Introducing: Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Hard Feelings with Jennette McCurdy

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’re excited to introduce you to a show we know you’ll love: Talk Easy. Hosted by Sam Fragoso, Talk Easy is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, activists, and politicians—where people sound like people.

In this episode, actor Mikey Madison has delivered the performance of the season with her star-making turn in Anora. She joins us this week on the heels of her recent Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

We begin by discussing the organic partnership she formed with writer/director Sean Baker, the ‘emotional preparation’ required to tell this vulnerable story, her San Fernando Valley upbringing, and her formative years working with Pamela Adlon on Better Things.

On the back-half, Mikey reflects on her breakout part in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, the sex professionals who helped inform her work in Anora, how she excavated her past to create in the present, and where she hopes to go on the other side of this towering achievement.

For more, listen to Talk Easy wherever you get your podcasts or head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/TalkEasywithSamFragosofd

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Lemonada
0:02.0	This is Talk Easy. I'm San Francisco. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fregoso. Welcome to the show.
0:40.8	Today, actor Mikey Madison.
0:49.6	Her career began in earnest back in 2016, playing the acerbic eldest daughter to Pamela Adlon in better things.
0:53.2	Madison came of age on that hit FX program.
0:55.8	She got the part at the age of 15.
1:00.8	By the time the show concluded its fifth and final season, she was 23.
1:05.3	Since then, she's emerged as one of the finest young actors we have,
1:09.2	with memorable turns and films like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,
1:13.1	where she plays a Manson girl and Scream Five as,
1:19.4	spoiler, a ghost-faced killer. But I'm not sure anything could have prepared us for what she delivers in the new film, Anora. It won the Palm Door at last year's Cannes Film Festival,
1:25.8	and has since been nominated for Best Picture.
1:28.9	Madison, who was also nominated for an Oscar, plays the titular character, a young sex worker
1:35.3	from Brooklyn who gets a chance to start anew when she meets and then quickly marries the son
1:41.7	of a Russian oligarch. The film is written and directed by Sean Baker.
1:47.0	He's made some other excellent pictures like Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket,
1:52.6	but I think this is a singular achievement. The story and style of the film is a cross between
1:59.2	Knights of Kiberia, Pretty Woman, and Zola,
2:03.3	a Cinderella story that's at once thrilling, funny, and devastating. If you haven't seen it,
2:10.0	it's still out in limited release across the country. It's also now available to rent on VOD.
2:17.1	But for today, we dive into the creative process that made this movie possible,
2:22.6	the organic partnership between Sean and Mikey,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lemonada Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lemonada Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.