Netflix movie, Blonde starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, was recently released. While few liked Ana de Armas’s acting, several fans took to social media to criticize the casting, saying that de Armas’ accent was not authentic to how Monroe’s voice sounded. However, Marilyn Monroe’s estate recently responded to the backlash and supported the actress.
Despite not being associated with the film, Marilyn’s estate responded to the people criticizing Ana and have thrown their full support behind her performance. The estate says it supports the casting of Ana de Armas as the Hollywood icon in the forthcoming Netflix film Blonde. However, the initial backlash has caused some people to point out that American actors do accents all the time without enduring criticism like this.
Authentic Brands Group is the owner of the Monroe estate, while the group has not authorized the film, the organization’s president of entertainment, Marc Rosen, told Variety that ‘it looks like Ana was a great casting choice as she captures Marilyn’s glamour, humanity and vulnerability. “We can’t wait to see the film in its entirety,” Rosen said. He called Monroe ‘a singular Hollywood and pop culture icon that transcends generations and history,’ adding that ‘any actor that steps into that role knows they have big shoes to fill.’
In a previous interview, Ana de Armas shared, “I only had to audition for Marilyn once and Andrew [Dominik] said ‘It’s you,’ but I had to audition for everyone else. The producers. The money people.” The actress added that she always have people she needed to convince. But she knew that she could do it. Armas also revealed that playing Marilyn was groundbreaking.
She added, “A Cuban playing Marilyn Monroe. I wanted it so badly. You see that famous photo of her and she is smiling at the moment, but that’s just a slice of what she was really going through at the time.” For the unversed, after Netflix dropped the new trailer for Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, many took to Twitter to criticize the NC-17 Marilyn Monroe movie for being based on fiction as well as de Armas’ Cuban accent.
The Golden Globe nominee, who learned English in 2015, spent a ‘whole year’ attempting to perfect the legendary blonde bombshell’s Hollywood accent with dialect coach Jessica Drake. But the backlash has already begun with Twitter users blasting Ana’s accent as ‘awful’ with some saying she ‘looks nothing like Marilyn Monroe.’
ALSO READ – Ana De Armas Effortlessly Transforms As Marilyn Monroe In First Official Trailer Of Netflix’s Blonde