The Weinstein Co. and Trademark Films announced today the start of principal photography on My Week with Marilyn and with the announcement included a first look at Michelle Williams who stars as Monroe in the feature to be directed by TV director Simon Curtis (“Cranford”) for 7 weeks at Pinewood Studios and on location in and around London.
Michelle Williams plays the iconic Marilyn Monroe alongside a British cast including as Eddie Redmayne Colin Clark, Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike, Julia Ormond (replacing Catherine Zeta Jones) as Vivien Leigh and Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller. Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson (Hermione in the Harry Potter films), Zoe Wanamaker, Toby Jones, Philip Jackson, Geraldine Somerville, Derek Jacobi, Simon Russell Beale and Dominic Cooper round out the cast.
The press release included the following synopsis:
In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.
Nearly 40 years on, his diary account “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me” was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as “My Week with Marilyn” – this is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
Back in 2009 Scarlett Johansson led the list of candidates for the role, which was also said to include Kate Hudson and Amy Adams, but Williams won the role. You can check out a larger look just below and make up your mind (or an even larger look right here). Did they cast the right actress to embody Marilyn?
