Ana de Armas met writer/director Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly, Chopper) 11 years into his quest to make Blonde. “That was about three years ago…maybe more…and he sent me the script. I met with him and we had our first chat about it. Immediately I could tell how passionate he was about the story and why it was so important for him to do it the way he did – and to push for his vision,” explained de Armas during the Critics Choice Association press conference hosted by Netflix.
Ana de Armas delivers a compelling performance as classic movie star Marilyn Monroe in the film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ bestselling novel, published in 1999. De Armas had never read anything like Dominik’s script, and she was blown away that she even had the opportunity to audition to play the Hollywood legend.
Before taking on the role, the Knives Out star didn’t know much about Marilyn. De Armas thought Monroe was a good actress and enjoyed her films, but she knew nothing about her personal life.
“I knew Marilyn – I knew the character on the screen. I knew her movies, but I didn’t really know much about her life. Andrew created this photographic bible with over 700 pictures, and you could see the movie throughout all of those images,” said de Armas.
“Getting to know her, I just feel a lot of empathy for her and definitely more respect. I feel closer to her, and it is impossible not to – even after doing the film – not feel protective of her. I’m just happy that I got to know how hard she tried and how brave she was and how strong,” said de Armas, adding, “I saw performances in movies that I was like, ‘This is freaking genius the way she does it. She’s so good.’”
YouTube videos, interviews, books, and rare footage provided de Armas with a peek at Monroe’s life off-screen. “Andrew wanted to pour those 11 years into my head fairly quickly, and it was just a lot to learn and to process. There’s so much information about her, so many things. It was pretty exciting. It was a very extensive, immersive process of just discovering not just her movies and her work, it was more about also trying to figure out who the woman underneath the character was. That was my main focus,” offered de Armas.
Ana de Armas confessed that at the beginning stages of approaching the project, she wondered what she could possibly have in common with Marilyn Monroe. “But then the more I learned about her, I realized I kind of felt even closer to her than I could ever imagine. I think that her personal journey, even though I didn’t have a childhood like her or go through a lot of her horrible, traumatic experiences, as a woman I just could feel her. I could see what her pain and her struggles were,” explained de Armas.
She added: “Just understanding the beginning of her life and how that will mark and set the way you see life from then on, carrying all that guilt and suffering with you…the duality between your private self and your public self and how do you deal with that, with the industry and what people project on you, and what the demand is, and you’re supposed to deliver that. Someone who was trying forever to be considered a serious actress and to be taken seriously and the level that she clearly, in my opinion, was prepared to deliver way better performances had she had the chance. So, all those things for me were very relatable. I just found it also fascinating that despite all of that, she kept shining and pushing through.”
The Physical Transformation into Marilyn Monroe
Becoming Blonde’s Marilyn Monroe meant spending hours in hair and makeup. Writer/director Dominik’s advice was not to apply Marilyn’s makeup on Ana but to make Ana look like Marilyn. The makeup process took about three hours each day, starting at 4:30am.
“One of them would just hold my head as I was sleeping so most of the makeup was with my eyes closed,” recalled de Armas, laughing. “It was beautiful. Every day felt like a huge achievement if we got the look right – with so many iconic looks and also taking that down to find the more natural Norma Jeane look but still looking like her.”
“It was very challenging every day, but it was beautiful,” said de Armas. “It was so emotional every time. I had the best team with me.”
Asked what it was like wearing recreations of Marilyn’s famous outfits, de Armas replied, “I’ve never had more wardrobe fittings than in this movie. I think we did over 100 wardrobe changes in the film. What was amazing about Jennifer (Johnson, the costume designer) is we built that together. It wasn’t like she was giving me these clothes like, ‘This is a hangar, and this is what you’re putting on just because it’s the exact replica of what she was wearing.’ She wasn’t imposing something just because it was exactly the same. We built it together to something that felt more natural to me.”
“We did little tricks here and there to just find the shape of her body,” explained de Armas. “There were these little things underneath the clothes that looked like nothing but at the end, they really created that illusion of her body.”
“And these incredible dresses that we recreated also. They made exact replicas of ‘Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend’ – the pink dress – to The Seven Year Itch white dress – that was a very difficult dress to make and it was just so perfect. It is something that, you know, in the mornings I would have my two and a half, three-hour makeup process then I would go to another 20 minutes in wardrobe, and then I would do another 20 minutes of vocal warming and all of that, and then you realize that it’s not just the voice that needs warming. I wasn’t just warming up for the voice. It was all a process of I couldn’t be in character without one of [those elements]. They all had to be in conjunction, and I had to have them all with me.
And when you step in this wardrobe and you’re wearing the clothes and the shoes and everything, it just feels like you’re in it. It’s so important to feel comfortable and to feel real, like you’re being this person. I love that part of the creation of the character,” said de Armas.
Ana de Armas actually started working on the voice while she filming Knives Out, which was about nine months out from shooting Blonde.
“It was probably the most complex part of the transformation for me, just because English is not my first language, to begin with. The accent, the period, Marilyn’s affectations – she also changed her accent many times. She had personal coaches for her own insecurities, and she had coaches for movies. You can see her accent changing from one movie to the other one,” said de Armas. “All of that was important for me to learn and to capture because she has a very specific quality in her voice.
But at the same time, the movie wasn’t about Marilyn. We are familiar, for the most part, with the onscreen voice, which is part of that character, but the movie’s about Norma Jeane. So, to have just imitated that would have been very restrictive for me and I would have just done that – Marilyn’s voice. So, the imitation part of it, or just like nailing the accent outside the recreations was not very interesting. It didn’t feel authentic, emotionally speaking. For me, it was more important to find that emotional truth and move people than just copying the voice.”
Marilyn Monroe’s Career and Lasting Legacy:
There wasn’t any specific performance of Marilyn’s that Ana de Armas pulled from. Instead, she did a deep dive into all her films, specifically concentrating on any that they were going to recreate for the film.
“We didn’t have time for rehearsals. I think the only thing that we rehearsed was for two days the ‘Diamonds’ scene, and that’s because it was a choreography that I had to learn. But everything else was just pretty much by myself, just watching over and over and over again, like hundreds of times,” said de Armas. “Just doing the observation work just to get her…she was so expressive. Her face would just do crazy things all the time. So, it was not just one thing; it was a lot.”
The film was shot on location around Los Angeles and even at Marilyn’s real home. Asked if she could feel Marilyn’s presence, de Armas replied, “I was discovering that the places that we were filming were the actual places. Like the apartment with mother, her house, the car I was driving – she drove that car. We were chasing her and these places where she had been. I mean, she’s all over LA.
The other day after the premiere we went to Musso & Frank and they have a table where she used to sit. LA is full of these things and everyone has a story about her. Every corner has a little piece of her. But it was very moving. It was very emotional to be in these places recreating these scenes.
I do think that when you’re living an experience like this and you’re so in it, and you’re giving so much of yourself and you’re so open and embracing all these feelings, there is no way you can not feel something else. I do think that I felt something, a bigger energy, something different. It was very strong and it was really powerful. It was beautiful.”
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Blonde opened in limited theatrical release on September 16, 2022 and is currently streaming on Netflix. Ana de Armas leads a cast that includes Adrien Brody, Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams, Toby Huss, and Bobby Cannavale.
Blonde is rated NC-17 for some sexual content.
