The dark side of Ana de Armas’ performance as Marilyn Monroe: “It’s disgusting”
Andrew Dominik’s Marylin Monroe pseudo-biopic Blonde was divisive for its portrayal of the Hollywood star, mainly its graphic portrayal of sexual assault and abortion. However, Ana de Armas’ version of the blonde bombshell garnered mostly praise, receiving a 14-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival and garnering her a plethora of award nominations.
When she was cast in the part, de Armas was a relative newcomer to Hollywood, and her breakthrough role in Knives Out had not yet been released. Yet, the Cuban actor manages to bring a very real level of depersonalisation and pain that were integral to Dominik’s surreal telling of the Norma Jean story.
Unsurprisingly, the role of Monroe was incredibly difficult to play, especially for a non-American whose first language isn’t English. Speaking to Variety, she explained how her acting coach had to feed her lines from beneath a table during her audition and how she was restricted from using rage as an emotion during her time as Monroe.
However, it wasn’t the difficulty of the role or the unsettling nature of placing herself in the film’s fictionalised Monroe’s psyche that de Armas found dark or disturbing. Instead, the actor touches on the worry of her nude body being out there for people to consume as they see fit. Controversially, Blonde was given an NC-17 film rating due to its sexually explicit nature, scenes of full-frontal nudity and depiction of sexual assault.
And this seems to give de Armas pause for reflection. She revealed, “I know what’s going to go viral, and it’s disgusting. It’s upsetting just to think about it. I can’t control it; you can’t really control what they do and how they take things out of context.” Eerily, this mirrors the way Monroe herself must have felt about nude photos taken of her early in her career no longer being in her control.
This might beg the question: why would de Armas sign up for a film that paints the already exploited movie star in much the same way as she has been before, if not in an even more explicit way? The actor claims the nudity in the film didn’t give her second thoughts, however, so much as the reality of the future of these scenes.
This anxiety of de Armas seems to be connected to the ways in which she eschews certain types of fame. During her early years as an actor in Madrid, she was incessantly followed by the paparazzi, which only continued in the US due to her relationship with Ben Affleck. She explained that while some stars might welcome all the attention they can get, she would rather be recognised for her work and her work alone.
She said, “I have never been someone that wants any attention that’s not about my work. So when the attention is not about my work, it is upsetting, and it feels disrespectful, and it feels inappropriate, and it feels dangerous and unsafe.” It’s not surprising then that the possible dark side of her performance in Blonde caused her anxiety, as pulling nude stills out of context is unequivocally not about the work.
But in many ways, this anxiety surrounding fame brings the actor even closer to Marilyn, as she was so heavily scrutinised and gossiped about during her lifetime – and still to this day – making her casting even more perfect.
