Blondes don’t have more fun, if the private life of mid-century sex symbol Marilyn Monroe means anything to you. All throughout her mega-watt career and even long beyond her shocking death in 1962, the platinum-haired starlet has been objectified by fans, critics, paparazzi, and the oppressive studio system around her.
We’ve heard that story plenty of times before, but perhaps never so graphically as in Australian director Andrew Dominik’s bleak new experiment Blonde, based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name. Read on to find out everything we know about Ana de Armas’ transformation into Monroe, who’s playing her famous husbands, and more. Fun facts are a girl’s best friend!
1. It’s 2022’s first NC-17 film of the year, and Netflix’s first NC-17 ever
The last mainstream film to receive and keep an NC-17 rating was Steve McQueen’s Shame, a film about sex addiction starring Michael Fassbender. Such a rating from the US Motion Picture Authority is normally considered a kiss of death, with most directors and studios falling over themselves to make edits and receive the gentler R-rating.
But not Dominik. “It’s a demanding movie,” he’s said, about a rape scene in the book and film in which Monroe is coerced and abused by a studio executive. “If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office.” So if you’d rather stick to the sanitised Monroe you know, maybe just watch her oldies: less graphic sex, violence, and existentially crushing themes.
2. Joyce Carol Oates’ book was sparked by a photo of a 15-year-old “Norma Jeane”
Firebrand author Oates adds an extra “e” to Marilyn Monroe’s birth name for some reason, perhaps spelling out that her text is fictional rather than a lavishly-researched true account. Released in 2000, Blonde is a bit of a brick, retelling Monroe’s life story over 738 pages: it’s wild to imagine that all that alternate history sprung out of a single photo, of teen Norma Jean Baker winning a 1941 beauty pageant.
(just a parenthetical aside–I have seen the rough cut of Andrew Dominick's adaptation & it is startling, brilliant, very disturbing & [perhaps most surprisingly] an utterly "feminist" interpretation… not sure that any male director has ever achieved anything this.) https://t.co/zUubjH5yqV
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) August 10, 2020
From the Tweet above, it would seem that Oates is already a big fan of how Dominik and Netflix have brought her book to the screen, calling it both “very disturbing” and “utterly feminist”.
3. …and it’s already been adapted into a miniseries before, back in 2001
One year after the novel was published, CBS slapped together a limited series, with Oates complaining after that the director would often “read the scene in the novel just before shooting it”.
Being honest, the trailer below is completely crap, but the cast is pretty wild! It’s full of Aussies (star Poppy Montgomery, Richard Roxburgh as an angry studio head, Emily Browning), familiar faces like Wallace Shawn and future Bosch star Titus Welliver, and plenty of screen hunks (Patrick Dempsey as Charles Chaplin Jr, Jensen Ackles playing the son of Edward G Robinson).
Kirstie Alley seemingly goes serious, telling a young Norma Jean that “it’s a man’s world, and in order to survive, a woman must betray her own kind”. It’s also cool that actual Old Hollywood star Ann Margret was still alive to join in on the, uh, fun.
4. Ana de Armas has the approval of the Monroe estate—and producer Brad Pitt
This always happens, so we’ll just touch on it briefly: there was some lame backlash to Knives Out star de Armas’ casting as the very blonde, very Caucasian Monroe, since de Armas is Cuban. That nonsense has died down pretty quickly after seeing de Armas’ transformative appearance in the Blonde trailer (above), even with the hints of her natural accent and all, and the blessings of Monroe’s estate probably helped too.
“Based on the trailer alone, it looks like Ana was a great casting choice as she captures Marilyn’s glamour, humanity and vulnerability”, an official statement read. She’s also received an enthusiastic thumbs up from the film’s producer Brad Pitt, who called her “phenomenal” and praised her as the reason the long-gestating project could finally be made: “It wasn’t until we found Ana that we could get it across the finish line.”
5. Two other actors considered for the part were Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts
Remember Chastain’s giggly, blonde-coiffed supporting role in The Help (pictured above)? It was so charmingly reminiscent of Monroe that the now-Oscar-winner was offered the lead part in Blonde in 2014, only for pre-production to stagnate yet again.
This was already after natural blonde Naomi Watts had been signed on and then dismissed as Monroe in 2010. Other actors to play Monroe over the years include Michelle Williams, Theresa Russell, and Mira Sorvino, with that iconic Madonna video for “Material Girl” itself influencing countless other imitations of the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes number.
