“Sean Baker messaged me out of the blue”: Andrea Werhun on her role as a sex work consultant on Anora

In 2018, Toronto’s Andrea Werhun turned her experiences as an escort and erotic dancer into a memoir called Modern Whore. Four years later, this led to a gig as the head consultant on Sean Baker’s buzzy new film, Anora, about a young sex worker in New York (played by Mikey Madison) who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. Here, she tells Toronto Life about the tips she gave Madison, the importance of sex worker representation and why there’s still so much stigma around the world’s oldest profession.

Funny story: I was meeting a friend at the Society Clubhouse the other night, and it turned out the venue was also hosting the launch for the second issue of your zine, Literal Bimbos. How did it go?

It went so well. I started Literal Bimbos when I was doing harm reduction outreach for a sex worker advocacy organization. When I left, I wanted to stay connected to the community, so I began hosting creative writing workshops for sex workers. The zine is a collaborative effort where we publish unique, vital sex worker stories. For many contributors, it’s the first time they’re seeing their work in print. It’s a powerful way to change perceptions of sex work.

I want to talk about Anora, which is expected to take home a lot of hardware this awards season. How did you get involved in the film? It happened out of the blue. Sean Baker messaged me on Instagram in 2022 to say he’d read my book, Modern Whore. He told me he was working on a new film and was wondering whether I’d be willing to consult. I had just watched The Florida Project, and I thought its depiction of sex work was so compassionate and nuanced, so it was an immediate yes.

Modern Whore is a memoir about your experiences as an escort in your early 20s. What prompted you to write it? I’d always wanted to be a writer. After two years of escorting, I got a job on an organic farm. In 2015, artist and filmmaker Nicole Bazuin came to visit, and I regaled her with stories of my whoring years. Finally, she said, “Okay, we have to make something.” Our goal was to create an immersive art book that placed the reader in the headspace of a sex worker. I also hoped my stories would help sex workers feel seen on the page and help civilians feel empathy, understanding and a willingness to fight for our rights alongside us.

You brought a lot of experience as a sex worker and writer to Anora. What was it like working with Baker and Mikey Madison? When I signed on to the film in 2022, Sean sent me a draft of the script, which was all in point form at the time. He had ideas of some things he knew he absolutely wanted to be in the film, including the ending. He asked me to give notes, and we went back and forth on four or five drafts, with him integrating some of my ideas.

What details did you help him get right? I wasn’t on set, but I was involved in pre-production. I met with Mikey to discuss her depiction of Ani and gave her tips on how to tap in to the qualities sex workers need in order to do their job.

Such as? Strippers have to be incredibly resilient. They don’t make an hourly minimum wage, so they have to have the strength to get on the floor, talk to men and make money. And that’s not something everyone can do.

Especially when you are near-naked, I’m assuming? Definitely. I spoke with Mikey about how a dancer has to have charisma, which can be broken down into three things—power, presence and warmth. Power: you have to feel powerful and embodied in your flesh as you walk around a club. Presence: people pay sex workers to be present with them, not distracted and scrolling on their phones. You have to feed the illusion that the person in front of you is the only person in the world in that moment. And warmth: a stripper who is good at her job emanates warmth, kindness and generosity with her beauty and her time.

In the opening sequence, we see Ani hustling men for money—she’s introducing herself, asking guys if they want to hit the ATM or go to a private room. What did you think of that scene? I loved it. One of my favourite moments is when one guy turns her down and she just walks away—it’s like, “on to the next, because let’s not pretend this is about anything other than you giving me money.”

In the short doc you made with Bazuin, Last Night at the Strip Club (CBC Gem), there are shots of you biking home after a shift. Did you talk to Baker and Madison about those kinds of details? Yeah. What I loved most about the opening sequence of Anora is that, at the end of it, Ani commutes home. She’s taken her makeup off, she looks schlubby and she’s riding the subway. I talked to Sean about how dancers, including myself, often take public transit home after work. And we deliberately make ourselves look less appealing because we’re usually carrying a bunch of cash.

Are there any other details in the film that you recognized from your conversations with the filmmakers? The big one is the scene where Ani is on her break and eating her dinner out of a Tupperware. That came out of a conversation I had with Sean when he asked what you might see if you walked into a locker room at a club.

Ani is in her early 20s and still fairly new to the biz. Does she make any rookie mistakes? There’s that scene after Ivan proposes to her, when she says bye to all the girls at the club because she thinks she’s hit the big time and is never coming back. I had an experience like that, which I wrote about in the second edition of my book. I left the club to publish the first edition of Modern Whore, convinced I was about to start my new life as a well-paid writer—and then I discovered that there’s no money in writing. We had a big party to send me off, and then seven months later, I went back to the club with my tail between my legs. I learned an important lesson: never announce your departure.

You’re also an advocate for sex workers here in Toronto. You’ve argued that sex workers need protections like any other worker. Why is there still so much pushback?

We still live in a misogynistic, sexist, racist, transphobic society that refuses to give sex workers agency. There are a lot of reasons why we’re unable to talk about sex work. One reason is that we’re still uncomfortable talking about sex. I think we’re still held back by certain ideas about marriage, monogamy, family, love and romance. Those ideas preclude us from understanding that a transactional relationship can still be meaningful, healing and good for society.

And on top of having a hard time talking about sex, we also have a hard time talking about work and worker’s protections. Sex work is just a really difficult subject for many people to wrap their heads around because of their inability to talk about either facet. And then, of course, there’s all this shame and stigma related to sex work, whether you’re a sex worker or someone who purchases sexual services.

What can the city do to make things safer? Regulation is mainly a federal issue. But there are Toronto-specific issues, like the city’s bylaws regarding strip clubs. A lot of people don’t know that the City of Toronto hasn’t issued a new strip club licence since 1981.

So no one can open a new club? Nope. In the 1970s, Toronto had more than 300 clubs. Then the murder of Emanuel Jaques happened in 1977, which triggered a huge puritanical backlash against so-called wild Yonge Street, which housed strip clubs, porn theatres and massage parlours. The crackdown resulted in the city instituting bylaws requiring strip clubs and massage parlours to get licences. There were over 360 strip clubs operating in the early ’80s, but the city capped things at 80 or 81, and they haven’t issued a new licence since. Today, there are only five left.

Would more licences provide safer environments for sex workers? Absolutely. As someone who’s done various forms of sexual labour, I feel like strip clubs are among the safest places to work. They’re legitimate businesses, so you’re in a workplace with management, security and protocols for handling violence against workers.

Baker has been lauded for creating the character of Anora as a fully realized person. Is there any part of you that wants to see a story like this told by a woman with personal experience in the industry? Yes! One hundred per cent of me wants this. I’m very grateful to directors like Sean who create work that offers audiences a nuanced portrayal of our labour and humanity. But I also need to side-eye the filmmakers who insist on creating stories about sex work without any experience in the industry. I don’t understand why they’re so interested in us and yet refuse to include sex workers in their films. If you’re making a movie about sex work, you’d better hire a sex worker consultant, writer, co-director, editor or producer. Otherwise, as a civilian, you’re pandering to your own fantasy of what you think sex work is.

You’re currently working on a feature version of Modern Whore, which Baker is executive-producing. After I worked with Sean on Anora, I asked him if he’d be willing to be our executive producer on Modern Whore, and he said yes. The film is a hybrid documentary—it includes interviews with my mom, my partner and many of my sex-worker friends, as well as reenactments of stories from the book. Nicole and I shared the script with Sean before shooting, and we’re about to show him our fine cut.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.