Ana de Armas Is Marilyn Monroe in Trailer for Director Andrew Dominik's BLONDE
Netflix has released a new teaser for the upcoming Marilyn Monroe film Blonde, which stars Ana de Armas. As you’ll see in the trailer, the actress completely disappears in the role. There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding this movie due to its NC-17 rating, but this film also might feature de Armes’ best movie performance yet.
The film comes from director Andrew Dominik (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and Killing Them Softly), and it’s based on the bestselling novel of the same name written by Joyce Carol Oates. Blonde “boldly reimagines the life of one of Hollywood's most enduring icons – Marilyn Monroe. From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, Blonde blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.”
When talking about the movie and the director’s vision, de Armas said, "Andrew's ambitions were very clear from the start — to present a version of Marilyn Monroe’s life through her lens. He wanted the world to experience what it actually felt like to not only be Marilyn, but also Norma Jeane. I found that to be the most daring, unapologetic, and feminist take on her story that I had ever seen."
Andrew Dominik previously talked about the NC-17 rating, saying, "It's a demanding movie. If the audience doesn't like it, that's the fucking audience's problem. It's not running for public office... It's an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe, it's kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story."
However, when the movie actually got the NC-17 rating, the director was confused and didn’t understand why. He said, "I was surprised. Yeah. I thought we'd colored inside the lines. But I think if you've got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think. It's just a weird time. It's not like depictions of happy sexuality. It's depictions of situations that are ambiguous. And Americans are really strange when it comes to sexual behavior, don't you think? I don't know why. They make more porn than anyone else in the world."
The film also stars Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Caspar Phillipson, Julianne Nicholson, Sara Paxton, Tony Curtis, and Xavier Samuel. Blonde will be released in theaters on September 23rd, 2022.