Blonde is one of the year’s most controversial films, sparking loads of debate in the press and on social media. However, one of the most frequently asked questions about the film focuses on an actor who isn’t actually in it.
Jessica Chastain, the star of Zero Dark Thirty, George & Tammy, and It Chapter Two was long thought to be the actor who would step into the shoes of the legendary Marilyn Monroe. But, eventually, Ana de Armas took the role, leading to the movie audiences can watch today.
But what happened with Jessica Chastain and Blonde?
How did Jessica Chastain’s role in Blonde re-enter the spotlight?
Jessica Chastain‘s role was presumed for quite a while, with her being listed on the film’s IMDB page for several months. However, as we now know, she isn’t the person who ended up in the role. Chastain‘s alleged involvement with the movie reentered the spotlight recently when Newsweek ran an article about why Chastain wasn’t interested in playing Marilyn in Blonde. The Newsweek article includes a quote from an Indiewire interview from 2014 that reads:
“I wasn’t interested in, and I’m not interested in, making a Marilyn Monroe biopic, because I feel like we’ve had so many of those and so many people are fantastic and it’s not a competition, you know what I mean? It was not exciting to me.”
However, if you find the original Indiewire interview, you’ll find that the publication says the opposite. After interviewing Chastain about her rumored True Detective role, Indiewire says:
“Meanwhile, Chastain did talk (and confirm) that she’ll be playing Marilyn Monroe for Andrew Dominik in the movie long-gestating project ‘Blonde’.”
It also features the full interview that Newsweek quoted from. And, in context, Chastain’s words take on a very different meaning.
“Listen, with that project, I love Andrew Dominik. I think he’s an incredible filmmaker and artist. He has his own different, unique voice. I wasn’t interested in, and I’m not interested in, making a Marilyn Monroe biopic, because I feel like we’ve had so many of those and so many people are fantastic and it’s not a competition, you know what I mean? It was not exciting to me.
So I read Joyce Carol Oates’ book, ‘Blonde,’ and what surprised me is that it’s not a biography. It’s actually a work of fiction. And I found it to be a great feminist novel, because it takes the archetype of the blonde, as represented by Marilyn Monroe, and we see what society does [with] her and what the film industry, in particular, does with her, and how she’s devoured up. And I think in a day and age where we’re fighting to have female voices in cinema and perspectives of women [in] a film industry dominated by male voices, it’s a good story to tell.”
The full quote puts Chastain’s thoughts in a whole new light. It seems to suggest that while Chastain wasn’t interested in doing a traditional Monroe biopic, she was won over by the book’s fictional elements. And these elements convinced her to sign on.
It should be noted that Chastain doesn’t confirm that she’s doing the movie in the quote. The confirmation comes from the writer of the Indiewire article. However, several other outlets at the time talked about Chastain taking the role, making it unlikely to be a misunderstanding.
Why didn’t Jessica Chastain star in Blonde?
Much of this confusion seems to come from Blonde’s rocky production history, as the film started and stopped several times over the past decade. When Andrew Dominik first tried to make the film in 2010, Naomi Watts was signed to play the lead. However, when Andrew Dominik failed to secure funding, Watts dropped out, and the film went dormant.
When the film resurfaced in 2014, Jessica Chastain signed on to play the role. At the time, Indiewire said, “Jessica Chastain is now set to play Marilyn Monroe in the movie.” This article also notes that the film was scheduled to shoot in August 2014, showing how messy this film’s creation was.
However, the film went dormant once more and remained so until 2016, when Netflix picked up the film’s distribution rights. Then, in 2019, it was confirmed that Ana de Armas would play the lead role. No official reason was ever given for Chastain leaving the project, but because of the delay, it is fair to presume it was simply due to the passage of time and the film’s failure to raise the needed funds to continue production.
In fact, this whole thing is best summed up by a quote from Andrew Dominik himself. During a 2013 interview about The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dominik was asked about making Blonde, and he said “it’s just a question of how much money I can get to make the film.”