Marilyn director discusses careful casting
While it should go without saying that My Week With Marilyn has amorous feelings for its eponymous bombshell this fluffy rom-com is equal parts puppy love letter to the golden age of Hollywood. Michelle Williams steals the marquee with her purring portrayal of Monroe and as director Simon Curtis explains this was wonderful to watch from either side of the camera.
“I was well aware that this film stood or fell on her pulling it off” he laughs. “It was a huge challenge so watching her put in so much talent and commitment was very exciting when it came to fruition. Happily Michelle was pretty damn good from the first day and seeing it become real was a huge thrill.”
Monroe’s story is the stuff of silver screen legend. In the days following her marriage to Arthur Miller Monroe flew to England to film 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl only to be met with the high-pressure direction of co-star Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). Yet the real romance at the heart of all this hoopla ended up between Marilyn and adolescent on-set whipping boy Colin Clark who captured these exploits in a pair of companion memoirs.
“We based the film on these two books” explains Curtis. “ The Prince the Showgirl and Me is an overall account of the making of the original film. Then there’s a missing week which is the story told in the book My Week with Marilyn . We put them back together as one overall piece. My objective was always to tell Colin’s story because there would be as many versions as there were characters on-set.”
On paper Marilyn sounds as light and unsubstantial as a bowl of whipped cream yet the cast makes it work. Branagh throws himself into the role of Olivier with a relish typically reserved for Shakespeare reportedly due to the fact that this role provided an antidote to his previous project Thor . Newcomer Eddie Redmayne is fittingly flushed as the starry-eyed Clark Dame Judi Dench is the kind-hearted foil and it’s fun to watch Emma “Hermione” Watson in her first post- Harry Potter role.
“I think we got such a great supporting cast because people like the script and the story” Curtis says. “Both Michelle and Ken are tremendous magnets to other actors. Also because we shot in London and so many of the cast members live there it wasn’t such a pain in the arse for them to travel.”
“We were very lucky to get Emma” he continues. “If you’re casting a pretty British girl in her early 20s she’s at the top of anyone’s list. It can’t not be difficult for her to shake off the Hermione role when she’s been in eight films which have dominated our culture for so long. But if you ask me she’s a real talent and a real actress and I think she’ll go all the way.”
In the end however everything boils down to Marilyn Monroe. Fifty years after her untimely passing why does the troubled blond starlet continue to captivate?
“It’s a combination of many elements” Curtis concludes. “She was obviously a stunning beauty and the soap opera elements of her life — her marriages her love affairs and the circumstances of her tragic death — continue to obsess people. There will never be another Marilyn because our culture is shaped so differently now. There are so many of everybody and everything it would be impossible for anyone to break out the way she did.”
