When Ana de Armas first saw herself fully dressed as Marilyn Monroe in Netflix’s highly anticipated new film Blonde, a roller coaster of emotions hit her hard.
“It felt so real. It was a very strong sensation…because it’s hard for me not to relate to the story of what was happening to her and to the woman in the story,” de Armas told reporters at the film’s Hollywood premiere on Tuesday evening, which was held at the TCL Chinese Theatre where Monroe would spend weekends watching films as a young girl.
Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, Blonde is based on Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel of the same name, which reimagines Marilyn Monroe’s inner life—from her extremely fraught childhood as Norma Jeane Mortenson to her rise to Hollywood superstardom and her volatile romantic relationships. The nearly three-hour film, produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, is 12 years in the making.
To transform into Monroe, she said at the premiere, de Armas spent three hours every morning of the nine-week production donning a stocking cap and having prosthetics glued underneath her custom-made platinum blonde wigs to conceal her natural hairline. In addition, she had her brows bleached and shaved. She also wore blue contacts to cover her naturally hazel eyes and had fake lashes strategically placed to alter the shape of her eyes to match Monroe’s. Every physical detail was painstakingly checked. Even the location of Monroe’s mole, most often seen on her lower left cheek, was referenced.
“On most days Ana would be guiding my hand, and we would get right to the spot where Marilyn had it on her face and dot it,” said Tina Roesler Kerwin, the film’s makeup department head, on the red carpet prior to the screening. “There was a time when Marilyn moved it and put it down near her chin. It’s in the movie as well.”
During the intense research to recreate Monroe-inspired looks for de Armas, Kerwin and her team discovered Monroe often slathered petroleum jelly on her face as part of her makeup routine, especially during photo shoots. “Marilyn always had this beautiful glow in photographs, and her secret trick was she used Vaseline, because it was reflective and it bounced back a lot of light and gave her a lot of glow,” said Kerwin, who also worked on Top Gun: Maverick. “We opted to do something else that was more contemporary and better for Ana’s skin long term.”
Exact replicas of Monroe’s iconic dresses were created for Blonde, including the pink gown with the large bow from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the hand-pleated, William Travilla–designed skirt seen in The Seven Year Itch’s famous New York subway grate scene, which de Armas said was her favorite costume to wear.
“Building the William Travilla dress was the hardest to make. It had to be an exact match to the photograph we were basing it on,” said costume designer Jennifer Johnson. “We used traditional pleating techniques and added extra yardage of the skirt to make it exaggerated. We used 50 yards of fabric continuing to make the skirt, remaking it, repleating it, and up until the eleventh hour, we made the perfect one. Ana really took flight in that dress.”
According to Johnson, a nontraditional wardrobe technique that Monroe would often use for her looks was sewing marbles into her bra in order to make her nipples appear more prominent. “I chose not to do it because it would look so silly, but Marilyn was so smart and found creative ways to look her best.”
Prior to the production, de Armas spent nearly a year studying Monroe’s famously breathy voice. She worked with a dialect coach and researched the pop-culture icon extensively to create an authentic tone. “She was all I thought about every day, from the set to when I went home. I even dreamed about her many times in my sleep,” said de Armas. “She was with me.”
Blonde, launching September 28 on Netflix, dives deep into Norma Jeane’s painful childhood and how she grew into Marilyn Monroe, a fragile woman in search of love. The film has made headlines for receiving an NC-17 rating and has stirred up controversy for its depiction of traumatic events in the star’s life. The movie chronicles Monroe’s sexual assault, multiple abortions, her mother’s mental illness, and a threesome with Hollywood scions Charlie Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams). It also depicts abusive relationships with two of her three husbands—baseball player Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody)—and a rumored affair with President John F. Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson).
“People may find the film provocative, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to relate to someone else’s life experiences in an authentic way,” said Dominik. “I wanted to make something that would affect the audience. I wanted to detail her childhood trauma and then show her adult life through the lens of that trauma. If you look closely at Marilyn Monroe, she’s the most visible woman in the world, but she’s completely unseen. The dangerous thing is that she has everything that society reflects as being good. She’s famous, she’s beautiful, she has a cool job, she dates cool guys, rich, and she kills herself. Clearly, there’s something wrong. And I think that’s the fascination about her life. There’s nothing sentimental here. Seeing the raw trauma in the film humanizes her.”
For Brody, the film’s focus on Monroe’s pain brings “a lot of honesty and value” to revealing the inner life and reality of someone as beloved as Marilyn Monroe.
“She’s probably one of the most iconic movie stars, and the perception of her may seem to be perfect, but once you understand her suffering and her personal struggle, you really appreciate that person and acknowledge them,” Brody said. “I think the film represents that in spades. Her story is heartbreaking. It really broke my heart, really seeing someone that is so adored to not really feel loved properly. We should try to instill love with everyone.”
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