Ana de Armas Slams Blonde's NC-17 Rating: Other Films 'Are Way More Explicit'

Blonde star Ana de Armas has a bone to pick with the Motion Picture Association of America, which handed down Netflix's first NC-17 rating to the Marilyn Monroe biopic.

In a Tuesday interview with L'Officiel, de Armas, who plays the Hollywood icon in the film, expressed her confusion about the adults-only rating.

"I didn't understand why that happened," de Armas of the film earning a rare NC-17 rating. "I can tell you a number of shows or movies that are way more explicit with a lot more sexual content than Blonde."

"But to tell this story it is important to show all these moments in Marilyn's life that made her end up the way that she did," she continued. "It needed to be explained. Everyone [in the cast] knew we had to go to uncomfortable places. I wasn't the only one."

Though the NC-17 rating has generated all sorts of buzz for Blonde, director Andrew Dominik was also "surprised" when the MPA rating came in. "I thought we'd colored inside the lines," he told Vulture in May.

"But I think if you've got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think," he added. "It's just a weird time. It's not like depictions of happy sexuality. It's depictions of situations that are ambiguous. And Americans are really strange when it comes to sexual behavior, don't you think? I don't know why. They make more porn than anyone else in the world."

Based on the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde "boldly reimagines the life of Marilyn Monroe, exploring the split between her public and private selves," per Netflix's description. The film makes its debut at the Venice Film Festival before premiering September 28 on Netflix.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.