Knives Out star Ana de Armas says essaying the role of Marilyn Monroe in upcoming movie Blonde is a groundbreaking moment for her as it is for the first time that a Cuban actor is playing the Hollywood icon.
The Andrew Dominik film, about the 1950s star, is based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates.
In a cover interview with Vanity Fair , de Armas said though the director was convinced after the first audition, she had to do more auditions for the “money people.”
“I only had to audition for Marilyn once and Andrew said ‘It’s you,’ but I had to audition for everyone else. The producers. The money people. I always have people I needed to convince,” the actor said, adding that she was convinced about pulling off the role.
“Playing Marilyn was groundbreaking. A Cuban playing Marilyn Monroe. I wanted it so badly. You see that famous photo of her and she is smiling in the moment, but that’s just a slice of what she was really going through at the time,” de Armas added.
The actor said her partnership with Dominik for the film was much more collaborative than most of her previous stints with directors such as Rian Johnson, Denis Villeneuve and Cary Joji Fukunaga.
“I have never worked more closely with a director than I worked with Andrew. Yes, I have had collaborative relationships, but to get phone calls at midnight because he has an idea and he can’t sleep and all of a sudden you can’t sleep for the same reason...” de Armas said.
Her Knives Out co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, whose father had famously featured with Monroe in Billy Wilder’s 1959 romantic comedy Some Like It Hot , told the outlet that she was amazed with de Armas as she disappeared into the role after watching her screen test footage.
“I remember when she showed me a video of her screen tests for Blonde, I dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe it. Ana was completely gone. She was Marilyn,” Curtis said.
Blonde , which hails from Netflix stable, is produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment banner. The film is expected to release later this year.
