Sean Baker Makes Movies About Sex Workers in Hopes of ‘Helping Remove the Stigma’ — and He’s ‘Already Talking About the Next One’

At a Cannes press conference for his new film “Anora” on Wednesday, Sean Baker discussed his affinity for making films about sex workers — and teased his next film.

“Anora,” which premiered at the film festival on Tuesday, follows a strip club worker who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. When asked about how sex workers came to be the subject of the last five of his movies, Baker said after making 2012’s “Starlet,” he was “introduced to the adult film world.”

“I became friends with [sex workers] and realized there were a million stories from that world. If there is one intention with all of these films, I would say it’s by telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal,” he said. “It’s helping remove the stigma that’s been applied to this livelihood, that’s always been applied to this livelihood.”

Baker said he perhaps won’t always make films about the subject, but teased that “we’re already talking about the next one and it involves a sex worker, so.”

He added later that he believes sex work should be “decriminalized and not in any way regulated, because it’s a sex worker’s body and it’s up to them to decide how they will use it in their livelihood.”

The film involves numerous sex scenes, but Baker said at the presser that he prefers to refer to them as “sex shots.”

“They’re really choreographed, they’re really blocked and I’m obviously working with my actors very closely in the choreography and development as well to make sure each sex scene or sex shot is necessary and moving the plot forward,” he said.

Mikey Madison, who plays the title character said she, Baker and producer Samantha Quan “would talk about different positions” and then Baker and Quan would “demonstrate what they wanted it to look like.”

“She’s my producer and wife,” Baker chimed in, sparking laughter in the room.

“Those scenes were fun to shoot and all of the lap dance scenes were very fun to shoot as well because the environment on set was very comfortable,” Madison continued. “After a little bit, I was almost too comfortable in those situations, especially walking around the club. All the women are naked, and I was too, and it was normal.”

Baker said the movie did not have an intimacy coordinator on set, with he and Quan instead acting in that role.

“I think with intimacy coordination, it’s a case by case basis, film by film basis. If an actor requests one, 100%,” Baker said. “But I have directed approximately 10 sex scenes throughout my career, and I’m very comfortable doing so. It is our No. 1 priority to keep our actors safe, protected, comfortable and involved in the process.”

Madison confirmed that she was given the option of an intimacy coordinator, but “as I’d already created a really comfortable relationship with both of them for about a year, I felt that that would be where I was most comfortable with and it ended up working so perfectly.”

At its premiere on Tuesday, “Anora” received a rapturous 7.5-minute standing ovation. In the film, Madison (“Better Things,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) plays Anora, a 23-year-old working at a strip club outside of New York City. Her luck changes when she meets Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch, who takes her on a week-long bender in Vegas during which the two get married. But when Vanya’s parents find out, the two find themselves being tracked down by Russian gangsters, who attempt to get them to annul the marriage.

“Anora” has been critically lauded out of Cannes, with Variety‘s Peter Debruge writing that “Baker’s subversively romantic, free-wheeling sex farce makes ‘Pretty Woman’ look like a Disney movie.”

Baker has become a Cannes regular in recent years. He debuted “The Florida Project,” his look at a mother and her young daughter living on the economic margins, in the 2017 edition of the festival, and then returned in 2021 with “Red Rocket,” the story of a porn star who returns to his hometown in Texas.