I had straightened my hair
and then once moisture hit my hair,
it just went like [vocalizing]
Sean was like, Oh no, what's happening to your hair?
I was like, I'm Jewish.
Like I don't know. What do you mean?
I'm Mikey Madison, and this is The Close Up.
[upbeat music]
Sean Baker wrote the character for me.
I had about a year to really think about this character,
put together Pinterest mood boards,
which is something I love to do,
and just kind of brainstorm ideas for how she would look,
how she would dress,
what her hair and makeup might look like.
I think the dance training took five or six months.
I am not a dancer, not even a little bit.
It was definitely the most physical training I've ever done,
but all of that training gave me a dancer's body.
I think it really helped me be more in tune
with my sexuality as well.
I think one of the things I realized was
how effortless these women move
and they walk on stage and there's an easy quality
and like an easy sexuality that kind of just comes out.
There's so much effort involved in dancing like that.
It's so physically strenuous,
but I also wanted it to look completely effortless
and I knew, I was like, Ugh, I have to be upside down,
even if it's for a little bit.
But I have really bad vertigo.
The first couple times I did it,
I had to lay on the ground for like 45 minutes after
because I was like, I can't, if I stand up,
I'm gonna like smash into a wall.
And so that was the most difficult part
was just getting over the nausea of it.
I went to a strip club, I got dances.
I observed to kind of understand the etiquette
of the club and what that's like.
There are lots of like funny little anecdotes
or things that I would hear women say
or I'm like, Oh, that's so interesting.
I'm gonna keep that in my back pocket
and maybe pull it out.
One time I was talking to this woman
and she said something so funny.
I asked her how she was and she was like,
I don't know.
I'm just trying to decide if this is a dumb bitch day
or a smart bitch day.
And I was like, Oh my god, that's so Ani.
[upbeat music]
Filming in New York where there's gonna be lots of rain
and a little bit of snow.
We were like, how are we going to keep my hair straight?
Because that's how Sean wanted it.
We had done a screen test in Los Angeles and it was raining
and I had straightened my hair
and then once moisture hit my hair,
it just went like [vocalizing]
got really curly, frizzy and Sean was like,
Oh no, what's happening to your hair?
I was like, I'm Jewish.
Like I don't know. What do you mean?
And so I got my hair chemically straightened.
It was like a Brazilian blowout type solution.
It's pretty gnarly [laughing].
It's okay. Anything for the character.
Our amazing hairstylist suggested putting hair tinsel
in the hair, which was such an amazing detail
because I have all this dark black hair,
but when it moves, it kind of catches the light
and reflects light in an interesting way.
It kind of gives some dimension to my hair,
which was essentially all one length
also just tells you a lot about who this character is
that she spends so much time
tying in all of these individual pieces of hair tinsel
because it would take like three hours
to put all of that in.
It was very time consuming,
but I think that it was such a great cherry on top
to the character's look that it was worth it.
[upbeat music]
The makeup was a simple liner
and then kind of like a 90s lip
that I would overline a little bit,
a little glitter on the eye, like a sheer glitter.
But overall we wanted to keep the skin like quite clean
and natural and we wanted it
to look like she did her makeup herself.
We used Fenty Beauties. I think it's a highlighter.
It's very sparkly
and kind of has a reflective quality to it.
And so instead of using it as a highlighter,
we just like washed it over my eyes
and it would catch the light in a nice way.
I actually loved it so much I bought it for myself.
This is her New Year's look.
We decided to add some bigger, little sparkles.
I think they're tiny little stars just on the top
of my cheeks, sort of going up next to my eye.
The stars are individually placed.
Dab on eyelash glue and then
with the makeup artist's finger,
she would just dip it into the sparkles
and then place them
and adjust them a little bit.
Because I think also for this particular scene,
the lines are becoming a little bit blurred between
customer and then him being someone
who she might actually really be interested in.
I don't think she would ever wear sparkles like that
to the club because they could get on a customer, a client,
and then they would go home and have glitter on them.
And so she's just doing it to, I don't know,
decorate herself a little bit more for Ivan.
[water splashing] [Ani breathing heavily]
So this scene was just kind of a one take scene.
We shot for a little bit.
It's her just kind of mentally preparing herself.
I mean obviously there's all this intense shit
that has happened to her.
So I think she's looking into the mirror
and she's kind of gathering up
that warrior energy that she has.
And so I kind of like ripped my eyelashes off
and then she's completely bare faced
but still has a little bit of smudge underneath
because she doesn't have time to get Bioderma
and like wipe everything else off.
She's just gonna do what she can
because now it's time to fight for her marriage.
