‘Anora’ writer-director Sean Baker on pole dancing, hair tinsel and the Google search that led to the film’s dream house

Anora, which is on a buzz-gathering world tour to rival that of a certain Brat, has touched down in Stockholm where writer-director (and editor and casting director) Sean Baker is being awarded with the Visionary Award at the Stockholm Film Festival. It’s the latest feather in Anora’s cap, which won the Palme D’or at Cannes and is dripping in Oscar buzz and “movie-of-the-year” declarations. It’s a thrilling status for an indie film about a charismatic New Jersey sex worker who’s swept off her feet by the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch. Spoiler alert: it’s hardly a happily-ever-after fairytale, which suits Scandinavians just fine (here, children grow up on Hans Christian Andersen’s dark originals, after all).

Few things in Baker’s films, which build worlds rich in texture, depth and utterly specific details, are left to happenstance. When it came to Anora, however, there was a bit of Internet-driven luck at play in the discovery of the film’s de facto theme song, 'Greatest Day' by '90s British boy band Take That. “We choreographed the opening sequence to two different songs,” says Baker, referring to the opening neon-drenched panning shot of several strippers giving lap dances in slow motion. The sequence ends with the face of Anora, aka Annie, played with next-big-thing panache by Mikey Madison. Baker won’t tell me what the other songs are, but he challenges me to figure it out myself. “It’s the biggest artists in the world,” he says by way of a hint. “We were going after the biggest pop songs. We even had all the dancers, and Mikey, dancing at double time to that song because we were shooting in slow motion.”

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When Baker got into post production, however, the “vibe didn’t work”. Driving around, “frustrated”, with his wife and producer Samantha Quan in the passenger seat, he lamented that there simply had to be a song that was more “on the nose”. “Like, perhaps about a greatest day,” says Baker. “It’s her greatest day. There has to be a song like that.” So Quan types 'Greatest Day' into Spotify and lo and behold there is an earworm of a song that fit the bill (it was a number one hit in the UK, but Baker, being American, had never heard it. It cracked the top 50 here in Sweden when it came out in 2008). “We were driving around and humming it and playing it again and loving it,” says Baker, who ultimately went for a house-y remix by German DJ Robin Schultz featuring Calum Scott (best known for covering Robyn’s 'Dancing On My Own').

“We got home and I threw it on the opening credits and it was serendipity – I guess it was the same tempo as the other songs,” says Baker. “Everything fell into place – all the names hit on the beats, it came up to her face on the chorus… it was meant to be.” When the song kicks in again towards the end of the fever dream first act, it solidifies itself as forever henceforth being known as “the Anora song”.

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The film’s ultimate vibe-setter, however, is Madison, who not only portrays a wild emotional rollercoaster (fitting, given the Coney Island backdrop) but also nails both a Jersey accent and pole dancing. “From that first meeting I had with her, I realised she definitely wasn’t typecast,” says Baker, who encountered Madison’s firecracker energy in Scream and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “She was a little reserved and kind of quiet and very different from her characters in [those films], so that impressed me.”

Upon accepting the role of Annie, (it was a straight offer, no audition), Madison threw herself into the preparation (which also included learning plenty of dialogue in Russian). “When I first told her she should start with the pole dancing lessons, she ordered [the pole] online,” says Baker. “She was out of town at the time, and she ordered it to her home in LA and her dad installed it.” Madison didn’t even tell her dad what would be arriving in the box, or why she had ordered a pole in the first place. “He thought she might be leaving the acting business,” says Baker, noting her dad has since seen the film and is incredibly proud of his daughter’s performance.

In the month leading up to shooting, Madison moved into a Brighton Beach apartment (in which she installed her trusty pole – herself this time) not unlike her character’s and began to frequent the clubs, diners and coffee shops haunted by Annie and her unlikely onscreen comrades. “The first day we had her in makeup and wardrobe, we went on the street and shot some initial tests and I just saw Annie come to life. All her preparation paid off,” says Baker. “I saw her on the Avenue and that New York accent came out of her mouth and I was just, ‘Thank god’.”

The special sauce in Annie’s look? The tinsel woven into her hair. “Justine Sierakowski, our hair stylist, proposed it to me and I was jaw-dropped because I had never seen that. I know it’s a new trend, but I hadn’t seen it in film and TV,” says Baker (Real Housewives-heads have seen it on screen, courtesy of Beverly Hills OG Adrienne Maloof). “As soon as I saw it in play – every single frame you’re getting a hit of colour and light emitting from her, every time she moves.”

There was one more integral element to Anora that was the product of an off-hand search: the mansion occupied by Russian rich kid Ivan (played by Mark Eydelshteyn). “Before I got to Brighton Beach, I was just writing New York from my apartment in West Hollywood,” says Baker, who grew up in Jersey and has lived in Manhattan.

Eventually, it dawned on Baker that he was going to have to find an actual mansion to shoot in, “probably in Sheepshead Bay”, a nearby posh neighbourhood. “So I just googled, ‘Biggest and best mansion in Brighton Beach’ and this thing pops up,” he says, noting that since it was located in nearby Mill Basin, it still counts as geographically accurate. The house had recently been listed so there were “hundreds” of photos online. Baker began adapting the screenplay to the home before it was even secured (luckily the owners were “very open” to the shoot). “It was just a mitzvah – the best thing ever. We got exactly the one I wanted,” says Baker. “And then I found out it was actually designed for and lived in by a Russian oligarch.”