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Today Netflix released the first teaser trailer to the highly-anticipated Marilyn Monroe biopic, BLONDE. The film stars Ana de Armas who switched her signature brunette bob for the star’s platinum blonde locks in a transformation the Cuban actress had previously revealed took nearly four hours of makeup each day.
In the short 50-second teaser we receive a closer look at her character as she cries in a backstage mirror. We are also treated to a recreation of the iconic scene where Monroe stands over a subway vent as her white skirt flies up around her waist. The film is adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’ novel of the same name and also stars Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson. It is directed by Andrew Dominik.
In March, BLONDE received a rating of NC-17 for sexual content (for Australians this is essentially an R18+ rating). In a February interview with Screen Daily, Dominik explained, “It’s a demanding movie. If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking 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.”
Similarly to the intense research Austin Butler endured for his role in “ELVIS” , de Armas has described the overwhelming task of playing the Hollywood star as “the most intense work” she’s ever done .”It took me a year to prepare for that,” she told Entertainment Weekly in April. “Research and accent and everything you can imagine.”
According to the actress it took countless hours in hair and makeup with the actress forced to wear a bald cap for the entirety of production.
“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.
The film will release onto the streaming platform from September 23.
