Mikey Madison’s Road to Potential Oscar Glory

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To paraphrase Chappell Roan: It’s a Madison-onemon! Mikey Madison stars as the title character in Sean Baker’s Anora this year, and she — how do we put this lightly? — absolutely eats. She put on her Brooklyn accent, she took off her clothes, and she delivered a performance that is somehow both the comedic and dramatic best of the year as the brash Ani. The film, which premiered at Cannes, won the Palme d’Or, and Madison has been a permanent fixture of the Oscar conversation ever since.

And yet, despite a top-notch performance, Madison has a tough road to hoe if she wants gold. For starters, the Best Actress Oscar has not gone to ingenues in recent years like it did in the 2010s, per our awards columnist, Nate Jones. (Think J.Law, Brie Larson, La La Land–era Emma Stone). Also, Madison, at this point, doesn’t have much of a public persona. Baker knew her from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood … and the Scream franchise, and some know her for her work as the teenage daughter on Pamela Adlon’s Better Things. Still, she’s something of a blank slate publicly — she’s a 25-year-old without any public social media. So, we’ll be tracking Madison’s star power from Cannes hopefully through the Oscars, to see just how a star is born.

Cannes Film Festival

May 21, 2024: Notably, before Cannes begins, Vulture does not even include Anora on our list of 11 movies we’re most excited to see during the festival. By the end of the festival, the movie wins the Palme and Madison is a front-runner for Best Actress. In her first major piece of press during the Anora cycle, a Vogue scene report from the festival on May 23, Madison is positioned as a classic ingenue. She’s at her first festival, it’s her first time in France, and it’s all a dream — plus, notably, she’s a cinephile. “It’s been a dream of mine since I started acting to one day come to Cannes with a film,” she says. “I genuinely feel like the luckiest girl in the world.” In another profile, by WWD, her status as Baker’s muse is the focus. She’s quoted as saying: “He was very willing to just be open and really wanted to collaborate with me on that level. It was very unique and special.”

A glossy mag profile

August 26, 2024: Madison begins her press rollout in earnest, and something becomes very clear: Despite the high-octane feistiness of her character in the film, Madison is a much more low-key personality. “I’m a good girl, really, and I’ve always been a good girl,” she says in an August 26 Esquire profile. “I’ve never broken the rules or done bad things.”

Anora’s release

October 18, 2024: Neon releases Anora in a prime fall slot, ensuring the movie coasts into award season without ever leaving voters’ minds.

Madison does much of her YouTube appearances (where all the biggest PR triumphs are made in 2024) alongside Baker. In their scene breakdown for Vanity Fair, which comes out October 17, Madison and Baker have a sweet, awkward chemistry. She’s interested in both the practicalities and the more analytical elements of filmmaking. At one point, she references her character’s love interest adjusting Ani’s top. “He’s taking liberties, but he’s also covering her, which I think is something interesting,” she notes. Baker responds, “Hm, yeah.”

Her first nomination

October 29, 2024: On October 29, Madison scores her first awards recognition when she is nominated for Outstanding Lead Performance at the 2024 Gotham Awards. The Gothams do not separate by acting categories by gender, and they are not necessarily the best Oscar prognosticators — Charles Melton won Best Supporting Performance last year for May December then went on lose out on even a nomination at the Oscars. Still, with her co-nominees including Nicole Kidman (Babygirl) and Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), it shows that she’s on the right path.

Awards-column darling

November 26, 2024: Notably, in press where she is with Baker — like the November 26 L.A. Times profile of both — her shyness is less central. Instead that profile spends more time on the film’s explicit scenes. Madison recounts how her father built her a stripper pole in their home so she could practice. Training for a role is second only to a physical transformation in the eyes of Hollywood voters. We’ll see how it pays off with Golden Globe nominations on December 9.