We finally have our first glimpse of Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe and we can’t look away. The Cuban-born actress has transformed into the late Hollywood icon for the upcoming film, Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates’s bestselling novel of the same name. A new teaser trailer was just released Thursday, along with the release date, which is set to drop on Netflix on September 23.
Known for its rare rating of NC-17, the fictionalized film “boldly reimagines the life of Marilyn Monroe, exploring the split between her public and private selves,” according to the streamer’s official synopsis. Starring Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody as her ex-husbands baseball player Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller respectively, Julianne Nicholson, Xavier Samuel and Evan Williams round out the cast.
Born Norma Jeane Baker, Blonde chronicles the Some Like it Hot star’s tumultuous childhood, through her meteoric rise to fame, and subsequent troubles. “I read Joyce’s novel, studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, films—anything I could get my hands on,” de Armas said in an interview with Netflix’s Queue.
“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.”
The trailer opens with a distraught de Armas perched at her vanity in her dressing room. “Please come,” she whimpers. “Don’t abandon me.” Flashing between onstage performances, the lights of the cameras, and the white halter dress moment above the breeze of a New York subway gate while filming The Seven Year Itch.
Sitting in the makeup chair for hours on end, de Armas opened up to Byrdie last year to discuss her transformation. “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,” the Deep Water actress explained. “So, we had to make a bald cap every single day from my forehead to [around] my whole head.”
With Blonde, de Armas joins the likes of actresses Ashley Judd, Mira Sorvino, and Michelle Williams to play the mid-century superstar. Williams even garnered herself a Golden Globe for her performance in 2011’s My Week with Marilyn, along with an Academy Award nomination.
Monroe’s name has been making headlines lately, after reality star Kim Kardashian donned the icon’s 1962 Jean Louis dress to the 2022 Met Gala. Slipping into the original dress Monroe wore to sing President John F. Kennedy “Happy Birthday,” Kardashian has since come under fire for damaging the historic gown lent to her by the owner of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!.