She's not thinking about how she looks. She doesn't care.
The makeup was essentially nothing.
I think we would maybe brush the eyebrows up a little bit.
There was nothing to hide behind.
You're able to see all of that, which I really wanted
you to see because it's this different side of her,
it's quite vulnerable.
And I think you also see a more youthful version of her too.
You really see how young she is, which I think is,
I don't know, a little unnerving for an audience.
[glass shattering]
I do lots of fighting.
Every scene where I have bare legs,
there was like maybe 30 minutes, 40 minutes before
hair and makeup of covering the bruises with,
I think it was like a tattoo covering kit
because my legs were literally black and blue.
And I do bruise easily,
but it was pretty brutal looking.
[upbeat music]
The long acrylic nails were very, very important
because in strip club culture,
all of these women have decorated their hands
in like a really glamorous way
with these very specific long nails.
I knew I wanted them to be squared off.
I wanted there to be some kind of like bling
or sparkle on them and I wanted them to be long.
And so on my Pinterest board,
I had lots of photos of nails.
I showed a photo to Sean,
I was gonna go get my nails done like a couple days
before we start, and I was like, Hey, I kind of like this.
I really wanna do a butterfly. What do you think?
And he was like, Oh, that's so perfect.
Because I actually just added a line in the film
where Ivan's father calls her a knight butterfly,
which is another term for a sex worker.
And I was like, Wow, that's so, that's so kismet.
And so the woman who was doing my nails
brought out these butterfly decals
and they were huge.
And I was like, Are the only ones that we have?
I guess we'll just do it and see how it looks.
And I sent a photo to Sean, he was like,
Okay, they're a little bigger than I thought.
I don't know about it.
And I was like, No, I think that this is perfect
for the character
because all of a sudden you're talking
and you have all this attitude in the tips
of your fingernails
and you start moving your hands in a different way
and like pointing in a different way.
And it was so informative to her physicality.
What is that? Is that a butterfly?
Yeah, it's a butterfly.
You're so classy.
I know [laughing].
I got dollar signs, like a real hoe.
The first set I got were acrylics
because I was gonna do lots of fighting
and I didn't want them to snap off
like maybe a Gel X might.
And then as we continued filming, I had to continue getting
that set of nails done
and the acrylic was just so hard on my nails
we switched to Gel X,
but I kept coming in like every two weeks to get them done.
And they're like, Are you sure you want the same thing?
I was like, Yeah, please just keep doing the same.
I shot a scene where Ani is fighting
her sort of nemesis in the film, Diamond,
and I tripped, I like twisted my ankle
and my whole pinky nail like cracked in half,
the gel with the nail underneath it cracked.
And so that was obviously like excruciatingly painful,
but we had to keep filming.
And so Yura Borisov of my co-star
would carry a little bottle
of medical skin glue in his pocket every day
and like glue my nail on in the morning and at night.
And so he was like my doctor on set.
Now my nail's fine [laughing].
[upbeat music]
I have some personal tattoos,
which you see a little bit in the film,
but the ones on the back of the legs,
I noticed that a lot of dancers had tattoos on their legs
because when you twerk it kind of shows
like the skin moving.
And it was just like a really cute detail
that a lot of women had.
And so Sean presented this idea for them to be little bows
and I immediately loved the idea.
So we would apply them every single morning.
They were kind of annoying, but you know, worth it.
They're just a classic stick-on tattoo.
Every way that she presents herself it is feminine,
but there's also kind of a, I think a little bit
of like a tongue-in-cheek thing as well.
Like there's an edge to everything.
And the tattoos are so feminine because they're a bow,
but they're in black and white.
Yeah. And you wanna go to VIP maybe?
Yeah. Excellent.
You're walking around all night
talking to people super close all the time,
and so you wanna present yourself as
the best version of you.
And so she has gum in her mouth
just to keep things fresh all the time.
But then I think it also has a little bit of attitude to it.
And I was like, Oh, I really wanna blow a big blue bubble.
And so there was like this mad race around town
to find blue, like Hubba Bubba or whatever,
so I could blow that blue bubble and we got it.
And you can't really tell that it's blue,
but it's still good anyways.
Hair and makeup and costume, it's so informative
for an actor, how I feel inside of those clothes
and how her nails make me feel.
The hair and makeup, it changes the way you move
and how you speak.
And so it's all such an important part of
bringing a character together.
I've never had this experience before
where I've been able to have such a say
in how she's presented costume wise,
hair and makeup, everything.
And it's really changed the way how
I'd like to work in the future.
But it's really because of Sean.
He listened.
[upbeat music]
