When Luna Sofia Miranda approached Sean Baker in a strip club in New York in 2022, she tried her best to charm him.
But he “very clearly did not want to buy a lap dance,” she says.
Miranda, who was 23 at the time, started asking why he and his wife were there.
“I’m very nosy,” she says. “So I kept asking them questions and I finally got it out of them. They were making a film about strippers.
She told them she had studied acting, and – after a successful audition – got a call on her 24th birthday, to offer her a part in the film.
That film, Anora, is now seen as one of the frontrunners heading into the Oscars on Sunday.
It’s directed by Baker, and stars Mikey Madison, who is up for best actress for her role as a New York stripper.
Madison, 25, relied on real-life strippers to help her perfect the part.
When she won a Bafta film award last month, she dedicated it to the sex worker community.
When Edie Turquet, 21, from London, was a background dancer in Anora, she was initially unsure whether to take part in the film.
The 21-year-old, who is British and appeared in Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts as a child, now lives in New York where she’s a student and a stripper.
She got cast as a background dancer in Anora after a casting agent spotted her in the club where she was working. But Turquet says the night before filming, she debated not showing up.
For Normington, the film reflected “the insecurity and competition and jealousy” that she has personally experienced in clubs.
“I appreciate that it’s not attempting to be a quintessential stripper movie.”
For Schneider, meanwhile, it was the film’s portrayal of the mundane nature of the job that struck a chord.
In the film’s early scenes, we see Anora at work, talking to clients in the club. We also see her and the other strippers on a lunch break, eating from Tupperware boxes in a back room.
“It felt really accurate,” Schneider said.
“A lot of the time in [stripper] films, you have glamorisation, with money falling from the ceiling. Those moments do happen but they’re few and far between,” she said. “It’s much more of a quiet hustle.”
Oscar hopes
When Anora came out, special screenings were held for sex workers in New York and LA.
Footage circulated on social media shows the strippers banging their high-heeled platform pleaser shoes together over their heads, to show their appreciation at the end of the screenings.
“That is the most beautiful applause I’ve ever received, I don’t know if that will ever happen again,” Madison told us.
Now, all eyes are on the Oscars.
Miranda and Normington will both be attending. “It’s kind of silly to think that I’m going to the Oscars, but [at the same time] I’m at the club arguing with a stupid man over $20,” said Miranda.
“I feel like I’m living two lives.”
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