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Anora opens with a slow-motion, lap-level camera pan across a row of men in a strip club, reveling in their lap dances. Even amid the gyrating, straddling, and grinding, the most eye-popping detail may very well be the titular protagonist’s luscious brunette lengths shimmering with pink and purple tinsel. It’s an unexpected but inspired shot of aesthetic endorphins, glinting off the flashing lights
In Baker’s exhilarating new film, Ani, as she prefers to be called, is a streetwise exotic dancer living in Brighton Beach who chances upon a whirlwind romance with the impetuous son of a Russian oligarch. But the Pretty Woman fairy tale swerves tones and genres midway through after his parents dispatch local goons to rein in the situation. A wild New York City odyssey by turns thrilling and uproariously funny, with moments of real emotional power and an indefatigable performance by Mikey Madison, Anora won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year and is poised to be an awards-season darling.
The hair and makeup were crucial to Madison becoming Ani, according to director Sean Baker (Red Rocket, The Florida Project). “Mikey said they helped transform her into the character from the outside in,” he tells Vogue. “She had to hold herself differently. She became Ani.”
The hair-tinsel idea was a lightbulb moment for hair department head Justine Sierakowski. Baker had already nixed any wigs or heavy makeup: “He wanted her to stand out but didn’t want her to be overtaken by anything,” Sierakowski recalls. “But he used a word like glittery or sparkly that triggered something in my head.” Then suddenly: “Oh my God, didn’t Adrienne Maloof from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills have sparkles in her hair?” (Both she and makeup head Annie Johnson are devoted fans of the franchise: “It was a huge talking point on set,” Johnson affirms.)
Baker loved the idea. “I wanted her to look like she fit in but was a top girl at the club,” he notes. “On a purely a visual level, the tinsel gave hits of light and color with every frame. I had never seen it in film before and was over the moon that we were presenting an original, new look. It’s important to me that my films are visually striking—the tinsel in the hair does exactly that.”
Of the choice, Sierakowski says simply: “I just thought it looked amazing on her long, beautiful dark hair and felt like it would be something cool to see in the lights in the club while she’s dancing.” Madison picked three colors for dimension: a dusty rose, magenta, and dark purple.
Sierakowski had never used hair tinsel before, however, so the learning curve was steep over the 40-day shoot. Applying it took six hours, double her estimated time. She observed that hand-tied tinsel was more likely to come out, so she clasped it with microbeads throughout Madison’s underlayers. But all the tinsel on her crown was hand tied—and had to be reapplied at the start of each day, which itself took three hours and sometimes meant waking up shortly after midnight.
Furthermore, Sierakowski hadn’t considered shampooing, which took out much of the tinsel—and therefore had to be negotiated with Madison. “She’d really want to wash her hair, and I had to be like, ‘Can you just go one more day?’” she says. Madison typically went four days between washes as a result, and even non-wash days required near-constant re-tying of tinsel, especially during action-heavy setups at the club and for the real-time home-invasion scene at the heart of the movie.
Add to that several hours of body makeup, due to Madison’s bruises from that epic 25-minute scene—where she insisted on performing her own stunts—and doing her own pole dancing. “She had some monster bruises, and a lot of her skin is showing,” Johnson points out. “So she was just covered in body makeup.”
For Ani’s face, however, which is in nearly every scene, Johnson developed a simple beauty look grounded in the character. “We wanted it to look like something she could do herself,” Johnson explains. “We knew the hair was going to be the focal point, so Mikey suggested, ‘What if my signature look was this wing?’ And then lots of glitter—shout out to Rihanna for Fenty Diamond Bomb. It came out really nice on camera.” The finishing touch was a simple matte pout, courtesy of Makeup by Mario in shades Almond and Toasty. “Whenever Mikey put it on, she felt like the character was complete,” Johnson says. Baker appreciated that the makeup glancingly enhanced Madison’s natural beauty: “Mikey has such a cool, unique look, and I wanted to make sure she didn’t disappear under it all,” he says.
Ani’s look evolves as the film progresses, with Johnson and Sierakowski plotting distinct looks for the club (straight hair, loads of glitter), for what they dubbed “playing wifey” (hair with some curl for more polish), and for a Vegas trip (“whatever craziness we wanted”). But in the latter half Ani’s makeup is almost entirely stripped away. “We used fake eyelashes as her security blanket in her girlfriend look,” Johnson says. “Then during the home invasion, those come off and she’s not wearing much makeup. She’s really rocking her natural beauty for a lot of the movie.”
The nails, on the other hand, remain extra throughout. “The nails go hand in hand with that line of work because they’re so alluring,” Sierakowski says. Madison chose her own nail design, full of rhinestones and butterfly appliqués, at Akiko Nails in the East Village. Claws by Joy created the character Lulu’s money-sign nails, and Johnson added an Easter egg with Diamond’s set: little strawberries, a nod to the character in Baker’s last film, Red Rocket.
Both department heads aimed to portray with accuracy and respect something that still remains “such a hush-hush topic,” Johnson says. “Sex work is work, and these people should be celebrated.” Sierakowski adds: “Dancing takes a lot of energy—physically, mentally, and emotionally. I have such major respect for the people who do it.” Their research included a visit with Baker to the strip club HQ in Midtown, where the club scenes were eventually filmed—and which happened to be their first in-person meeting with the director. (“That’s very true to Sean,” Johnson notes. “He’s just so real and down to earth but also fun and cool.”)
Johnson and Sierakowski were fortunate to say a proper final farewell to Ani about a month ago in LA at a billboard photo shoot with Madison. “It was an emotional moment, getting her ready one last time together,” Sierakowski recalls. “And after Mikey put her lip liner on, she was like, ‘I feel like Ani again.’”
