The film "Blonde" is based on Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 novel of the same name — a fictional account of Monroe's life. Oates has always said that the novel is inspired by her own imagination of what it was like to be Monroe. Many of the men in Monroe's life are not referred to by name in the novel.
For her part, Oates praised the film in a 2021 tweet, writing, "an exquisite portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Ana de Armas & director Andrew [Dominik]; one without the other could perhaps not have worked this magic. the tone of the film is hard to classify, not surreal but not totally realistic, not 'horror' but suffused with the dread of horror."