When you close your eyes and think of Marilyn Monroe, you probably have the image of the American bombshell actress with beautiful blonde hair and a very distinct voice. You might not immediately imagine a brunette Cuban woman, huh? Well, in Andrew Dominik’s upcoming film, “Blonde,” Ana de Armas tackles the role of Monroe and had to endure quite a bit to ditch her Cuban accent to pass as the Hollywood legend.
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Speaking to The Times, de Armas talked about all the preparation that went into the filming of “Blonde” and why it was so difficult for the actress. The film, based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, isn’t really a Marilyn Monroe biopic, but instead is a historical fiction story about the legendary bombshell that the author insists is not a true biography. However, de Armas definitely treated it as if she was playing the real Monroe, which meant she had to figure out how to lose her Cuban accent.
“I tried! It only took me nine months of dialect coaching, and practicing, and some ADR sessions [rerecording dialogue after filming],” de Armas explained. “It was a big torture, so exhausting. My brain was fried.”
In addition to losing her accent, getting blonde hair, and dressing as if she was Monroe, the actress wanted to get into the appropriate mindset of a woman in the industry during that time. And in doing so, de Armas started to see how relatable that era is to what’s going on now.
“I had a lot of thoughts as a woman in the industry, and even in general, about how things from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s are so relatable to nowadays,” she added. “And how if you don’t have a strong base, with your family and so on, it’s really hard to make it through — really hard.”
“Blonde” doesn’t have a release date yet, but the film should be arriving on Netflix sometime this year.