6. Marilyn’s hair and voice were exhausting for de Armas
Before being made up to look blonde and beautiful, de Armas had to get bald and brain-fried. Her daily make-up for Blonde took three-and-a-half hours, and that’s after nine months of training with a dialect coach: “it was a big torture, so exhausting”, de Armas has complained. “My brain was fried.”
She’s also said she “actually cried the first time [she] saw the wigs on”, feeling proud and terrified at once. And probably feeling some scalp pain, too, as a bald cap had to be glued to the actor each day in order to avoid seeing her natural, dark hair under each finely-crafted blonde wig.
7. Even without names, you’ll recognise Monroe’s famous lovers: The Ex-Athlete, the Playwright, and The President
Above is nose king Adrien Brody as the final love of Monroe’s life, legendary American dramatist Arthur Miller, and Bobby Cannavale canoodles with de Armas below as Joe DiMaggio, perhaps her most famous beau. Like in the novel, neither iconic guy will be referred to by their full name, though: only “the ex-athlete”, “the playwright”, etc. You might recognise Danish actor Caspar Phillipson as Monroe’s rumoured hookup JFK, too: he’s already played the 1960s president in Jackie and Project Blue Book, continually cast in the part due to his striking physical resemblance.
8. Other stars returning to life in the film? James Dean, Tony Curtis, Joseph Cotten, and Charlie Chaplin Jr
We can’t say we recognise the actors imitating Curtis and Dean in this star-studded biopic, but Australian hunk Xavier Samuel will appear as the eldest son of silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin. Known as “Cass Bulut” when Patrick Dempsey played him in that 2001 TV movie, Chaplin apparently dated Monroe in the late 40s, and they both happened to die tragically before their times. David Warshofsky will play Hollywood head honcho Darryl F. Zanuck, in that traumatic sexual assault scene, and physically gifted comic Toby Huss will be at Marilyn’s side as her beloved makeup artist “Whitey” Snyder.
9. Prepare to shift from black-and-white to colour and back, plus changing aspect ratios
As you can tell from the trailer for Blonde, we’re in for a dazzling, confusing blend of frame sizes and colour palettes, perhaps to suggest the volatile changing times Monroe symbolized and was victim to. Dominik has said his script contains “very little dialogue”, in favour of a cinematic “avalanche of images and events.” The above magic Marilyn moment just had to be recreated, for instance, but it’s done with overexposed, bleached lighting—now we get to see the poor scared girl at the centre of the sexy scene.
10. We might see a conspiracy theory ending, alleging that Monroe was assassinated
Dominik’s no stranger to heartbreaking tales of celebrity assassination (see: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). And in Joyce Carol Oates’ source material, she discusses the theory that Monroe might’ve been assassinated at some great length: a Kennedy conspiracy to stop her from speaking out, or some sinister studio system plan to cash in on her posthumous fame? Since the biopic is clearly billing itself as a fictionalised take on true events, they have the freedom to make some pretty wild claims, and we can’t wait to chuck on our tinfoil hats and join in.
11. Dominik isn’t shy about his pride for the film, and says it wouldn’t exist without the #MeToo movement
In a talk with Screen Daily, Andrew Dominik stated that the #MeToo movement was the ultimate catalyst for Blonde—because until those industry-shaking accusations, “nobody was interested in that sort of shit, what it’s like to be an unloved girl, or what it’s like to go through the Hollywood meat-grinder.”
The Australian director has such a solid real-world foundation for his story, in fact, that he’s recently boasted Blonde will be “one of the 10 best movies ever made”, and that it’s like if “Citizen Kane and Raging Bull had a baby daughter”. Whew, big claims Andy…but considering that he’s already subverted the gangster and Western genres so fabulously, perhaps Blonde could live up to this self-confident hype.
12. Marilyn’s still making headlines—most recently, when Kim K stole her dress
Despite being buried in Hollywood since 1962, Marilyn Monroe keeps getting dug up and dragged out as a symbol of absolute fame and beauty—even making a necromanced appearance on the last Met Gala red carpet, when Kim Kardashian borrowed her famous nude-illusion sequinned gown. The curvaceous Monroe wore the outfit to breathily sing “happy birthday, mister President”, and there was a social media uproar when the current owners of the frock, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, allowed Kardashian to slightly alter the gown and wear it with pretty cheap-looking Pleaser heels and a fur shrug.
That red carpet scandal and Blonde‘s controversial content rating prove that Monroe is still attracting scandal from beyond the grave. Perhaps the streaming subscriber public will finally give her a bit of rest, after seeing her life of tabloid torment through Dominik’s dark lens.
