Blonde
Ana de Armas is Joyce Carol Oates' Marilyn Monroe
She is a pop culture icon immortalized by Andy Warhol’s screen-printed images. She was the sultry, sexy Hollywood starlet who died at 36. She is Marilyn Monroe, the tragic Norma Jeane Baker, the subject of countless films, documentaries and biographies. According to IMDb, there are 185 shows and movies in which Marilyn Monroe appears as a character. Now, production is underway for yet another film about the alluring Monroe. Based on the novel, Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates, the film is spearheaded by Netflix and Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment.
It is not the first go-round with the novel. In 2001, Blonde became a CBS mini-series. The series followed the book but deviated from the idea that Monroe was assassinated. Oates maintained the book was a work of fiction and not a biography. She changed the notable names or used initials such as “R.F.” for Robert F. Kennedy. Monroe’s husbands became Ex-athlete for Joe DiMaggio, The Playwright for Arthur Miller and her first husband is referred to by the pseudonym Bucky Glazer.
The film adaptation of Blonde, written by Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik also takes the helm as director. Several A-list Hollywood names suggested for the role of Marilyn Monroe included Jessica Chastain, but it’s Cuban born Ana de Armas who will portray the blonde bombshell. The 31-year-old actress just came off a recent Golden Globe nomination for the murder mystery Knives Out and her upcoming role in the next James Bond installment No Time to Die is set for release later this year. She is bankable and she is beautiful, plus recent photos of her donning Monroe’s signature platinum blond style are turning heads.
“I only had to audition for Marilyn once and Andrew said ‘It’s you,’ but I had to audition for everyone else,” de Armas said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “The producers. The money people. I always have people I needed to convince. But I knew I could do it. Playing Marilyn was groundbreaking. A Cuban playing Marilyn Monroe. I wanted it so badly.”
Jamie Lee Curtis starred opposite de Armas in Knives Out and saw de Armas’s early screen tests. Curtis, whose father Tony Curtis, played opposite Monroe in the hit comedy Some Like It Hot, told the magazine, “I dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe it. Ana was completely gone. She was Marilyn.”
Blonde chronicles the inner life of Norma Jeane Baker as she blossoms into the idolized sex symbol the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. Her desire to be taken seriously as an actress by the powerful men who controlled the studios reveals the Hollywood myth of the 50’s and 60’s when the exploitation of actresses would be labeled as sexual harassment today. Monroe’s death in 1962 may have cemented her a legend, but it’s her tantalizing human story that remains the subject of enduring fascination.
Netflix has not set a release date for the film but may debut it at one of the significant 2020 film festivals, pending pandemic. The novel Blonde released 20 years ago was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
