Jamie Lee Curtis Says She Assumed Ana De Armas Would Be An “Unsophisticated Young Woman” When They Met

In a new profile of Ana De Armas in Elle, Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred with De Armas in Knives Out, says that she had some preconceived notions of what De Armas would be like before they met. And just to editorialize a bit, I find those notions very, very stressful.

“I assumed — and I say this with real embarrassment — because she had come from Cuba, that she had just arrived. I made an assumption that she was an inexperienced, unsophisticated young woman. That first day, I was like, ‘Oh, what are your dreams?'” In fact, by the time De Armas had been cast in Knives Out, she was 30 years old and had already appeared in Blade Runner 2049 with Ryan Gosling, Knock Knock with Keanu Reeves, and War Dogs with Miles Teller and Jonah Hill.

The article adds that Curtis, who has been acting for decades and comes from Hollywood royalty as the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, offered to make introductions to people like her godson, Jake Gyllenhaal, who De Armas already knew. While it’s entirely understandable that Curtis might want to take a younger actress under her wing and help her make connections in a tough industry, it’s clear that Curtis’s comments might sound patronizing or outright ignorant (it’s the Cuba line that does it, I think). Her intentions were obviously good, but man do I wish she reworded things for this feature because I know this is not how she wanted it to come off. At least I hope.

Curtis admits that she quickly realized her error in assuming De Armas was a rube, and lauds De Armas’s career and talent, specifically calling out her transformation into Marilyn Monroe for the upcoming film Blonde. “My father was in Some Like It Hot, and I have a lot of photos of my father and Marilyn,” Curtis says. “It was a couple of still pictures and one video of her moving through space with no audio. But it was so shocking because she was Marilyn.”

Blonde is scheduled to be released on September 23, 2022 on Netflix.