In
Poussière blonde
, her new novel, Tatiana de Rosnay evokes Marilyn Monroe in an unexpected light.
Because it is not the star who takes center stage, but a young woman who officiates on the sidelines of her life, Pauline, responsible for cleaning the suite at the Mapes Hotel where the actress then resides, in the middle of filming the
Unhinged
– and in full marital discomfiture, her affair with Yves Montand having sounded the death knell for her union with Arthur Miller.
One is addicted to medication, unable to sleep, unable to wake up, barely able to play, while the other is under the influence of a man who gave her a child – the deputy director of the prestigious establishment – before granting him the favor of a job in the ladies' room.
The meeting with the famous actress will fortunately deviate the course of Pauline's existence and lead to her emancipation, orchestrated in a completely cinematic way by Tatiana de Rosnay.
Interview.
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Madame Figaro. - What does Marilyn Monroe represent to you?
Tatiana de Rosnay. -
I had four idols as a teenager.
I satisfied my passion for Tamara de Lempicka by writing
Tamara par Tatiana
where I depict her existence during the Roaring Twenties in Montparnasse.
Otherwise, there was Daphné du Maurier, who made me want to write when I was thirteen, reading
Rebecca
, and whose biography I published with Albin Michel in 2015,
Manderley
.
Then comes Emile Zola, who appears in
We will be better tomorrow,
and finally Marilyn Monroe.
It's all in all banal: I was just another teenager who adored him... In my case, it was the 1970s, I had bought his perfume, Chanel n°5, which I still wear, and my room was wallpapered with posters of her.
The first movie I saw with her was
Some Like It Hot.
I was immediately seduced by the mixture of fragility, seduction, charm and humor that was his.
Then I was a plump young girl, uncomfortable in her skin, and this magnificent woman who assumed her curves gave me a lot of hope...
You choose a particular point of view: that of an unknown woman who was briefly his maid...
I didn't want to write another book about Marilyn.
My heroine is Pauline, and it is through her eyes that we witness the events.
It was a real challenge, because Marilyn tends to take all the spotlight, even sixty years after her death.
I had to imagine Pauline's life from A to Z, and give it flesh and depth.
Like her, I discovered the United States at the age of seven, but two decades later.
I arrived in Boston in 1967. My father had been sent there, he worked at MIT, and I was dazzled by the city, by America, by nature and I wanted to give Pauline this wonder. - there, even if in his case, it is about Nevada and the great outdoors.
I spent three years there, I was very happy there, and when I had to return to France, I experienced it as a heartbreak.
I kept traces of it in my accent, to the great despair of my British mother, who has more of that of Kristin Scott Thomas…
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Why did you make Pauline a Frenchwoman?
I wanted it to have a particularity that could interest Marilyn Monroe at that time when she was coming out of an affair with Yves Montand.
We know that she wrote to him and I wanted to imagine a letter that she would have sent to him in French, with the help of Pauline... It was also the opportunity, through the story of the mother by Pauline, Marcelle, a Parisian hairdresser who marries a GI and joins him in Reno, to talk about
warbrides
, the “war brides” who arrived on American boats, about which I knew nothing until then…
Was Nevada a source of inspiration?
Yes, but it was especially the Mapes Hotel that interested me.
It was demolished in 2000, exactly as I describe it in the novel: a collapse in swirls of blond dust... As soon as I saw the video of its destruction, I knew.
I had an actress, a hotel, a film –
Les Désaxés
– encompassed by the gaze of a young woman who enters the life of the star in a very intimate way, since she makes her bed and puts away her things.
Housekeepers know everything about our lives, especially in hotels.
They see the clothes we wear, what medicine we take, what we read, what we drink, how we sleep, what is in the trash... Following this direction has given me seemed irresistible, to depict a fragile, lost, endearing Marilyn, and not the mermaid all dressed in sequins.
The Marilyn that interests me is the one standing behind the door of Suite 614.
You are mixing three temporal threads. Could you enlighten us on this choice of construction?
I didn't want to settle for the face-to-face between Pauline and Marilyn, which would have been too linear.
I first wanted to say what Pauline became in 2000 and show how this story was decisive for her, how this meeting with Marilyn Monroe gave her rise.
The star opened her eyes to herself, gave her confidence and made her aware of her beauty and her resilience.
Then I wanted to tell the story of the American West and the mustangs, which constitute one of the main threads of the book - I even got back on horseback for the occasion.
Pauline's friend, Velma Johnson, who dedicated her life to these wild horses, also existed...
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What was it about this period of Marilyn’s life that interested you?
Perhaps it's less a question of time than of place.
I could have chosen the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she had her affair with Montand.
At the time, Marilyn made three films,
Some Like It Hot, The Billionaire
and
The Unhinged
.
But much has already been said and written about California, Hollywood, or her clandestine love affair with Yves Montand.
Additionally, the Beverly Hills Hotel still exists.
However, what I liked was to start from photos and documents to reconstruct everything.
So I preferred the Wild West, the American legend of the silver mines, the ghost towns and Reno which was really
the place to be
before the advent of Las Vegas.
Recreating this Nevada of the 1960s, the filming of
Désaxés
, was extraordinary.
And then, coming back to the Mapes Hotel, I liked the idea of staging a micro-society, an
upstairs/downstairs
– masters and servants – like in
Downtown Abbey
.
A whole world of janitors, elevator operators, chefs, sous-chefs,
etc.,
housed in a twelve-story establishment, with at the top this
skyroom
, this room in the sky where concerts and shows were given.
Blonde Dust Press
Blonde dust
, Tatiana de Rosnay, ed.
Albin Michel, 320 p., €21.90.