See First Look At Ana De Armas As Marilyn Monroe In Blonde Trailer
It's finally here!
We’ve been getting updates about Blonde for a while, and now the first trailer for the movie is finally here! The film boasts an impressive cast, but for this first little tease our view is pretty much limited to Ana de Armas as the American icon Marilyn Monroe. But boy, that’s enough.
Netflix released the teaser trailer on Thursday. Shots of Ana de Armas with Toby Huss (Copshop), who plays Monroe’s personal makeup artist Allan “Whitey” Snyder, sitting in front of a makeup mirror and praying for someone to appear are interspersed with moments of Monroe dealing with throngs of fans and photographers. By the end of the teaser the “someone” Monroe wants to appear finally does, and their identity might come as a bit of a surprise. After the title, the teaser reveals the premiere date on Netflix: Friday, September 23. You can watch the teaser below.
As you can see in the trailer, the person Ana de Armas’ character is waiting for isn’t a separate person — at least not physically — but the persona of Marilyn Monroe for which Norma Jeane Mortensen is remembered. It implies that in Blonde, Norma Jeane and Monroe will be treated almost as completely separate personalities; along the lines of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton’s characters in Fight Club. That may seem a little extreme for a bio-pic but that’s just it — in spite of what you may have read or heard, Blonde is not a bio-pic.
Written and directed by Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly), Ana de Armas’ upcoming film is based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. While Oates steeped her novel in biographical research, her story was never meant to be taken as factual. Blonde the novel is Oates’ own imagining of what would happen if Monroe’s death was the result of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Kennedys.
Apparently, Dominik has not been shy about the sexual content of his film. In March it was officially announced the Ana de Armas starrer had received the rare NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Dominik’s thoughts on the matter have seemed a bit contradictory. In February, when the director had apparently heard word of the rating before it was official, he told Screen Daily, “It’s kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story. It’s a demanding movie. If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the f—–g audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office.” But then when Vulture asked the director about it in May, after the official word had come down, Dominik responded, “I was surprised. Yeah. I thought we’d colored inside the lines.” The Australian filmmaker also thought the rating was the result of American sensibilities. “Americans are really strange when it comes to sexual behavior, don’t you think?” Dominik mused to Vulture. “I don’t know why. They make more porn than anyone else in the world.”
Along with Ana de Armas and Toby Huss; Netflix’s Blonde stars Adrien Brody as the playwright Arthur Miller, Bobby Cannavale as baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, Caspar Phillipson as President John F. Kennedy, Evan Williams as actor Edward G. Robinson Jr., Julianne Nicholson Monroe’s mother Gladys Pearl Baker, and many more.
