The charming Russian scene-stealers of 'Anora' are also real-life best friends

Mikey Madison is the heel-clacking heart of “Anora,” a screwball Cinderella story about a tenacious Brooklyn stripper.

But watching Sean Baker’s Oscar-bound dramedy (now in theaters), it’s impossible not to be smitten by her scene-stealing Russian co-stars: Mark Eydelshteyn, 22, whose boisterous Ivan leaves Ani (Madison) high and dry after an impromptu Las Vegas wedding; and Yura Borisov, 31, whose stoic fixer Igor is tasked with returning Ivan to his incensed oligarch family.

The two actors first met at the Berlin Film Festival in 2022. They became best friends while shooting “Anora” early last year, sharing an apartment in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood.

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“Every day I’d get up and yell, ‘Markos! How are you? Good morning!’” Borisov recalls with a smile. “We did everything together; we discovered New York, went to lots of museums and vintage stores. It was interesting to be in America, like, ‘Wow! It used to only be in video games and cartoons, and now it’s reality.’”

“I can’t imagine going on this whole amazing adventure without this guy,” Eydelshteyn adds. “My whole life, I dreamed about having an older brother. Now I have him.”

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Baker wrote Igor specifically for Borisov after seeing him in the 2021 film “Compartment No. 6.” Ani initially finds the shy and soulful Igor off-putting, but the two kindle an unlikely repartee as they run around Brooklyn searching for Ivan. “He gave me this incredibly subtle performance,” Baker says. “It was up to me to just hold the camera on him.”

Ivan, meanwhile, is anything but subtle. He’s a debaucherous yet oddly endearing rich kid who meets Ani at the strip club and pays her to be his live-in girlfriend. Borisov recommended Eydelshteyn to Baker, who remembers the playful young actor submitting an unusual audition tape.

“He was fully nude, facing away from the camera: butt visible, sunglasses on, smoking and giving this really funny performance,” Baker recalls with a laugh. “After that moment, we couldn’t see anybody else for the role.”

“I used to vape a lot as a way to fight stress,” Eydelshteyn says of the audition. “I just tried to do a lot of improvising.” Although Ivan is a wild child, we come to learn that his constant revelry is how he copes with loneliness: “He’s trying to save the kid inside himself, but he can’t. His friends aren’t real friends, and partying is just his protection. He finds his own little world with Anora, but his family breaks that, too.”

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Borisov is predicted by many Oscar pundits to earn a best supporting actor nomination. Madison praises her co-star as “one of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with. He’s a very loving person and his humor just sneaks up on you.”

The actor found “a lot of space to explore” within his quiet character, but says he was mostly there to support Madison. “I just tried to be (present) with her in every scene. Mikey is super professional; she could work seven days, 24 hours, and still turn it on whenever Sean said ‘action.’ She’s also very beautiful.”

Their most grueling moment together was a raucous fight scene when Ivan’s parents send Igor and some Russian gangsters to force Ani to annul the marriage. Ani quite literally bites back, leading to smashed furniture and broken noses.

The sequence took about eight days to shoot, largely because “there was glass everywhere, and we had to do a lot of rehearsal for safety,” Borisov recalls. At some points, “we really had to fight, which was very funny. I got punched by Mikey and I liked it.”

For the breakout Russian actors, real life feels like 'a movie'

One of Baker's favorite memories working with Borisov and Eydelshteyn was a weekend getaway to Woodstock, New York, where they played charades and hiked to a frozen waterfall in winter. "They're such sweet, down-to-earth guys," the filmmaker says. On the last night of shooting in Coney Island, he also remembers "everybody hugging and eating cupcakes and Yura just starts singing ‘Forever Young’ in that Russian accent. I don’t even know if he knew the lyrics aside from ‘forever young!'"

"We just love our life," says Borisov, who hopes the movie will lead to "more work and more opportunities" in America and beyond. For both actors, the most exciting moment so far has been the Cannes Film Festival, where “Anora” won the top prize in May. Eydelshteyn heard the news while he was on the set of a new project, shooting a scene set in a mental hospital.

“Yura called me and said, ‘Hey, man, we won the Palme d’Or,’” Eydelshteyn recalls. “I just started to run and scream around the hospital. People looked at me like I was crazy, like I’m not an actor but a real mental illness patient. It was really funny. I thought, ‘For this surreal and hilarious moment, I feel like my real life is a movie.’”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Anora' movie's Russian actors talk fight scenes, nude audition