Tatiana de Rosnay is a bestselling author who writes in both French and English. In her latest novel, Blonde Dust, she revisits the troubled production of The Misfits, through the fictional perspective of a young woman who befriends its leading lady on location in the Nevada desert. Recently published in France (with a cover photo by Dennis Stock), it has also been acquired by Grand Central Publishing for a US release in 2025.
“‘Pauline was well aware that she herself was only an ordinary woman sucked into the orbit of someone who was anything but ordinary… That was what being a chambermaid was all about: unintentionally intruding into private lives, glimpsing the contents of wastepaper baskets, noticing the titles of books, reading the first sentences of little notes lying around for all to see. An entire life, tucked away in a hotel room.’
A moving, redemptive tale that captures the unexpected relationship between the most famous movie star in the world and a young cleaning woman whose life will be changed forever.
Blonde Dust is told through the eyes of Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada. One day Pauline is asked to step in for a colleague and clean suite 614 – and although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, alias Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits.
Set against the backdrop of the vast, arid Nevada desert and its wild mustang horses, this is a heartfelt, engrossing novel and an upstairs/downstairs story of colliding worlds. A testament to the enduring power of female friendship, it also provides an intimate portrait of Marilyn Monroe and a side of her we have never seen.”
Tatiana de Rosnay discussed the writing of Blonde Dust in a recent interview for France Info.
“In January 2000, Pauline went to Reno with her childhood friend to witness the destruction of the legendary Mapes Hotel. Why mythical? It was here that in 1960, Pauline had an encounter that shook her and transformed her life.
‘I’ve been trying to talk about Marilyn Monroe for a long time,’ Tatiana de Rosnay says. ‘I’ve been a fan since I was 13, but I always approach my novels through a place … And when I saw this magnificent Art Deco building fall like that, I said to myself, this is my starting point: a hotel, a legendary shoot, an actress, a chambermaid. And that’s how I got into the story.’
When she stayed at the Mapes Hotel, Marilyn Monroe had already begun to drown herself in alcohol and drugs. It was just after her affair with Yves Montand. Marital scenes, delays on set, texts rewritten at the last minute, which she struggled to play. The Misfits will be a kind of ‘final testimony’ for Marilyn and her co-stars, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.
‘It has become my favorite Marilyn Monroe film,’ Tatiana says. ‘I find that it is the one which shows the actress that she could really have been, if we had stopped confining her to her silly blonde roles.’
It’s a real pleasure to let yourself be held by the hand of Tatiana de Rosnay, a true fan of Marilyn Monroe since her adolescence. We enter with her into suite 614, into the intimacy of Marilyn Monroe, with all her array of hairdressers, masseuses, and assistants of all kinds … human shields against her own fragility, even if no one managed to save her.
‘My book doesn’t present this glamorous woman,’ Tatiana says. ‘It presents the woman in the privacy of her hotel room, who had all these people gravitating around her. She trusted them, they protected her … It was a very difficult time for her. I think she must have suffered a lot in Reno. Besides, the heat was absolutely terrible, and the filming in the desert took on an absolutely apocalyptic aspect.’
And by the way, if the title of the novel, Blonde Dust, symbolises the dust caused by the explosion of the Mapes Hotel, it is also a bit like that of the desert under the hooves of the famous mustangs, and the eternal colour of Marilyn’s hair …”
The Marilyn Report 
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