Anora Star Mikey Madison Starred In A Hilarious TV Show That's A Hidden Gem On Hulu
At this point in her career, Mikey Madison, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 2024 for "Anora," is a firmly established part of the entertainment industry's A-list. If you want to watch her entire body of work, though, you should hit rewind and check out her FX series "Better Things."
To call the series "hers," meaning Madison's, is a little bit misleading. The show, pioneered by actress, writer, and comedian Pamela Adlon, is loosely based on Adlon's real life as a single mother living and working in Los Angeles and stars Adlon as Samantha "Sam" Fox, who's raising three headstrong daughters all on her own. Her eldest, Maxine — who goes by Max — is played by Madison, and even though she and Sam butt heads almost constantly, Max is a pretty smart, good kid who ends up making her mom proud. Her younger sisters, Francesca — or Frankie, played by Hannah Allgood — and Duke (Olivia Edward), round out the core family, but the Foxes are supported by Sam's mom, Phyllis "Phil" Darby (Celia Imrie), who lives nearby and is a huge part of their lives.
Throughout "Better Things," the Fox family overcomes obstacles and hits milestones together, anchored by Sam's fierce love for her daughters. In an interview about the show coming to a close, which it did in 2022 after five seasons, Madison opened up about how playing Max Fox taught her to be a better performer.
Mikey Madison said that she learned how to be a better actress working on Better Things
In an interview with Nylon in March of 2022, Mikey Madison sat down to talk about the ending of the long-running, critically acclaimed series that put her on the map as a performer. By then, Madison had also appeared in Quentin Tarantino's revisionist history film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and the legacy sequel "Scream," which hit theaters in 2022. Still, she credited "Better Things" as the project that taught her how to be a performer.
"'Better Things' was like my college," Madison said while sitting down for an in-depth chat about playing Max from 2016 to 2022. "It was my college experience, it was my film school, and my acting school."
Understandably, Madison was, at the time, intimidated by the prospect of moving on from the show that established her as an actor. "For seven years, I was totally dedicated to the show. I really hope to continue my career in film, and to do things that scare me or things that I haven't done before," Madison said. "I'm doing a lot of thinking about what I want to do next. But I'm mostly just trying to savor the last moments of 'Better Things.'" She continued:
"I really tried to compartmentalize that while we were filming. I started the show when I was 15 and a half and I'll be 23 soon. My entire career as an actor, I've been on the show. I don't really know life without it. I'm really kind of heartbroken that it's ending, but also excited for the other opportunity that it might allow from."
Thankfully for Madison, the best was yet to come — including the role that would net her an Oscar.
After Better Things, Mikey Madison worked with a beloved indie director and won an Oscar
In 2023, Mikey Madison played the title role in "Anora," a film from writer-director Sean Baker that helped Baker tie a huge Academy record — and a movie that catapulted her to acclaim and stardom. Baker, known for films like "Tangerine" and "The Florida Project," cast Madison without an audition after seeing her supporting turns in the aforementioned "Scream" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," essentially designing the film around her so that she could play Anora "Ani" Mikheeva, an exotic dancer who lives and works in Brooklyn. One night, Ani, who speaks Russian, is asked to cater to a high-roller client from Russia — Mark Eydelshteyn's wealthy Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov, the son of a powerful oligarch — and when Vanya asks Ani to keep spending time with him for exorbitant amounts of money, she keeps saying yes. Before long, Vanya proposes to Ani so that he can stay in the United States; the two elope in Vegas, and it all feels like a Cinderella story.
Starting in the film's second act and continuing into the third, though, everything goes horribly wrong for Ani ... which is an understatement. After Vanya's parents send hired goons to collect him and drive her away, Vanya runs off and leaves Ani with said goons, including the secretly sympathetic Igor (Yura Borisov) and Vanya's godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian, a frequent Baker collaborator). The result is thrilling, infuriating, and heartbreaking, and Madison sells every second of the film so beautifully that it's no wonder she won that Oscar. If "Better Things" was her acting school, it was a damn good education.
"Better Things" is streaming on Hulu now.