Ana de Armas Says She Didn't 'Imitate' Marilyn Monroe in Blonde , Focused Instead on Her 'Feelings'
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Ana de Armas is sharing insight into her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe.
The 34-year-old Cuban actress covers the fall issue of French fashion magazine L'Officiel, where she explained why she didn't mimic everything about the screen siren in the upcoming Netflix movie Blonde.
Though she worked with a dialect coach and studied up on the Hollywood icon before filming began, de Armas said, "my job wasn't to imitate her."
"I was interested in her feelings, her journey, her insecurities, and her voice, in the sense that she didn't really have one," she said in the interview, out Tuesday.
The fictional film, based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2000 novel of the same name, "boldly reimagines the life of Marilyn Monroe, exploring the split between her public and private selves," according to an official synopsis from Netflix.
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Trailers show de Armas' Monroe — who was born Norma Jeane Baker in 1926 — struggling with the dark side of fame at the peak of her stardom, all set to a haunting rendition of her 1953 rendition of the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," from her film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
In the same interview, de Armas told L'Officiel that she didn't understand why the film was stamped with a much-talked-about NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association, which the magazine noted is a first for a Netflix original movie.
"I didn't understand why that happened. I can tell you a number of shows or movies that are way more explicit with a lot more sexual content than Blonde," she told the outlet.
"But to tell this story it is important to show all these moments in Marilyn's life that made her end up the way that she did," continued de Armas. "It needed to be explained. Everyone [in the cast] knew we had to go to uncomfortable places. I wasn't the only one."
The MPA gave the movie an NC-17 rating "for some sexual content."
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In February, Blonde director Andrew Dominik told ScreenDaily that he had always wanted his Monroe movie, which was filmed in 2019, to have an NC-17 rating.
"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," Dominik said at the time.
"It's a demanding movie. If the audience doesn't like it, that's the f------ audience's problem," he added. "It's not running for public office."
De Armas spent two to three hours getting hair and makeup done for the film, according to Netflix Queue, and the actress did plenty more research leading up to the film shoot.
RELATED: Ana de Armas Breaks Down as Marilyn Monroe in First Official Trailer for Netflix's Blonde
"We worked on this film for hours, every single day for almost a year. I read Joyce's novel, studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, films — anything I could get my hands on. Every scene is inspired by an existing photograph," she said. "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."
The cast also includes Bobby Cannavale, Adrien Brody, Julianne Nicholson, Xavier Samuel and Evan Williams.
Blonde hits Netflix Sept. 28.
