Blonde producer Brad Pitt defends casting of 'phenomenal' Ana de Armas amid backlash over her accent

Two-time Oscar winner Brad Pitt is one of the six credited producers on Andrew Dominik’s NC-17 Marilyn Monroe movie Blonde, and he defended the casting of Ana de Armas amid backlash over her Cuban accent.

‘She is phenomenal in it. That’s a tough dress to fill,’ the 58-year-old Plan B Entertainment co-founder told ET on Monday.

‘It was 10 years in the making. It wasn’t until we found Ana that we could get it across the finish line.’

And while Blonde is not fully-authorized by the Marilyn Monroe Estate, the rep Marc Rosen told Variety on Monday: ‘Ana was a great casting choice as she captures Marilyn’s glamour, humanity, and vulnerability.’

Blonde author Joyce Carol Oates and Jamie Lee Curtis – whose father Tony Curtis (played by Michael Masini) co-starred with Monroe in Some Like It Hot – have both seen the film and fully approve.

The 34-year-old Golden Globe nominee – who only learned English in 2015 – spent nine months attempting to perfect the legendary blonde bombshell’s Hollywood accent with dialect coach Jessica Drake.

‘I think this movie is going to throw people, you know, in the way that it’s been told,’ Ana admitted to Rotten Tomatoes last Wednesday.

‘I think it’s not a traditional biopic. It’s not literal. it’s not conventional. It’s not even chronological. It’s more like an experience. And the audiences will – the hope is that they will feel what it was like to be her.’

But when Netflix dropped the new trailer last Thursday, Twitter users blasted de Armas’ accent as ‘awful’ with some saying she ‘looks nothing like Marilyn Monroe.’

The 84-year-old author’s novel boosts the conspiracy theory that the Golden Globe winner was murdered by former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. 

Blonde will feature a scene where Marilyn was allegedly raped by ‘Mr. Z’ (David Warshofsky) aka Fox Studio Head Darryl F. Zanuck, which was thinly veiled in the 752-page work of fiction.

‘Reminder Blonde is heavily based on a fictional book about Marilyn Monroe that will [feed] the public more lies about her,’ Twitter user @moonyves wrote. ‘This is not a biopic.’

And Twitter user @four7878 wrote: ‘Blonde is NC-17 and a fictional tale of Marilyn Monroe. It’s basically trauma porn but literal on the porn part.’

Back in February, Dominik said early backlash was ‘the f***ing audience’s problem’ and assured ‘the one thing nobody’s going to complain about is Ana’s performance.’

‘It’s an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe, it’s kind of what you want, right?’ the 54-year-old Kiwi director told Variety.

‘I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story.’

Blonde will have its world premiere in-competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival (spanning August 31-September 10) before streaming September 28 on Netflix.

The two-hour-and-45-minute flick also features Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, and Julianne Nicholson.

It’s technically the second adaptation of Blonde after Joyce Chopra’s three-hour TV movie, which aired in 2001 on CBS starring Australian actress Poppy Montgomery.

This Thursday marks the 60th anniversary of Marilyn’s (born Norma Jeane Mortenson) death, at age 36, from a barbiturate overdose.