately knew he had found the lead for his new opus, Anora.

The director-screenwriter shared all of this at the recent Toronto festival in an interview with Variety, adding that he had already noticed Madison in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, but the final push came from Scream.

Baker also added that it was thanks to Madison that the story of Anora fully came together in his mind, as after the pivotal cinematic experience, he wrote the film specifically with the actress in mind.

The heroine of Anora is a sex worker from Brooklyn who falls in love — or at least it seems to her — with the son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). They suddenly get married, but the enraged parents do everything to annul the union.

Anora won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and holds a 97 percent rating on RottenTomatoes.

(Anora – domestic release: November 7, 2024.)