Actress Ana de Armas (The Gray Man) is primped and ready for the biggest role of her career. The Cuban and Spanish actor will portray late film icon Marilyn Monroe in Netflix’s fictional biopic Blonde, which is adapted from a book of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. The film will be Netflix’s first ever to hit the platform with an NC-17 rating.
In the first official trailer for Blonde, which transitions back and forth from black and white to color, we see de Armas’ Marilyn inside her dressing room smiling at herself in the mirror. She motions a kiss toward her reflection before the scene cuts to her exiting a limo where she is greeted by flashing cameras and an adoring crowd cheering her name.
But her name, as we learn from the trailer, is not who she really is. Marilyn Monroe is just a character she plays in the movies. When she’s not on the screen, Marilyn isn’t the “blonde bombshell” the public knows. She’s Norma Jeane, the name she was given at birth.
During the trailer, a haunting version of the jazz song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from Marilyn’s 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes begins to play. Actor Bobby Cannavale (The Irishman), who portrays professional baseball champion and Marilyn’s love interest Joe DiMaggio, asks her how she got her start in movies. The scene cuts to Marilyn stepping into a producer’s office alone where it’s suggested that he takes sexual advantage of the situation. It all has a very cringy Harvey Weinstein feel to it. “I guess I was discovered,” Marilyn responds to DiMaggio.
Later in the trailer, Marilyn explains that she can’t get used to the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. “I can’t face doing another scene with Marilyn Monore,” she says. “Marilyn doesn’t exist.”
Marilyn, however, will exist at least once more when Ana de Armas recreates her for audiences in Blonde. The film hits Netflix on September 28, 2022.