*Trigger warning*: This story has references to assault, abuse, trauma.
It feels like everyone has been talking about Netflix's, Blonde, for quite a long time now, and for good reason. The film is a fictional retelling of Marilyn Monroe’s rise to fame and her untimely death, with a twist. While actress Ana de Armas is a convincing Marilyn, the story that the three-hour film tells is not totally based in truth. And movie critics, for one, have had a lot to say about that. The film hasn't won any major awards yet this year (although Ana has been nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and SAG Award for "Best Actress").
Of course, this is a movie, so some artistic liberty was warranted. But it's important to clear up what is real versus what is fiction when it comes to Blonde. Here’s a breakdown.
The movie is based on a book by Joyce Carol Oates.
At its core, Blonde is based on a work of fiction. Author Joyce Carol Oates published her book, Blonde: A Novel, back in 2000, and Oates makes it very clear that while the subject was real, her book is a work of fiction.
Joyce “re-imagines one of America’s most enduring icons” in Blonde, according to the Amazon description, noting that it’s a “dazzling fictional portrait of the intricate inner life of the idolized and desired movie star as only the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates could paint it.”
So…the literal screenplay is based on a novel.
Did Marilyn have an abortion?
The movie features several scenes depicting Marilyn's multiple pregnancies, and they're pretty intense. For instance, one scene shows Marilyn getting an abortion, and the camera literally "enters" her vagina with the doctors. Then, after showing Marilyn getting an abortion, Marilyn gets pregnant again, and has a telepathic conversation with her fetus.
“You won’t hurt me this time, will you?” the fetus asks, to which Marilyn responds, “You’re not the same baby,” per The New York Times. The fetus then says, “That was me. It’s always me.”
But as much as writers and historians like to speculate on the subject, there's no proof that Marilyn ever had an abortion.
Did Marilyn have any miscarriages?
Yes. This part is true. While she was married to playwright Arthur Miller (from 1956 to 1961), Marilyn was known to have gotten pregnant three times, according to Netflix’s 2022 documentary, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, per Yahoo. She miscarried twice, and also suffered through an ectopic pregnancy.
These pregnancies reportedly occurred in 1956, 1957, and 1958. Marilyn did not have any children when she died from a drug overdose at 36.
Was she in a threesome with Charlie “Cass” Chaplin and Eddy Robinson, Jr.?
Early on in Blonde, viewers see Marilyn meet Charlie "Cass" Chaplin Jr. and Eddy G. Robinson Jr. in an acting class. The three end up having a steamy threesome during the movie, and eventually become a throuple. The movie even shows Marilyn getting pregnant as a result of their romantic escapades.
But there's no evidence to suggest she was ever in a threesome with Cass or Eddy.
In real life, Marilyn did date Charlie Chaplin, Jr., and he wrote about their brief affair in his book, My Father, Charlie Chaplin. Marilyn also may have been briefly involved with Eddy while filming Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but the three didn't overlap in their romantic endeavors, per RadioTimes.
Was she really obsessed with her father and did they ever meet?
Marilyn's father wasn't involved in her life, and his true identity was actually a mystery to the public for a long time. (DNA tests in 2022 cleared this up.) The movie shows Marilyn obsessing over her father and even calling her husbands “Daddy." And there seems to be some truth to both claims, but the movie definitely seems to have played them both up.
Marilyn’s first husband James Dougherty did say that she called him “Daddy,” per Marilyn Monroe: The Biography.
And according to contemporary accounts, Marilyn also tried to meet her dad, Charles Stanley Gifford, several times, according to the Charles Casillo biography, Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon and The Daily Mail.
The biography says that Marilyn called Charles and told him who she was, but his response was to tell her, “I’m married, and I have a family. I don’t have anything to say to you. Call my lawyer," per Showbiz CheatSheet.
Did she really have an affair with JFK?
It’s hard to definitively prove an affair between the American president and the starlet, but one of Marilyn’s biographers, James Spada, previously told People that “it was pretty clear that Marilyn had had sexual relations” with John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby Kennedy.
Was her mother really abusive, and did she suffer from mental illness?
The film shows Marilyn’s mom, Gladys Baker, physically and psychologically abusing her young daughter. However, it's unclear whether this actually happened.
It is accurate, however, that Gladys suffered from mental illness and schizophrenia, Slate reported. She appeared sporadically in Marilyn’s life when she was a child, per Biography. And Gladys lived in a mental institution, hospitals and care facilities at various times due to her symptoms, Biography says.
Was Joe DiMaggio really abusive?
Blonde shows some pretty tough scenes where Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn's second husband, physically abuses her. Unfortunately, there is some evidence to suggest this is at least partially accurate.
In her memoir, My Story, Monroe wrote that she and her then-husband DiMaggio “knew it wouldn’t be an easy marriage.” Marilyn later said that The Seven Year Itch’s famous scene where her skirt flows up was a breaking point. Plus, Joe’s son has suggested that his dad was physically abusive toward Marilyn, per Time, but it's not something that Marilyn publicly addressed.
The New York Post recounts a story from Joe’s son, where he remembers one incident. “I was asleep downstairs,” he said, “and I woke up to the sound of my father and Marilyn screaming...After a few minutes, I heard Marilyn race down the stairs and out the front door, and my father running after her. He caught up to her and grabbed her by the hair and sort of half-dragged her back to the house. She was trying to fight him off but couldn’t.”
