'Blonde' Trailer: Ana de Armas Is “Watched By All, Seen By None” As Marilyn Monroe

All the glam and lights are outshined as Ana de Armas Is Marilyn Monroe in Netflix’s New Blonde Trailer. 

Netflix released an official trailer of Blonde. The fictional movie is based on the 2000 novel, Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, has earned an NC-17 rating. Blonde will explore how the Hollywood industry's violence led Monroe to lose her sense of identity.

“I’ve played Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe,” de Armas can be heard saying over the montage of footage of the woman born as Norma Jeane struggling with the effects of her public image. “I can’t face doing another scene with Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn doesn’t exist. When I come out of my dressing room, I’m Norma Jeane,” de Armas says in the trailer. “I’m still her when the camera’s rolling. Marilyn Monroe only exists on the screen.”

Born in 1926 in Los Angeles, California, Norma Jeane Mortenson took the name Marilyn Monroe and joined the film industry in 1945, quickly becoming the most prominent sex symbol in cinema. During the 40s and the 50s, Monroe developed a prolific career as an actress, singer and model, enchanting the world with her big smile and seductive gaze. However, behind the façade of success, there was a person feeling pressure to act just like everyone expected her to, especially in an industry that constantly objectifies women and associates their value with their appearance. Monroe's troubled private life and mental health issues led to her precocious death from an overdose of barbiturates in 1962, when the actress was just 36 years old. Monroe’s death was sadly ruled a probable suicide.

The official Blonde synopsis from Netflix reads: “[The film] 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.”

“We worked on this film for hours, every single day for almost a year,” de Armas told Netflix Queue earlier this about the film. “I read Joyce’s novel, studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, films — anything I could get my hands on. Every scene is inspired by an existing photograph. We’d pore over every detail in the photo and debate what was happening in it. The first question was always, ‘What was Norma Jeane feeling here?’ We wanted to tell the human side of her story. Fame is what made Marilyn the most visible person in the world, but it also made Norma the most invisible.”

“I had to go bald every day, because with the blonde wigs … [Monroe] went through different shades of blond from golden to really platinum, so for these wigs that are beautifully made, you can’t have anything dark underneath,” the brunette beauty told Byrdie in 2021. “It was like, three and a half hours every day of makeup. I think I actually cried the first time I saw [the wigs] on. Probably because I was terrified.”

Blonde will make its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, before hitting Netflix on September 28.