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Ana de Armas’ portrays Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde,” a film that has been heavily debated despite not being released. Following delays and pushbacks from the studio, the film will be released this year, becoming the first Netflix film to have an NC-17 rating.
NC-17 ratings are rare, only given to films that have very explicit content. And while Netflix houses some NC-17 movies like “Blue Is The Warmest Color,” “Green Inferno,” “Blonde” marks the first film with this rating that the streamer has had a hand in making.
The director of the film, Andrew Dominik, spoke about the film’s rating and why it was necessary for the story he was trying to tell. “It’s a demanding movie,” he said in an interview with Screen Daily. “If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the f**king audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office. It’s an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe, it’s kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story.” And despite the heavy debate that the film’s rating enabled, Dominik says he’s grateful for Netflix for allowing him to stick to his vision of the film.
Dominik has explained that the film took a long time to make and to get right, and that de Armas’ work is one of the best parts about it. “The one thing nobody’s going to complain about is de Armas’ performance,” he said.
De Armas has spoken a bit about the hard work that went into portraying Marilyn Monroe. She worked with a dialect coach for 9 months in order to perfect Marilyn’s accent and inflection, and had to spend three hours a day applying make up and prosthetics to perfect Marilyn’s emblematic look. “Well, I had to go bald every day, because with the blonde wigs… [Marilyn] went through different shades of blonde from golden to really platinum, so for these wigs that are beautifully made, you can’t have anything dark underneath, so we had to make a bald cap every single day from my forehead to [around] my whole head,” she explained to Byrdie.
“Blonde” has no release date yet, but it’s slated for 2022. It co-stars Adrien Brody, Julianne Nicholson and Bobby Cannavale.