“Blonde” on Netflix

Marilyn Monroe’s life needs no fictional embellishment. It was rags to riches, triumph and tragedy, and then there was the almost-Hollywood-like scripted, mysterious and untimely end. She was exploited in life, and far more so in death.

Her last taped interview with Richard Meryman was published in Life Magazine (August 3, 1962), one day before her death. At the conclusion of that interview, Marilyn said, “Please don’t make me look like a joke…” 

I feel that it’s so very important to honor those words, and that wish. It’s our duty to give her legacy something she explicitly asked for. It was as if she knew how she’d be portrayed in death, when she had no voice to fight back, because she fought so desperately hard, for everything, when she lived. Some sixty years on since her passing, we are still debating and deciphering the lies from the truth.

That said, it’s essential to remember that Blonde is not a biopic. It walks the precarious tightrope of artistic licence and historical fiction.