Yura Borisov Felt the Fire Inside ‘Anora’

Yura Borisov may not have been physically present when Anora swept the DGAs, PGAs, and Critics Choice awards, but emotionally he was there. “My heart is with them,” he says. Back at home in his native Moscow, Borisov hadn’t had a chance to speak with titular star Mikey Madison or writer and director Sean Baker about Anora’s game-changing weekend, launching Neon’s movie from underdog to top dog in this year’s ultra-competitive best picture Oscar race. “We’re just texting, but we will talk soon,’” he says. “Lots of hugs.”

There have been a lot of reasons for hugs. The 32-year-old has earned his first Oscar nomination for playing Igor, Anora’s taciturn bodyguard of sorts who winds up forging an unexpected connection with the jilted and fiery sex worker. Nominated alongside more established actors Guy Pearce, Jeremy Strong, Edward Norton, and Kieran Culkin, the relative newcomer is the first Russian actor to be nominated for an Academy Award since Mikhail Baryshnikov for The Turning Point in 1978. Like his character Igor, Borsiov is a Russian who chooses his words carefully. While we chat, a translator is present off-camera and, as far as I can tell, is never used, as Borisov describes his life before Anora won the Palm D’or win at Cannes Film Festival in May, and unofficially began its Oscar campaign.

sent in a naked self tape—a bold move, to be sure—he booked the part.

Although Anora was Baker’s brainchild, Borisov says he had a lot of freedom on set to make Igor his own. The director, Borisov says, constantly asked the actors for their thoughts on the script. ‘“What do you think? What’s better for your character, for this scene, for this film? What do you feel? How do you feel?’” he remembers Baker asking. “He’s open to everything, and we could try everything.” This included translating Baker’s dialogue from English to Russian however Borisov wanted to. “Take by take, I translated in a new way,” he says. “It was different every time.”Translating on the fly may sound daunting, but Borisov says that acting in English and in his native Russian is “absolutely the same.” “I could use my misunderstanding of the language for my character,” he says.

Borisov says there was a translator on set, but that ultimately he didn’t feel like he needed one. “It’s not so important because you can’t translate energy,” he says. “We couldn’t discuss the most important part—this special language between people when we’re looking eye to eye and some magic happens. Maybe we couldn’t understand some of the details, but we could understand, ‘Do you feel some fire inside me and do I feel some fire inside you?’ It’s like a dance together.”

With Baker’s help, Borisov went “very, very back” when filling in the details of the mysterious Igor’s life before Ani comes hurtling into it. He believed that Igor’s backstory was “important for me, of course, and important for Sean,” but not important for the audience to know. “I could tell you, ‘So, first of all, his mother and his father and his grandfather’—No, it’s not about this,” he says. “It’s not so important discussing it right now. What’s most important is ‘what do you feel about him?’ and what do you feel about the film?’” He adds a salient point: “A lot of times, an actor can know everything about his character and it doesn’t work.”

Anora does work, perhaps because so much is left unsaid. The blistering final scene features Madison and Borisov together in a car, communicating so much about their relationship and what has transpired while saying very little to each other. Nailing that final scene was the most difficult part of the shooting process for Borisov. “It was again and again” he says. “Sean tried to find the right energy, and sometimes it’s impossible to discuss by word.” Both Borisov and Madison were, at times, not entirely sure of what Baker was looking for in this climactic moment. “Where are we going? What are we looking for?”, he recalls feeling. “Finally, when I saw the film, and when I saw this scene, I understood why,” he says. “But it was not easy.”

Now both Madison and Borisov have earned Oscar nominations for their performances. “I love Mikey. We spent all our time together,” he says. “She was out of her house because she lives in Los Angeles, and we were in New York and I was out of my house, too, because I live in Moscow. And it’s very, very far from my house.” Shooting in Brighton Beach, away from home, Borisov says, was like “summer camp” or “a big game in childhood”: “That’s why we discussed our life, our dreams—very important parts in our life—and of course the script and characters too. We went step-by-step, and discovered some very interesting things inside each other. That’s why it was real—the energy between us was growing and growing.”

When I ask Borisov the difference between acting in Hollywood and acting in Russia, he notes that the awards season in the U.S. is “very fast.” “I don’t have time to really understand what’s going on,” he says. “I don’t know, maybe after a couple months or a couple years I will understand what’s going on, but right now, it’s like a roller coaster.”

Like the good actor he is, Borisov pantomimes riding a coaster. “Like, ‘Whoa, whoa,’” he exclaims. “It’s a lot of turns,” he says. But he’s enjoying the ride: “I’m very happy that it’s happening with Anora.”

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