• Oscar nominee Mikey Madison says getting cast in "Anora" marked a turning point in her life.
• Madison and Baker spoke to BI about how she landed the title role playing the feisty sex worker.
• Baker also recalled what it was like to be on set for Madison's infamous scream during the home invasion scene.

To an outsider, Mikey Madison's ascendance to Hollywood It Girl might seem sudden. But for the 25-year-old actor, the road to mainstream acclaim and an Oscar nomination has felt like a long, slow climb.

"It's funny, I have to say it doesn't feel rapid at all," Madison told Business Insider. "I mean, I've been acting for almost 10 years now, and at times it's been so incredibly slow."

Before her Oscar-nominated leading role in Sean Baker's "Anora," Madison had a small but dedicated fanbase, thanks to her breakthrough role playing Pamela Adlon's eldest daughter in the FX series "Better Things" and scene-stealing appearances as a Manson follower in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood" and a particularly sassy Ghostface in the 2022 "Scream" sequel.

Playing the titular sex worker in "Anora" catapulted Madison — and Baker, a longtime indie darling virtually unrecognized on the awards circuit prior to this year — into the mainstream conversation.

When BI spoke to Madison in October, just before the film's theatrical release, the actor was coming to terms with the fact that the project she had deeply immersed herself in would now be released for public consumption.

"I was very in my character's mindset. I wasn't necessarily thinking from an audience's perspective of this is going to possibly be in movie theaters and things like that," Madison said. "I was just focused on telling the story. And I'm glad that I was, because I wouldn't have wanted to have that in my head."

Madison's laser focus on her craft is part of what compelled Baker to cast her in his movie. The filmmaker was so captivated by Madison after seeing her in "Scream" that he immediately met with her, pitched her his general idea for "Anora," and then offered to write the part for her if she agreed to do it.

"I didn't have a word on paper yet. I started writing after she accepted," Baker told BI.

"He's told me he liked how I scream," Madison recalled of her initial conversations with Baker. "I think also it was just an intensity that he was interested in."

For Madison, saying yes, even without a script, was a no-brainer — she'd long admired Baker's work and counts "Tangerine" as one of her favorite films. She was particularly attracted to Baker's penchant for bringing morally grey characters to life in vivid color.

"Those are the characters that I love to play: Nobody is just good. Nobody is just bad. It's somewhere in between," Madison said.

"I've dreamed of working with a filmmaker like Sean for my entire career as an actress," she added.

Indeed, Anora is a deeply complex character, one who's frequently inscrutable even in the film's Rorschach test of an ending. One of Madison's biggest scenes, and the crux of the film, is a home invasion sequence in which Anora is restrained and held captive by the handlers of her new husband Vanya, the wayward son of a Russian oligarch, after they arrive to bust up the pair's ill-fated marriage.

The scene, shot in real time, involved many hours of Madison emitting an ear-piercing scream.

"That scream was bone-chilling, and it echoed throughout the entire mansion. And you had members of the crew working in other places of the house, and they didn't know what was going on," Baker told BI. "And to tell you the truth, it was actually quite disturbing for a lot of people. They had to cover their ears after a while, because it was so intense."

"I think she told me after maybe a few hours, 'I'm going to lose my voice if I keep going on like this,'" he said.

That quite literally full-throated commitment to the role, which also required twerking and shadowing real sex workers to learn the ins and outs of stripping, has paid off. Madison was nominated by most of the major awards organizations for her work in "Anora," winning the lead actress category in several of them, including the BAFTAs and the Independent Spirit Awards.

Most Oscar season pundits anticipate the trophy on Hollywood's biggest night will go to either Madison or Demi Moore for "The Substance." But whether she wins or loses, Madison knows that the movie — and Baker — have changed her life forever.

"'Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood' was my sort of introduction into the film world. It reminded me of why I wanted to be an actress," Madison said. "But I do feel that Sean seeing me and seeing any potential, or whatever it was that he saw, and giving me this opportunity to play a character like Anora — I think that that's been a huge turning point in my life."